How a Quest by Elites Is Driving ‘Brexit’ and Trump
nytimes.comI may be reading this too late at night, but the theory seems to be that our benevolent, perfectly logical Ivy League-educated overlords regrettably have to break a few eggs to make a delicious omelette of economic prosperity for all, and those broken eggs are enough to make people throw up their hands and vote for Trump/Brexit/whatever just for a chance to cling to the present, the good old days, at the expense of that shining, golden future.
I have a feeling that people are actually pissed off because they don't think the established elite are generally benevolent, but rather that they act in their own interests at the expense of the prosperity of the middle and lower classes. Whether this is true is beyond the scope of this comment, but any discussion of this seemingly relevant alternate theory is conspicuously absent from the article.
Pretty much this. And that's the issue with globalisation; it's great for those at the top, decent for those at the very bottom and often rather awful for those in the middle.
The votes for Brexit, Trump, various far left and right wing parties, etc are a way of saying "let's watch the elite's world and system collapse on itself". They've seen how little any of this is doing for them as workers, and how every system seems stacked in favour of the well off, and they just want to see it all burn to the ground.
> are a way of saying "let's watch the elite's world and system collapse on itself"
I don't think people want to replace the elites with void. Maybe that's the case for nihilistic, fringe far-right or far-left parties. But when majorities or near majorities are voting for Trump or Brexit, they want to replace the elites with something else`.
It's funny to watch the elites suddenly renouncing democracy because she stopped serving their purposes (It was quite a relevation to watch reddit go full-on military-dictatorship this past week, but hey reddit is not reality).
Democracy is a very adaptive concept and there is a saying that there are no dead ends with it.
That's a depressing pattern in general. A lot of people like democracy... up until something or someone they don't like gets the majority of the vote.
It's especially interesting to see all the political figures against brexit talk about more referendums and reconsidering whether to leave the EU. Think it's time the Labour Party and the likes accepted the results and started thinking about how to make the best of it rather than trying to ignore the results of a major vote like this.
Replacing the "elite" with an underspecified, possibly unachievable "something else" is begging for a void.
Come on, we're software engineers; we know how crazy it is to turn off a working system without having a viable plan for its replacement.
> underspecified, possibly unachievable "something else"
I think it's pretty well outlined what is that "something else". The implementation is not there (obviously), but the API exists, for example anti-immigration, [edit]pro-protectionism etc. Most people dismiss it as non-existent though, due to liberal reflexes.
Being anti-immigration is protectionism, though. Especially for the services sector. The two things are in direct contradiction to one another. The specific motivation for objecting to immigration (other than straight racism) is "protecting jobs".
yep. sorry typo
Software != Politics.
Revolutions and other acts that tear things down do often result in worse outcomes, yet sometimes the tearing down is necessary, regardless.
We also know that management will never approve a replacement until the working system burns down.
Globalisation is much more than that actually. It is basically a technological change, happening throughout the last couple of centuries, that enables people to operate at any point in the world. Of course, the ability is not evenly spread out. First it was the Europeans who could colonise the world. Then it was big corporations who could set up shop abroad and fly their managers in. Tourism from the first world was kind of a fallout of that too.
Today it is not just rich people but pretty much everyone. It is much more easy to migrate from a different culture and then stick your own via the internet. This makes migration much more bearable for the migrants, especially if they can tell themselves that it's just temporary. And a lot of people are migrating, because wealth is just not evenly spread.
This is all nice until you realise the difference of cultures. In the 80's it was no big deal if someone at the other end of the world was "wrong" (about how to lead your life, what to eat, etc.). If that someone moves into the house down the street that's suddenly a different matter. What if his "wrong" spreads?
On top of that, corporations have less of a need to play well with a regional population if they can move any place of the world. This has resulted in a power shift towards corporations with an impact on politicians (think revolving door politics).
The result is that many people feel abandoned, betrayed, and left helpless under a deluge of "wrong". And finally they want revenge. Let it all burn down and build something that's more like how it used to be.
But those times are gone. We cannot wind the time back to the 80's unless we roll back the internet. Because the root cause of it all is not betrayal or corruption, or a conspiracy to establish a new world order.
It is my belief that this century will be characterised by how humanity will deal with the issue of a globalised world, with contradicting cultures and beliefs. Are we going to raise fences everywhere, forming blocks protected by new iron curtains, hiding in our shells? Or are we going to form one all encompassing harmonised culture that you better not deviate from? My hope is that humanity learns that the world is not going to end just because someone is wrong on the internet or down the block.
Indeed. I can understand that a lot of economic policies can be viewed in the way the author describes (a relentless pursuit of efficiency), but Ivy League overlords are also doing a lot of stuff that's just plain greed and can't be explained away with efficiency.
For example high-frequency trading. Or (here in Germany) renting ruinous hotels to the government as refugee centers at bizarre rates because there was literally no other big-enough accommodation available.
High-frequency trading is usually justified by pointing at increased market fluidity, which is a positive thing in principle. Whether that is enough justification for the problems it causes is clearly something that should be discussed more.
Ah right, market fluidity was their cover-up story. I'm absolutely not convinced, seeing how billions of dollars and euros are pumped into the market to increase fluidity, with questionable success.
That's the justification. If you go to e.g. zerohedge.com and find an article showing the millisecond by millisecond bidding by hft, you might come to the conclusion that the justification is hollow.
Not 100% what the article said. Yes, prosperity for all is what the elite wants to achieve. But, they have a different understanding what "prosperity for all" means. For the normal person it may not mean "more growth, more efficiency" but a stable life, job, apartment. The assumption is that most people want less risk not more gain, while the people at the top think more gain is what everybody wants.
Just that much explaining the article. My personal opinion is that discussing the elite as psychopaths who just want to exploit humanity as boring. Yes these people exist and at the top there may be more than in the middle, but it's simply not common human behaviour. Most people want to be geniunely valuable to the other people around them. Your boss wants to make a good impression on you, etc. But the understanding of the world and how the different factors of your life influence you differently than the factors of other people's life influences them, that is what leads people to make different decisions and set different priorities.
Call it the syndrome of vox.com - there was this article about how Bernie's trade protectionism will have a "price" of depriving millions of third world countries' citizens of chances to develop and escape poverty.
I blinked twice or trice to see if they were not joking. But no - they were seriously thinking that some other's country citizens' problems should be considered equal to the US citizen ones by the President of US. I agree that all people are equal, but elected officials/statesmen should always consider their constituents couple of orders of magnitude more equal than the rest of the people.
The people right now want a real statesmen like Bismarck:
"The whole of the Balkans is not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier."
The US and British (and a lot others) working and lower middle classes want to hear that they are more important to their own government than the foreigners.
And Trump and Brexiters are the only ones that give that message. So was Sanders while campaigning.
I don't think the distinguishing characteristic of bankers is their desire for economic efficiency. It's their desire for self-enrichment.
Maybe the author doesn't mean actual bankers, but is instead referring to central bankers, in which case I'd argue that the meager GDP growth achieved from an unprecedented expansion of central banking assets has been anything but efficient.
Regardless, the fact that the author can look back the past 10 years of economic policy and find among all the mad and destructive monetary actions a "quest for efficiency" just shows that the author is as out of touch as the bankers.
What's happening is that the public at large is figuring this out (and this part the author gets right) using the imperfect vehicles of Trump and Brexit to try and stop it.
I don't think central bankers have a particularly egregious desire for self-enrichment. I do think however, their policies have been disastrous for pretty much everyone. If anything, it's their "altruistic" behaviour and prescriptions for society that have had these unintended consequences.
I don't think the average banker has a greater desire for self-enrichment than say, the average lawyer or the average sales manager. And anyway, there's nothing wrong with a certain amount of greediness in a capitalist system, this is what drives innovation and efficiency. The problem with banking has been that the system is broken. Unlike other companies, mismanaged banks cannot go bankrupt because they drag the entire system with them.
> And anyway, there's nothing wrong with a certain amount of greediness in a capitalist system, this is what drives innovation and efficiency.
I wonder how many years will pass before people realize this mantra is an article of faith.
The one example of innovation mentioned in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations came from a boy who wanted to go out and play with his friends.
(His job was to activate the release valve on an early steam engine. He rigged up a string to do that so he could play. James Watt incorporated this into his design.)
(Watt and Smith were contemporaries in Edinburgh. Not only that, but Smith arranged for Watt, who'd been driven from business by the blacksmith's union (the Hammermen), to have an appointment and facilities at the University of Edinburgh. I'm fairly convinced they shared drinks at the local pub and swapped war stories.)
We're currently at 240 years, so I wouldn't hold my breath.
> It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.
Greediness is not the same as simply regarding one's interest, though the line is subjective.
The greed that people talk about when they say that greed is good (by way of Wall Street, the 1987 movie) is, though.
Also, a great many uses of the word in (lazy) criticism of markets and capitalism is that too.
> The greed that people talk about when they say that greed is good (by way of Wall Street, the 1987 movie) is, though.
Thing is, you can't reduce the pursuit of self interest to accumulating wealth. Therefore, even if we accept the definition of greed as merely pursuing wealth, we misunderstand Smith's quote and fail to acknowledge many sources of creativity. By disproportionately rewarding greed and not other work incentives, we build a society for the few that are driven by it, at the expense of most, and ultimately, we cannot thrive.
Ayn Rand's "Virtue of Selfishness" completely ignores, or fails to compare with it's vices.
It's convenient for people to believe in it because it's a self-serving belief.
I was part of the banking system for many years - it is unbelievably greedy. There is no respect for individuals, other than how much money they can make. Concepts like loyalty and service have no meaning.
I was not denying that the banking system is greedy, I am saying that it is not more greedy than certain other branches. I have been part of the banking system for quite a few years as well, and although there is some truth in what you are saying, I have experienced the same things elsewhere as well. For instance in certain IT consultancy firms.
> Unlike other companies, mismanaged banks cannot go bankrupt because they drag the entire system with them.
Of course they can, we just have to be willing to let them in order to see the fundamental flaws in the system as it is.
Quote from OA
"Voters in large numbers have been rejecting much of the underlying logic behind a dynamic globalized economy that on paper seems to make the world much richer."
In the UK, we don't actually know why 17+ million chose to tick the leave box.
My conversations with a handful of people who did vote leave suggest a range of reasons from immigration, through to 'loss of control'. Macroeconomic policy does not seem to figure prominently.
The government of Mrs May is further to the right of that of Mr Cameron. Her published statement does mention a softer approach to social factors and a desire to spread the rewards around more evenly...
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/statement-from-the-ne...
...we shall see how that actually goes over the next few years in terms of actual law (look out for 'red tape' discussions - your red tape may be my employment rights) and policy (look out for some systematic way to replace the EU grant system that has recycled tax income from London/South to North).
I guess it depends where you live.
In my part of the UK people were overwhelmingly in favour of leave. I wouldn't typically mention I was a remain voter as it was near sure to get me a discussion.
Very few claimed the immigration directly - t'was about jobs, or more precisely the lack of them, therefore immigration.
A good part of the region is not yet out of the 2008 recession, and house price growth is a joke. When you relatively recently had a well paying job with which you supported your family, yet now you're not making ends meet in a temporary delivery driver fake-freelance job, as that's all you can get despite skills, it's hard to see much logic in the "dynamic globalized economy".
Now then, I'd argue that for most in tht position, the social justice, work regulation and regional development funds of the EU would be something to heavily vote for. The EU, though, has always been appalling at making a case for itself - hence distant EU bureaucrats and other tropes.
Sadly, Boris's bullshit of £350m to the NHS and evil EU immigrants taking your jobs touched sore nerves and lead to the leave votes.
Now we get a government that looks like it will lurch heavily to the right, and as far as London and the tories are concerned, the regions can go f* themselves.
Turkeys voting for Christmas perhaps, but I do undertand the reasons why, least round these parts. I'd say the root cause goes all the way back to Thatcher and the loss of local industry, from which many towns have still not recovered.
I am not sure what I am saying, but I believe that a lot of the people voting, do not have the intelligence to vote.
I met a couple of neds in Spain recently on the day of the vote, and they were like "Take it back, init, take it back and be great".
I was like "What does that mean though??? Take back what??". "Take it back! We just need to run ourselves".
Despite almost an hours worth of discussion, they were passionate about something which was nothing of value. I would probably put a lot of money on 20% of the vote being people who pick up a newspaper, and copy what the editor says.
This "lets be great again" rubbish was the common theme.
This is the nature of our democracy, however.
One could argue that one has a duty to educate, but you cannot force knowledge and reason upon people who do not wish it.
I saw much of the same on the brexit vote - one that stood out was someone i'd always thought was an intelligent man (he used to run a substantial investment bank), who I found screaming, froth-flecked, in my face about how I was a traitor for not voting for freedom, how I loved evil, how leaving the EU was a vote for freedom. He couldn't elaborate on anything, he could just shout louder. It doesn't matter to him even, he'll be dead soon. One of his sons is a us native with British citizenship working on an eu research grant in Scandinavia. So strong was his irrational hatred he voted to fuck his own son over. Oh, and this guy is your ivy league elite, as were many of the other codgers in the room with the same groundless hate, so there goes the argument of this piece.
The trimp/brexit voters aren't disillusioned youth, aren't the left behind, they're just your usually older traditional values crowd.
That all said, like it or lump it. You are in the same boat as these people, they are people, and they represent the majority of people.
I've spent most of my life trying to be tolerant of incredible stupidity, and I don't know if I'll ever fully succeed, but all you can do is grit your teeth, and keep quiet. You won't change their minds with any rational discourse, only emotional.
You know, I have heard this argument used a few times. If you are intelligent, you voted to remain, if you are not intelligent, you voted to leave. So blame lack of intelligence on not getting a vote you wanted, because people that disagree with you must not be intelligent - right?
I'm not sure where you get that from. The leave arguments were emotional, the remain arguments were rational. Emotional arguments always win.
Project Fear from the remain side was rational, was it? George Osborne's "punishment budget" was rational, was it? Attempting to delay the release of NI numbers until after the referendum was rational, was it? Instructing the Civil Service to not help Brexit ministers with EU questions was rational, was it?
There are many rational arguments for both leave and remain, it depends on your point of view. There were many emotional arguments from both sides.
"he voted to fuck his own son over"
Now, that was both emotional and irrational.
So, despite his sons residency and employment both being dependent on the uk's continued membership of the EU, you think this was a rational, kind decision?
I don't think they're dependent on the UK's membership of the EU that much.
First, there's plenty of people not from EU who participate in European research on European grants. Think Russians in CERN and so on.
Second, secession from EU doesn't mean freedom of travel will be thwarted for scientists. UK was already not on Schengen, so what? At worst they'll have get a visa every few years.
In short, that person might consider that his son will figure it out.
Regarding "kind" - "kind" is irrational. Rational is often not kind and kind is often not rational.
He's at a European university on an EU grant via a British institution. It's hard to see how that would continue.
There was no rationale behind his leave vote other than the EU being the "empire of evil" that we must free ourselves from for freedom. Same applied to everyone else I spoke with that evening.
There's always been a percentage who would vote for, shall we say, simplistic reasons. They're the group least likely to actually go and vote I believe.
But some kid latching onto the oft used soundbite of "take back control" (from whom, why?) is little different to "I vote Labour because my dad always did", or "I voted Blair because he has a nice smile" (someone actually said that to me after the 97 election).
I just consider it background noise, and might be perhaps 20% of all votes.
What was different is that they managed to get a good turnout, and in cases where it wasn't about jobs/EU migration it was about London overlords telling them what to do whilst simultaneously neglecting them (take back control).
The messages resonated perfectly with their life experiences.
Unfortunately the irony of giving the UK govt a good kicking via an EU Brexit vote that will remove more benefits than problems for them will be lost on them.
You can look more recently than that, the failed austerity experiment contributed to these conditions
Both really.
For places like Middlesborough or Burnley they're a shadow of their former 80s selves. Austerity there is just a case of rubbing salt into the still open wound.
Early in my career I regularly visited towns like Middlesborough and Burnley, installing IT systems. There was a lot of unskilled and semi-skilled work available at those businesses that has either been shipped out to China or automated away.
Those jobs aren't coming back, whether we are in the EU or not.
No they're not.
But you have to consider recent history to understand life for people there. It's not just "stupid bloody Northerners voting for Brexit" because they don't understand the world has moved on.
Many once prosperous, vibrant, manufacturing towns were decimated under Thatcher. The councils didn't have two brass Farthings to rub together (both from the loss of business and also ever increasing centralism, especially of funding). The regional redevelopment agencies (as I think they were called) managed to create a few call centre jobs and poorly draft some folks' CVs. Heseltine wanted properly funded development agencies, similar to the old New Town corporations, with enough power to make decisions and achieve things, Howe (I think) didn't want to spend the brass. If memory serves, Heseltine was able to make some significant difference in Liverpool (mainly because of the recent Toxteth riots) and Manchester. He wanted to cover all the affected towns but wasn't permitted both from a financial point of view, and it was interventionist which went against the religion of Thatcherism/Reaganism.
Then came large, poorly integrated, immigrant communities, actively placed there by one government or another (I forget if it was mostly Tory or Labour). There was tension, mainly stemming from the pre-existing lack of opportunity. Little wonder there were race riots in some of these towns a decade later.
Then came New Labour, full of promises. No regional redevelopment, so sorely needed for well over a decade. More London-centric than even the Tories which defied belief. More large infrastructure projects, but none within 100 miles. If London wanted the tube rails gold plated you'd believe it was more likely to be approved than development spending in Sheffield or Truro.
Children of the eighties grew up with no working parent as role-model. Opportunities heavily curtailed from lack of money, be that nutritionally, books in the house, or ability to go to university. It's little wonder many became disaffected and disenfranchised.
The three bed family semi might sell for £80k or £120k, if it sells, but want to relocate to MK or London or anywhere with some life chances? Can't even afford a shared shed in such places, let alone relocate a family. Hell, the differentials got so large they can't even afford to relocat to Manchester or Leeds
So along come the blatant lies of Johnson and Farage: "Take back control of your lives", "£350m a week on the NHS", "xx,000 immigrants a year taking your jobs". It was an easy sell after 30 years of bull in the media about stupid EU regulations, straight bananas, EU super state and what have you.
As another commenter insightfully pointed out receiving EU redevelopment funds is a reliable indicator of neglect by successive governments. That those places most heavily voted leave is ironic, but a reliable indicator of how neglected they feel by all in power for the last 40 years.
There's no point pointing out they were backing not just the wrong horse, but the wrong race. Tell that to Farage and co selling a vision they neither cared about or had any intention of delivering. Look at their surprise the morning after when they won. Not a damn lying one of them even smiled. About time the ASA covered political messages too.
This is it exactly. Staying (and therefore nothing changing) was a really bad option for millions of people.
Brexit was change. And maybe, just maybe it would be a change for good. Staying and project fear did not offer hope.
To change the things that are controlled by the UK government, you need to vote for a different UK government.
> Brexit was change
"I don't like my car, therefore I am changing pants"
Huh?
I'm not sure, the left wants to offer more welfare, the right crappy minimum wage jobs and the populists offer pie in the sky. I don't think any of them have a real solution.
There was a thing called [left-exit] that a lot of us voted for. There was also a good [green-exit] argument which made a lot of sense. Just because these are both almost hopeless...
And yet without a goal and a plan voting for Brexit is just as bad.
Hope is not a strategy. Luck is not a factor. Fear is not an option. -- James Cameron
Of the 5 people I know who were pro Brexit:
- One blamed being a evacuated kid in WW2
- Two said it was a "protest" vote - and admitted that they didn't want to actually leave the EU
- Two said it was because they felt that immigrants made their search for jobs more difficult
Do you think millenials being priced out of London as it became a global money laundering hub had anything to do with it? That's what I hear from my friends there.
If you look at a map showing the breakdown of referendum voting by district you will find that Scotland, London and University towns together with many larger cities voted to remain. Areas of the country that depend most heavily on EU grants (ESF/ERDF) voted to leave. Grant allocation is a reliable indicator of relative lack of investment/development.
I don't live in London so I can't comment on conversations there.
We're being priced out of everywhere. Paying over the odds for a crappy semi that the boomers hoarded for profit surrounded by leave voters outside of London isn't appealing either.
EU was pretty much our lifeline that we could move to somewhere much nicer and affordable in Europe once our careers have been established.
Unlikely. If you look at the age breakdown of the vote, millenials and other assorted youngsters voted overwhelmingly for "Remain", while the older cohort voted for "Leave".
> If you look at the age breakdown of the vote
That's not the breakdown of the vote but of exit polls and other opt-in polling such as YouGov surveys. Both of which are biased towards those (1) likely to contribute and (2) not concerned about sharing how they voted.
The actual demographic composition of the vote is unknown, it could be determined ( all UK ballot papers are linked to their voter ) but that would be unprecedented and probably bad for democracy.
>all UK ballot papers are linked to their voter
No they're not. The ballot papers themselves are indistinguishable, and they are rejected during counting if people include any identifying marks.
> (2) not concerned about sharing how they voted
Are exit polls not anonymized in the UK? At the last federal election in Germany, I was asked to contribute in an exit poll, and they had their own voting booth and urn set up for that purpose next to the actual voting room.
The ballot was mostly identical, except for additional checkboxes for age group and gender, which they wanted to break down in their analyses. So still reasonably anonymized.
The exit poll for the EU referendum at my local voting station was conducted by a man with a tablet computer! I didn't stop to investigate the process, unfortunately.
Haven't ever seen an exit poll round here. No one was trying to gage who voted for what near any of these polling stations.
Guess it's more common in some areas than others.
London largely voted remain so not really. However I think youth are rightly frustrated about London prices
40% of London voted to leave, that's enough to change the outcome.
I don't think pretending there is a huge geographical divide is particularly helpful.
There was a huge divide in London too. Places like Camden, Kensington and Barnet overwhelmingly voted remain. Other places like Havering, Barking and Dagenham and Bexley voted to leave. And some areas (like Newham) were extremely close as far as percentages go.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/london-eu-referendum...
General rule seems to be that places with lots of university students or large businesses tended to vote remain and those with either deeply conservative populations or a lot of immigration tended to vote leave.
> General rule seems to be that places with lots of university students or large businesses tended to vote remain and those with either deeply conservative populations or a lot of immigration tended to vote leave
Doesn't think that is true. Lewisham, Lambeth and Tower Hamlets are some of the places with the most immigrants and remain won in all of these places by obscenely large margins.
Maybe votes were more along racial lines - White English (especially the older ones) voting to leave, but people with a more colourful Asian/Caribbean heritage voting to remain?
Not quite. Have you seen the demographics for Barking and Dagenham?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Borough_of_Barking_and_...
It's actually been specifically mentioned in a BBC article on the same subject:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21511904
On the other hand, Havering is the least ethnically diverse area in London. Upminster has the lowest Simpson Index in the country.
Maybe it's places with the highest and lowest amounts of diversity that voted leave and those in the middle that voted stay?
It might not be helpful but it's not pretending, there was a huge geographical divide: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36616028
- Some councils in London, Edinburgh, some Belfast, voted ~75% remain; - Some eastern England ares voted ~25% remain.
If you ignore the protests of some regions how can you address their problems (real or perceived).
Becoming a global money laundering hub like London is a wet dream of every major city on this planet. Plus, as the commenter below mentions, London mostly voted remain.
It may be the dream of owners of property in London but not those that rent there.
Well, keep in mind that for every million processed via, say, Credit Suisse in London, several thousand land up in Accenture (or other IT firm), several go to Deloitte (or other consultancy), some more go to Linklaters (or other law firm). Their employees get their salaries that allow then to support their families and then go drink coffee at Nero and eat sandwiches at Pret. Everyone in this chain -- from Credit Suisse via Accenture to Nero are employing people, growing and paying wages.
Now you can go "those high-earning landlord scum" as much as you want, but nobody in their right mind would say that it's better to have a situation in, say, small towns in the Northeastern England where rent is spectacularly low — but so is employment.
If you work in London at all, you get trickle down from the financial services sector. People who work in finance drink in your coffee shop, eat in your restaurant, ride in your bus or taxi, buy things in your shop.
Look at what happened in 2008. Finance caught a cold and the entire global economy including Britain fell flat on it's back. Brexit has the potential to do far more damage over a much longer period of time, but mostly just to Britain. The knock on effect across the country isn't going to be pretty. But hey, if the rest of Britain decides they'd rather like to have a long drawn out recession just in order to stick it to the bankers then fine.
And those same people leech off the public purse in order to bail themselves out of their greedy, malicious fuck ups that end up ruining economies and destroying lives.
Alright, you hate bankers and financiers. I get it. Fair enough, that's your right and I won't argue the point.
However London is a global cultural and trade hub entirely due to it's finance industry. Take that away and what does London or Britain have economically? Every single London resident would suffer from that from lower wages, fewer employment prospects and higher taxes. Property would be less valuable and so rents might fall, but so would earnings to pay for it with.
I fully expect a 'we should be making cars (or whatever) instead of running banks' type argument, but why is that a choice? Anything else we could do to make up for losing Finance we could do anyway. We had a 3 term Labour government. They were in power for 13 years. If anyone was going to dial back the clock and 'save' Britain by turning it into a low-wage, low value jobs-for-the-boys economy they had the chance. Killing finance first then wondering what to do instead is kind of the wrong way to go about something like that.
I get where you are coming from. But, the revolving door/lobbyist economy/power concentration needs to be broken before real reform can begin.
This whole thread makes me wonder what the lowest common denominator is. My bet is brains in jars hooked up to virtual reality. Or perhaps we're all just harvested for our organs by the elite like in unwind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9snP4HuRsr4 or turned into AI controlled drones like in Ancillary Justice. I dunno, Bro. The future is bleak, and time is running out to take it back.
I'm pro-economic liberty and voted for Brexit. Every analysis like this has tunnel vision: yes, the free trade opened up by the EU brought prosperity to an entire continent. Had we been voting for the 1970s era EEC, I'd have gladly voted Remain.
But in 40 years the EEC has evolved into the EU, with a constitution, a parliament, a president, a national anthem, a flag, supreme law-making powers and a currency.
Maybe the Merckel anti-integration faction will remain dominant and they'll stop there. Given the Juncker faction pushes further integration as the solution to every crisis, and given the EU is in constant crisis, the next 10 years should be interesting.
The EU is a world-historical experiment in social democracy - free markets + state regulation + the welfare state. The consensus is that this system represents the current pinnacle of political evolution. (Both 'progressive' Scandinavia and 'capitalist' America implement variants of it). An alternative perspective is that it's simply a compromise system which emerged after WWII and is already showing severe cracks.
Maybe the EU will create prosperity by such actions as forcing Google to break up, throwing state money at impoverished regions, etc. Maybe the populations of France, Spain, Italy et al will accept that they can't fund welfare states by borrowing in perpetuity and stop voting in radical left-wing governments. Maybe they'll find an alternative solution to the ever growing debt-burden, over Piketty's proposal for seizing 15% of all bank accounts. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_long-term_solutions...
I have no idea. I would like to see pro-EU articles which actually address these issues, and not simply assume that the only reason to be against the EU is that you're an ignorant racist, deluded by propaganda and lies.
> Had we been voting for the 1970s era EEC, I'd have gladly voted Remain.
The UK was not a signatory of any relevant treaty post-EEC. It opted out of the Schengen Area, of the Euro zone and even of the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
The idea that the UK was being controlled by a distant bureaucracy in Brussels is one of the many lies told by tabloids. The EU is far from perfect, but the UK was never in it in any meaningful sense. It was mostly being oppressed by tomato size regulations and things of that sort. Ironically, they will probably still have to comply to all that if they wish to maintain trade agreements with Europe. This entire thing was based on lies and disgust at "experts". And a good dose of xenophobia.
I have lived in the UK and I have never seen a EU flag being flown anywhere (unlike what you see in any other EU country). It was always more likely to see an American of Commonwealth-country flag than an EU one.
There is no EU constitution, by the way. It was rejected by referendum in several member states and the project died.
The UK already enjoyed access to EU markets while giving almost nothing in return to the common project. In fact, many people in Europe felt that the UK was participating mostly to prevent further integration. Even British comedy thought so:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37iHSwA1SwE
I think younger people see things differently, are less xenophobic and less attached to nationalist ideas, borders and walls. The next generation might have brought real participation of the UK in the EU (i.e. real skin in the game). Unfortunately, Baby Boomers still had another social contract to wipe their asses with before they checked out. So here we are.
> There is no EU constitution, by the way. It was rejected by referendum in several member states and the project died.
It's true the EU constitution was rejected, but the project didn't die: it was replaced by the treaty of Lisbon which contained most of the changes which were in the proposal for the EU constitution. See for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Constitu...
The fact that those changes were brought back in via the back door created even more distrust in the political leaders and the EU than before, in particular in those countries where the EU constitution was rejected in referendums.
> Maybe the populations of France, Spain, Italy et al will accept that they can't fund welfare states by borrowing in perpetuity and stop voting in radical left-wing governments.
Spain has never had a left-wing government, let alone radical left. Since democracy, we have had 4 centre-right legislatures and 6 centre-left, last of which was in 2008, with the current election deadlock still resulting in a majority of centre-right votes.
Thanks for the correction. I was researching the different political parties of Eurozone countries yesterday and it's difficult keeping track of whether a particular 'People's Party' is on the left or right.
I overstated that point but there certainly seems to be a strong left-wing base in every centre-left coalition in Southern Europe. And the centre-right coalitions follow a pragmatic mix of nationalism, traditionalism and capitalism. I.e., neither side has a strong will to cut state spending. Liberalism seems to be more a Protestant northern Europe thing.
> The EU is a world-historical experiment in social democracy - free markets + state regulation + the welfare state. The consensus is that this system represents the current pinnacle of political evolution.
Where does the EU provide the means for a welfare state? Do jobless people get money from the EU? Any country can handle its own version of welfare state. There is no mandate from the EU.
The perception is usually actually the other way round: many people think the EU caters too much to the multinationals and bends over backwards to let the "turbo capitalists" have their way with the little people. At least that is what I hear from pretty much everyone I know in the south of Europe, the left in France and Germany, and UKIP supporters in the UK (think of the TTIP discussions). So which is it now? A socialist welfare state or bureaucrats pleasing bankers and corporations?
It's the "quantum immigrant" problem - where simultaneously immigrants steal all jobs and at the same time sit at home and claim all the benefits.
I should have been clearer: every country in the EU has a welfare state, and since the more fiscally responsible countries bankroll the less responsible, they're indirectly supporting welfare recipients in those countries. Plus direct support via the EU's many handout programmes (CAP, etc).
In absolute terms, the amounts involved aren't huge right now, but this is a problem that will grow worse with time as a) most European countries have aging populations and face a pensions timebomb and b ) cutting welfare spending is politically very difficult.
Some voices in the EU have been pushing for a welfare and pensions union. It's impossible to predict if this will actually happen, but it shows that many people want to head in that direction.
The EU is indeed more pro-market than many member nations. This is where the left/right axis just confuses the debate. 'Market-friendly social democracy' is the most accurate term for the system promoted by the EU (and the linked NYT article, and most educated elites): a system with 1) free enterprise 2) state regulation of industry 3) state management of the economy and currency and 4) a welfare state.
It's a compromise system which appears capitalistic (and is denounced as neoliberal) but the underlying theory is socialist (a descendant of the gradualist theories promoted by most anti-communist socialists of past generations). History will tell whether it's sustainable.
You make it sound as if the UK was not in the EU all these years. You had bargaining and Veto powers to steer the EU to your direction, but i can't remember when you did so. Probably that's the reason why most EU citizens are indifferently watching you leave.
I believe the UK tried very hard to avoid the creation of the euro but when it became apparant that it was going to happen anyway it got itself an opt out. I think after that the UK largely disengaged because the common view was the currency couldn't succeed without a much higher level of political integration than was being proposed at the time and the British public simply wasn't interested.
So I think you're incorrect, the UK did try but failed to steer the EU in its direction because it was outvoted.
Yep , but that was 20+ years ago (plus apparently the UK succeeded in steering the EU as separate from the eurozone; that's why it's not rallying countries NOT to join the euro ). The Brexit debate was not really about euro, however, it was all about immigration.
And why is there such high immigration to the UK from the EU? Perhaps because numerous economies within the EU continue to suffer with high unemployment, especially high youth unemployment which has forced their citizens to move to more functional economies, the UK being one.
If the euro crisis had not happened or at the very least had been solved within some reasonable timeframe then I doubt we would have had an EU referendum in the UK. The EU looked and still looks incompetent in its handling of the issue which in very large part lead to the rise in UKIP popularity which ultimately created the pressure for a referendum.
The UK has essentially opted out of everything it could, but with one big exception: not delaying free movement for the accession of Poland, Bulgaria and Romania.
Now that anger has been roused about immigration, a substantial part of the Brexit vote wants to end free movement altogether, which is simply not achievable in the EU.
> "Maybe the populations of France, Spain, Italy et al will accept that they can't fund welfare states by borrowing in perpetuity and stop voting in radical left-wing governments."
I agree with a lot of what you said, apart from this statement.
There are problems with borrowing in a system based on debt, particularly if the interest on that debt is in the hands of profit-motivated enterprises. However, that is not the only way of funding public spending. It's possible to shift to a debt-free money system where new money reaches the system through government spending. That way there's no debt to pay back, and the level of public spending would only need to be limited by a need to keep a manageable rate of inflation.
In other words, whilst I agree there are problems with how public spending is funded right now, the problem isn't the radical left per se, as there are ways of running a fiscally responsible 'radical left' government.
>>stop voting in radical left-wing government
I'd like to point out that nearly every government in EU is right-wing at the moment. The UK government that is apparently giving so many benefits away and letting so many immigrants in was right-wing for quite a while now, so I don't think it's the "radical left-wing" which is the problem here.
And the reason why these issues as you called them are not being addressed is that maybe not everyone sees them as issues? I'd love to live long enough to see creation of United States of Europe, where my own nationality was just replaced with one EU passport - but a lot of people are vehemently against that, thinking that national identities matter in 2016.
What's wrong with integration? You clearly think it's bad but don't say why.
Ah, downvote me for replying with a question. Mature. I guess you don't have a reason that doesn't boil down to "I don't want foreigners next door"?
Downvote wasn't mine. I upvoted you to cancel it out. But thanks for dishonestly implying I'm racist (thereby proving my point), when my entire comment was on economic issues.
By integration I mean political integration. I think very large states have scale problems, large democracies in particular. (Look at India or the US). You either end up with populist parties who need to appeal to the lowest common denominator of hundreds of millions of people, or technocratic elites who ignore the people. The EU has 500 million citizens from 27 ancient nations, with wildly different cultures and economies. There's no way you can fuse them into one giant country, and the inevitable outcome is fuelling nationalism and populism centred around anti-EU resentment.
Yes. It's certainly the case that many Brexiter voters voted that way for reasons that bordered on or went over the line to be racist--not that a desire to place controls on immigration is inherently racist.
That said, if I had been voting (I'm a US citizen) I would almost certainly have voted remain in part because pulling out of the existing union is going to be a mess. And because the UK is already outside of important parts of EU-related structure such as the Euro. But I would have done so in spite of many of the aspirations to create a European super-state that many in Brussels share.
Sorry, it just pissed me off almightily that I got downmodded for asking a question, so went for plan b: bait.
Those "ancient nations" are mostly less than a century old. Europe has been a superstate several times previously, although it admittedly hasn't lasted under political or religious hegemony.
The age of nations is quite a key difference in how things are seen from the UK (300 years old, with England claiming 800 years of constitutional monarchy with only one interruption) vs the rest of Europe, much of which wasn't in its current form or system of government in 1950.
To Europe, the EU represents stability. To the UK, it represents change.
Only one interruption? I assume you refer to the interregnum - but there were plenty of violent successions, imports of royalty from overseas to continue the crown, and changes in governance so fundamental it's hard to view it as the same state.
I mean, you don't consider yourself French, do you? If you view yourself as being a member of that "continuous" state, you should, for by that measure we are Normans.
It doesn't matter if it's true or not, it's tradition :) This kind of objection is like pointing out that the Royal family are German in origin and Prince Philip is an immigrant by marriage; it's true, but not in any way relevant to the kind of people who regard the monarchy as important.
All nations have a chunk of mythos holding them together. Brexit seems to be popular among people who think that Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples is good history.
> "Voters in large numbers have been rejecting much of the underlying logic behind a dynamic globalized economy that on paper seems to make the world much richer."
That's a very different narrative than the one I recognise. From what I've seen the main effects of globalisation have been twofold:
1. Lowering prices by getting the working classes of all countries to compete with each other.
2. Giving multinational companies greater leeway in tax avoidance.
The narrative that either benefits us all is somewhat misleading. Furthermore, with increased automation we'll see an even more rapid concentration of wealth in the hands of the few.
On a semi-related note, if you have the time to watch it (it's roughly 2 hours long, but it stays interesting throughout IMO), I can recommend this video, it's a conversation between Yanis Varoufakis and Noam Chomsky, it helped me develop a further understanding of the problems in the EU, and the issues that come from unelected bodies taking over our democracies:
Exactly. The average citizen doesn't see much of the benefits of globalization. It mostly helps governments and companies.
Tell that to my cheap phone made in China running an OS made by developers from around the world. My Turkish t-shirt, the Spanish tomatoes I ate this morning or the server I'm remotely setting up on the other side of the planet, so my company can sell their services there.
You benefit as a consumer, but you may lose as a worker.
We end up in this strange environment where manufactured goods are very cheap compared to housing and professional non-importable services like health and education.
Are you in the lower/working class of your country? If not, then you're not necessarily amongst those that the system works against.
The mere existence of globalization is not a counter-argument to the grandparent. To construct a counter-argument, you need to proof that the Turkish t-shirt and Spanish tomatoes are actually a benefit to you (or rather, to the mythical "average person").
The person does not seem to draw to anything actionable, and his conclusion is vague.
I am not sure what he even means by 'optimizing for efficiency'
If your business depends on the happiness of your employees then optimizing for their happiness increases your bottom line.
If your business will be shut down if you commit fraud then optimizing for transparency is in your interest.
Is this person blaming economists for something that they do not have much control over - and that is thinking about individual lives. Its mathematically not possible for economists to worry about each person.
The reason why people are angry is that employment is closely linked to your ability to feed yourself and be a consumer of the global economy.
So when politicians talk about employment - what they mean is a person's ability to survive.
For economists, efficiency is simply that goods should be created where the surroundings are best suited for it - first described by David Ricardo in the 19th century. E.g. Cotton should be planted where there is the most fertile soil etc. This works best in a globalized economy where production can move around freely and where there are no trade restrictions. As a result, productivity is higher, meaning that goods are cheaper (if there is competition), meaning that - provided the result is used for consumption - that everybody is better off. This doesn't take into account that a) labor doesn't move freely, meaning the change process creates winners and losers, and uncertainty (locals are in constant danger that their job is reallocated to some other place), b) it gives an incentive to move production to places with lowest priced-in externalities (labor market frictions like unions, environmental damage).
"Cotton should be planted where there is the most fertile soil etc."
Nitpick: this statement is about absolute advantage, whereas Ricardo emphasised comparative advantage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage#Ricardo....
Imagine that you're better than me at everything (both programming and needlework). You can program three times as fast, and sew twice as fast as I can. Does that mean you should do all your own programming and sewing? No.
However small my contribution, I can save you some time by doing some sewing for you. In that saved time, you can do more programming than I could have achieved in the time I spent sewing. So in sum we're better off. So, there are potential gains from trade.
Yes, but at a certain threshold that is no longer true due to logistics. For instance, I could try to sell back all the plastic bags I got at the grocery store, and even if I folded them flat, made sure they were clean and ready to reuse, no matter the price, the grocery store owner would with all likelihood refuse to buy them from me.
Because, regardless of how much money would be saved from buying my bags over the ones fresh from the factory, it wouldn't be able to cover the logistical cost to the company's workflow.
My simplified example was designed to demonstrate the difference between absolute advantage and comparative advantage, and show that there are gains from trade, even when one party has absolute advantage for all output goods.
There is no doubt that transactions costs and other friction make some potential exchanges uneconomical. So, what you say is true. But it doesn't help or hinder my explanation, and is irrelevant to the point I was trying to make.
> For economists, efficiency is simply that goods should be created where the surroundings are best suited for it - first described by David Ricardo in the 19th century. E.g. Cotton should be planted where there is the most fertile soil etc.
This seems slightly off to me. Cotton can be grown more efficiently (in the usual sense of less cost per unit return) in some climates than others. But the economy as a whole may be more efficient if cotton is grown exclusively in subpar-for-cotton areas; perhaps the ideal-for-cotton areas are needed for another crop.
As I understand it, "efficiency" in economics will refer to one of two ideas:
1. Small deadweight losses. The smaller they are, the more efficient the economy is.
2. Pareto efficiency. (That is, the economy is efficient, in this sense, if there is no reallocation of resources that makes somebody better off without making anyone worse off.)
"This seems slightly off to me."
You are correct. GP gave an example of absolute advantage. But Ricardo is more famous for demonstrating that comparative advantage can be enough to make trade worthwhile.
Your field may be 1/3 as efficient at making cotton than mine. But perhaps it's 1/5 as efficient as mine in growing olives. So, assuming we both want cotton and olives, it would be worth you growing more cotton, and swapping for some of my olives. I get a little more cotton than I would have alone. And you get a few more olives than you would have.
The issue he's talking about here is financialisation of the economy. It's an economy that's efficient at delivering large profits for an increasingly concentrated number of businesses and people.
Jobless recoveries, debt deflation, etc.
The answer of course is a reversal of the trend of neoliberalism over the past 40 years, to re-regulate banking and finance, increase government spending and return to full employment as a policy priority.
This is all achievable through understanding Modern Monetary Theory. If anyone is interested in finding out more check out this Facebook group[1].
If anyone in Australia is interested I'm also starting a political party based on these principles.[2]
An interpretation:
- Many people want to be able to have agency in what their future is like.
- A quest for economic and technological growth makes the future unknowable, and makes predictions about what skills (and capital) will provide a livelihood to support your family as tricky as predictions about how much a startups equity will be worth. Many (most?) people can't effectively make these predictions and they suffer pretty badly.
Perhaps the pursuit of ever higher gross domestic product misses a fundamental understanding of what makes most people tick. Against that backdrop, support for Mr. Trump and for the British withdrawal known as Brexit are just imperfect vehicles through which someone can yell, “Stop.”
Did the author communicate at all with Trump supporters and leave voters, or is this just speculation? The support given in the article seems pretty weak: an unrelated abstract experiment about efficiency versus equality and a reference to another newspaper article about a BMW worker.
I think this idea that Trump is anti-establishment is a play right out of the Game of Cards show.
Look at Obama, he had the Hope and Change rhetoric going, they even gave him a Nobel Peace Prize.
What did he actually accomplish? Medical costs are 5x what they were in some cases. The middle east is still in disarray. Police and protesters are clashing.
They talk a big game before getting elected, but the reality is that they have very little power once they are elected.
They would be better off reading Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt then working off improving minor things.
Even trying to fix your three examples is fairly impressive for a US politician. Particularly as his opposite numbers (Trump included) run on a platform of intentionally making these things worse.
People voted for change (Brexit?) in order to keep things unchanging?
Not sure the theory fully checks out, but it seems very clear indeed that the policy narrative that's all about economics is not something normal people can feel connected to. It's just that it's easy (?) to measure and thus has taken over the debate. But if I'm a German or Dutch worried that TTIP will bring America's 'chlorine-soaked chicken' on my plate you can tell me as much about job gains as you want and i won't hear it - statistics and numbers don't feel real. Policy has to find the reconnect with reality, that means probably to purge the lawyer and economist thinking that pretty much dominates all ministries and government.
Is there some source that elites want "hyper-efficient global economy"? From what I see, there is a push towards bigger government spending and higher taxes. A lot of that actually decreases efficiency, to the point it suffocates some industries.
The American health care system seems to be way less efficient than the state run systems in Europe.
Rent control and protectionism are different, and immigration for instance, a hot subject in today's politics, is another thing altogether.
Supporting rent control doesn't make you stupid/uninformed, but the only other option is evil.
Protectionism is a complex topic in a world with currency manipulation, labor laws variability and geopolitical conflicts; it's only simple (and evil/stupid) in a world without these things.
And immigration is not just about economics, it's about who you want to live next door and vote. Here, people can disagree regardless of economic views.
> favored equality over efficiency
I think this is the wrong trade off. More equality does not necessarily mean less efficiency.
It might have something to do with the fact that the weaker the economy gets the more the rich get rich and people know it. Whether they recognize that it through inflating of the stock market, bonds and real estate with cheap credit or not.
Central bankers can't seem to get it into their thick heads that their 'wealth effect' is a 'poverty effect' for those who didn't get the chance to own those assets before they pumped them up out of reach.
The fact that the central banks of Japan and Switzerland own most of the companies that we are employed by and pay money to thanks to their ability to create money out of nothing should make people angry.
I recall a study that showed that above average income workers supported Trump at a higher percentage. If that's true, it seems to contradict the whole premise of this article. They should have asked those same Yale grads if they were voting Trump or not.
You're probably thinking of this:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-...
One thing that confounds it is that Hispanic and African-American voters avoid Trump due to his appeals to white supremacy, and they are poorer than average. So if you only count "real Americans" then there may still be some truth in it.
People also have friends or relatives who would be better off under Brexit or Trump. I know a lot of rich people who want better for other people and adjust their vote accordingly.
I'm a little amazed at the tone of this article.
People rent a home, and then exploit the democratic process in a beggar-thy-potential-neighbors strategy. They use things like rent control and other anti-migrant policies (e.g. anti-Google bus policies in SF, anti-Hijab laws in France) to enrich themselves at the expense of others.
Because her wealthy uncles lost their job, and had a small drop in their standard of living, "Andrea" wants to screw over a bunch of desperately poor people a world away.
Unlike "Andrea", our elites behave far better. Populists try to protect their favored ethnic groups - witness Shiv Sena trying to pass laws preventing non-Marathis from driving taxis, or "tech bros" entering SF. In contrast, I've never heard a white banker complaining about allowing a Marathi to be the CEO of Citi. Elite institutions - think of banking or tech - tend to be truly global enterprises, open to anyone who can demonstrate the requisite ability.
Somehow the author doesn't draw the obvious conclusion: that our elites are honest, moral and principled individuals, while our masses are selfish, tribal and greedy people out to beggar their neighbors. For good policy making the conclusion is that we should try and increase the power of the elite.
"Tech bros" don't like their jobs outsourced to India. That's comparable to your examples, yet they are mostly upper class.
In addition, people are concerned about things that effect themselves. The elites don't care about the neighborhoods they don't live in, or the jobs they don't have to compete for.
But they do care about profit, and about getting richer. In all of the examples you gave, that motivation would work just as well as being "principled" as to explaining their allegiance to the opposite side of the issues as to that of the lower class.
If the world ends up 99.99% of us are either starving or doing jobs such as building a carbon fiber toilet for some rich guy's yacht, simply because the elite "own" everything, the world would be a worse off place, wouldn't you agree?
And, IMO, that's what will occur if we strip away all laws meant to protect the little guy.
I've never actually met a tech bro who objected except on HN. Everyone I've met has been fine with economic competition from people unlike them. But I could be wrong - do you have evidence that tech is even remotely as protectionist as the trump/Bernie voting masses?
The local elites don't need to compete for CEO jobs with Satya Nadella or Sunder Pichai? That's news to me.
The people you are talking about are either your coworkers or those you've met in a workplace related environment, correct? Management wants to do the best things as quickly and cheaply as possible, and anyone who speaks out about it publicly or to their coworkers would be doing harm to their career.
The same is true in any industry. On the factory floor, workers who complain loudly about immigrants working side by side them at the workplace will get them fired.
The same people who you think are all for globalization of the workforce, may also be part of the "trump/Bernie voting masses" behind closed doors.
As for the CEO jobs, there isn't a large group of voters that identify with candidates. I mean, this is getting kind of silly. Do I really need to explain why someone competing for a CEO job with an immigrant can't look to the political process to help them?
And anyway, even if I'm wrong and tech workers are for the race to the bottom, you are quibbling about minor things while ignoring my main point. Do you really think there is morality in denying the lower class a voice to help change the situation they are in? Are the laws shat out by our ancestors so great we cannot change them, even though the result turned out not to be so good? Is it like a board game, in that if you lose, it's unfair to complain because you should have been able to deduce what would happen from the beginning?
What, exactly, do you mean when you refer to the elite as "honest, moral and principled individuals" in your parent post?
By honest, moral and principled, I mean they don't try to exploit politics to screw over their neighbors. They just compete economically. Kind of like the article claims, and mg experience agrees with.
Some people also didn't want to get into a race to the bottom with negros. I think it's perfectly moral to deny lower class whites the right to change their situation by harming the competition.
Nobody really cares about neighborhoods that they don't live in, so I don't see why that makes elites particularly terrible people.
I cringe when I see my customers outsource their IT to India, but that is mostly because it immediately makes my life much more difficult. There are fantastic Indian engineers and sysadmins, but they aren't the ones working the grunt jobs at these cut-rate outsourcing firms...
I'm not arguing they are terrible people. I'm arguing they are people, and like everyone else they are for their own interests. The point is that people, regardless whether their ethics are similar to the average person or not, that have too much power, can be dangerous to the world as a whole if not kept in check.
If we allow them to run roughshod over everyone else, we will be worse off because of it.
"screw over a bunch of desperately poor people a world away"
We don't owe them very much, we don't have jurisdiction over them and we certainly can't help them all.
For any value of we.
Maybe it's better to create jobs "a world away"? If it's a genuine concern.
> Elite institutions - think of banking or tech - tend to be truly global enterprises, open to anyone who can demonstrate the requisite ability.
So you're saying that people of color and women just aren't fit to rule the world? The ethnic and gender distribution among elite managers etc. is certainly not representative.
The top 5 tech companies according to a quick Google search -> fortune article are apple, HP, IBM, Amazon and Microsoft. 2 CEOs are people of color (bezos and nacelle) one is gay and one a woman.
It's true that Asians are overrepresented in tech. I believe this is, in fact, because more Asians are fit for the job. Do you disagree? Why do you think Asians are overrepresented, and what do you think should be done about it?
Bezos is a person of color?
Hispanic is color, right?
> Hispanic is color, right?
Hispanics are typically within the scope of what is referred to by "people of color", sure, but I've never heard that Bezos identifies as Hispanic or has Hispanic ancestry (a stepfather is not an ancestor...)
I suppose, as weird as that sounds to a descendant of Spaniards, but Ted Jorgensen is not Hispanic, as far as I can tell.