Brexit 2

Like many people I am still trying to digest the lunacy of Brexit. I say lunacy because retreat from European integration is, in my opinion, a regression towards the pettiness of nationalism that we can ill afford at a time of ever increasing technologically driven proximity to one another.

Having said that I am astonished at the foolish and narrow minded reaction I am seeing from the usual suspects amongst our intelligentsia, media, and the political and corporate elite. Those latter two are hard to distinguish nowadays.

One of my favorite examples of such narrow mindedness is Thomas Friedman of the New York Times. For many years he has been an unabashed cheerleader of all things technological, global, and connected. He regularly tosses those, and related, concepts around with narry a thought to the extraordinary and wrenching consequences they are having on the everyday lives of those of our fellow citizens who less fortunate than we are and are not as readily adaptable to the vicissitudes of modern connected life.

Frankly I am tired of homilies from the elite about society needing more education. Really? Then provide it.

I am tired of commentaries about the need to protect workers from the losses caused by trade or globalization. Really? Then provide it.

I am fed up with lectures about the need to encourage entrepreneurs in technology who seem all to make significant fortunes by reducing the lives of their fellow citizens. Capital flows, as is its wont, to any potential fountain of profit, why do we need to provide incentives over and beyond those of the market?

I am even more fed up with those in our elite who apparently just realized that the economic policies of neoliberalism have produced massive dislocation and inequality. Really? Where were you all these years? Davos? Who cares about Davos? No one.

How about the central bankers who ‘target 2% inflation’. They routinely underperform. They have missed that target on the downside for years. Yet they are still employed. How come? Why do we routinely reward the failures of our elite, but punish those of the regular folk?

I could go on, but it is pointless.

It is a basic principle of stable democratic government that the elite ought govern from the center. The center ideologically in order to spread the political net the widest. The center intellectually in order to incorporate the maximum current thinking. And the center culturally in order to provide the broadest appeal to all parts of society. Government ought, in other words, be pragmatically constructed to protect and honor the wishes of the majority whilst not trampling too often on those of the minority.

So much is, I think, obvious.

But what is now just as obvious is that the center is broken. It was the center that, post Reagan and Thatcher, invested fully in neoliberal economic and political theory. It was the center that sold our citizens on the magic of markets and on the evils of government. It was the center that constructed endless excuses for the protection of capital and yet the exposure of labor to the great forces of change. It was the center that told us to integrate the ancient traditions of Europe into a new technocratic ‘modern’ version, thus shedding centuries of cultural identity in a few years of bureaucratic haste. And it was the center that allowed itself to become inextricably muddled up with corporatist thinking. This center is continuous across the western world. It is comprised of academics, politicians, journalists, capitalists, business leaders, and professionals of all sorts. It is cosmopolitan and comfortable with change. Why? Because it benefits from that change.

So it advocates change. It encourages change. It worships at the alter of innovation. It toss the Schumpterian phrase ‘creative destruction’ about as an abstract rallying cry at every opportunity. And it has become a self referential and self congratulatory clique bestride the western world ever more detached from the ‘lesser classes’ who, in the eyes of the elite, just don’t understand the inevitability of it all.

It isn’t just the European adventure that appears to have failed. It is the American Reagan/Clinton project that has failed too. Too much change too fast. Or too much change with a callous disregard for the consequences.

Back to Friedman. Here’s a quote from his latest piece in the New York Times:

“We have globalized trade and manufacturing, and we have introduced robots and artificial intelligence systems, far faster than we have designed the social safety nets, trade surge protectors and educational advancement options that would allow people caught in this transition to have the time, space and tools to thrive. It’s left a lot of people dizzy and dislocated.”

Damn right. And whose fault is that?

Not the people, that’s for sure. Look in the mirror Friedman. Stop being a shill for technological change, globalization, and all that stuff. Start being an advocate for your fellow citizens. Stop lecturing us on how we need to re-educate ourselves or get used to our jobs going to China. Start explaining how we compensate for those lost jobs.

In short: stop looking down. Start walking around. It is the center that is broken. No wonder the extremes are winning. They’re the ones with ideas.

I agree that a new era is dawning, if we want to preserve our democracy then we need to make sure our elite governs on behalf of all of us. All of us. Not just big business and the wealthy.

We need new ideas. We need to get rid of old ideas. We don’t need any more breathless descriptions of what’s going on. We need solutions to what’s going on.

Now.

Before it’s too late.