The place of public goods

This is the bottom line: without the public realm, a society is impoverished.

Conservative Political Parties Embody The Politics Of Nihilism

Howie Klein [DownWithTyranny 1-6-2023]

Yesterday public intellectual Umair Haque took a stab at explaining why democracy is broken in the U.S. and Britain to the point where both countries appear ungovernable. He began by asking why the Tories and the GOP are so incredibly incompetent that their nations are falling apart. And his answer goes back to the old truism about conservatives not believing in public goods. “If you don’t believe in public goods,” he wrote, “you are basically saying that the there is no job of governance to be done. Because there’s nothing to administer, oversee, nurture, invest in, shepherd, keep ship-shape for the next generation.”

Now the crux of his argument: “Neither the GOP nor the Tories believe in public goods. Not believing in public goods, they can’t do the job of governance. Because of course, to them, the task they’ve set out to accomplish isn’t governance at all. It’s the destruction of public goods. But that’s not governance, especially not in a modern democracy. What is it? Well, it’s a lot of things: ignorance, folly, hate, bigotry, rage, stupidity, and self-destruction, to name just a few… [After being ravaging in two World Wars] Europe’s living standards rose to the highest levels in human history because Europeans enjoyed the greatest public goods in history: from public health, to education, to transport, and so forth. There is absolutely no debate on this score… This is the great lesson of the 20th century, one of the most crucial in history, and now I can restate it in a simpler, more powerful form. We know the key to human prosperity. It’s called investment in public goods. They a) lift living standards while b) keeping societies equal and c) sharing wealth broadly, thus d) creating a relatively stable middle class that e) is the key for democracy to endure… [America and Britain] have been overrun by parties which genuinely don’t believe public goods should exist.”

Directly from Umair Haque: Why Britain's Severely Underestimating British Collapse

Excerpt: "Until a decade ago — just ten years — [Britain's National Health Service - NHS] was the world’s best healthcare system. Not according to me, but according to international rankings. The BBC was widely acknowledged to be its finest broadcaster, developing many of the world’s finest cultural brands and training its best directors and actors alike. I could go on and on. Britain worked. It was an example of what a modern society could be. The NHS had taught Europe — Europe — that universal scale public goods were possible. The BBC had taught the world what art and culture meant. Its universities produced some of the world’s finest intellectuals, from Amartya Sen to Stephen Hawking, and by and large, its people were some of the most prosperous on earth, in history, period, full stop, admired and liked for being funny, gentle, warm, and wise.

That was just ten years ago. Ten years. One decade.

Now that I’ve set the stage, let’s take stock of where Britain really is. This is the part where we talk about how hard and fast a society can collapse — the utterly shocking, chilling story that Britain teaches the world. Yes, you can lose it all, everything, in one decade. Proof positive: British collapse.

Right about now, Britain’s own finer minds have estimated that there have been 25,000 excess deaths because…the NHS has collapsed. It doesn’t work anymore. You can’t get an ambulance, you can’t get a doctor’s appointment, and if you do, well, you’re the lucky one. Those 25,000 excess deaths have happened “since the summer.” The summer ended on September 23rd. It’s been 15 weeks. In other words, there have been 25,000 excess deaths — because of social collapse — in 15 weeks.

....Britain is having a 9/11 every two weeks."