Terry Field spent a portion of the holidays in England visiting family and old friends. A number of these friends are successful Londoners thriving in the global economy of high finance and services. Building on the theme of his last article of the rise of the cyber cities filled with creative persons, he continues to expand his thesis that nation states are giving way to 'nodes' such as London where very creative, energetic, talented people gather and prosper. And the hinterland does not.
This rural-urban divide in western countries has been most vividly demonstrated recently in the U.K. Brexit referendum and the U.S.A presidential election.
Terry's thesis of the Super-Creator cities can be found also in Edward Glaeser's 2011 book "Triumph of the City", a work I have recently read and commend to those who wish to understand why 80% of the America population is crowded into only 3% of our land mass. - Glenn N. Holliman
If Brexit succeeds, those who voted for it will be the
losers.
In very unexpected ways.- by Terry Field
It is instructive to spend some time
with city folk in London, to take the cultural
temperature, and to smell the future
they will create.
I have recently talked to some old friends who,
together, command
the resources of institutions of a size comparable to
small countries.
The experience is like smelling an
odour not experienced since childhood – a
whole world floods back.
For a long time now, London has been the high-yield heartland of
the equities
business, the centre for liquidity across a panoply of asset classes, and still has
the houses that always dealt in the
goods, foods, wines, other traditional
consumables whose commerce was
founded upon the old merchant adventurers
who spanned the world, and whose
adventure and vitality formed the basis for
empire.
In addition, of course to funding wars,
weapons and material, whilst often
profitably directing resources to
both antagonists at the same time.
Money is money.
The dreadful period of dislocation
that followed the disaster of the Second
World War saw little hope for
recovery along the old lines. Russia and America
both acted aggressively towards the
tottering British Empire, and its collapse
was unavoidable.
In all of this, the Europeans were
engaged in confident recovery and seemed
to offer the way forward for what
had become a newly reduced island.
The entire political class was convinced that to avoid a repeat of the
wars
and instability, Europe would need to come together, and thus high-flown
national structural planning
overtook the previously dominant British prime
motivation of growing sinews around
the tentacles of private trading and
merchant adventuring.
As De Gaulle said, when he rejected British
accession to the EEC, ‘Britain does
not
farm, but its traders can be found in every port, every harbour, every city
in the world’.
All this state structuring sat well in an
environment drenched in state socialism;
directed
state warfare morphed into directed state peacetime.
Mr. Field does does some of his most creative thinking while stroking cats! 2016
Europe
copied a watered down version of soviet state socialism,
and suppressed that vitality that arises
spontaneously from free individual
mercantile adventurism. The cities were poor -
as was London – the urban
populations concerned with recovering even modest
prosperity, and there
was little economic difference between the
potential for life in a European
city as compared to life in the countryside.
Suppressed demand was almost
universal. That suppression was authored by,
and managed by state agencies.
The post-war collective
acceptance of modest living standards was most
marked in Britain. There, ‘deferred gratification’ was
the order of the day;
the
approach to service standards was one of personal commitment. The
‘national
health service’ in Britain was characterised by very low technology,
committed, extremely poorly paid doctors and
staff, and a happy acceptance
that
everyone should have an equitable share of really very little when it
came to treatment, and expected outcomes.
Suffering, in a group context, was not just
accepted, it was considered a
moral good. To do otherwise, in a poor and
ruined economy, would invite
misery,
rage, even revolution.
Everyone ‘pulled together’.
Britain employed social discipline to ‘get
through’ this hardship.
Then
came Margaret Thatcher, the ‘big bang’ in the ‘city’
which exploded wealth creation and personal
prosperity for the ‘financially
connected’, and sparked a new morality – but a London world of
consumption and
enjoyment sat uneasily with the rest of the country,
still mired in
repressed personal economic freedom.
That the entire country later grasped on to the
pleasures of the good life
so rapidly during the 1980s is unsurprising;
the wartime memories receded,
and the
old pleasures re-appeared.
Yet the nation had bolted onto this old pattern
of consumption (while) new
services (appeared) such as national insurance
protections and healthcare
protections together with universal pensions
and massive redistributive
taxation from the rich cities to the poor regions.
As London prospered,
and became a new city – a place entirely different in
character to that of
an imperial capital of an almost universal empire, it
attracted a new kind
of wealth.
Where the old wealth was generally British or British
imperial in origin, and
connected – at least for appearances sake – to
the culture and values of the
rest of
the nation, ‘new money’ was totally disconnected.
The rich were to some small degree British –
city traders, newly rich
commercial lawyers, finance house kingpins who
held British passports,
but far more
came from the global kleptocracy. The London resident
rich were folk who owned vast tracts of new global
economic life,
often
together with, in reality, vast numbers of quasi-slave workers
generating previously undreamed of
concentrations of wealth.
London hosts the rich from – quite literally – a
world of exploitation.
For these people, the entire attraction of
being in London was its
remoteness from the point-source of their
wealth.
This sounds harsh, but
it taps a deep root in the history of Britain
– the willingness to
trade with anyone, deal with anyone, for gain
and prosperity. The only difference now is that
the ‘deal’ was to offer
life in a city where there exists the rule of
law, and to agree a tax ‘fee’
to be paid by the newly British-resident multi-billionaire.
The British government
harvested revenue from wherever it could
find it – and was happy
to do so, in order to fund the national social
service system. All
this became much more difficult to sustain after
2008.
The reaction of the
population to the crash was to so loathe the
‘bankers’ as to be indifferent to the revenues
they provided; thus
developed a willingness
to forego the revenue they had previously
provided.
Politicians, ever open to lying for self
interest, attacked the bankers
and
financiers – with the predictable result that activity, revenue, tax
take
became suppressed.
British morality-free pragmatism had changed,
it seemed, really quite
fundamentally.
People – particularly
state socialist types – whilst selling the idea of a
morally better world, talked
less and less about how to pay for it.
, the British coalition government engaged on a
series of modest state
spending cuts, whilst at the same time
suppressing the ‘financialised’
economy. The socialist opposition
systematically rejected any state
spending cuts, yet screamed from the roof tops
that the bankers
should be ‘brought to book’.
How was such dissociation between income and
social responsibility
possible? Why by printing vast numbers of
government bills, and
paying for them by printing money. The State
auto-funded itself. It
capitalised the interest on its own debt! Fantasy economics became
the norm.
In effect the economy ‘nationalised’ the
government, not the other
way
round.
THIS generated the view that productive
activity was not required
for the
population to survive, even if uncomfortably. An end-game
following on from the de-industrialisation
that also seemed to offer
– for
most - enhanced consumption combined with
much less work.
For the first time
since the capitalist economy developed in Britain,
deindustrialisation,
and state money-printing, made millions forget
the discipline of
work, effort and the resultant reward.
Political life of course followed this new
fantasy-land.
Populist politicians
could now profitably argue that ripping up trade
relationships, ignoring and rejecting the
clever, the managers of the
economy, the high-priests of ‘globalisation’ could
result in personal
liberation, recovery
of ‘sovereignty’, and nothing bad would happen
to ‘the people’.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the
collapse of work, the
importation of goods at inconsequential
prices, and money printing
is disorientating
to such a degree that rational people could argue that
acting
with economic irrationality could have no bad result.
In other words, social insanity removed rational
imperatives.
The nationalism of
UKIP – always a potent force in such times of
dislocation, was unstoppable. It drives the new Junta regime of
(Prime Minister Teresa)
May to ever
more lunatic statements of the unachievable – for they fear
their MPs will be eviscerated at the polls by
UKIP if they show a
glimmer of rationality.
Either May is insane, or, more likely, she knows she is riding a tiger
that may consume her
yet. The UKIP
cheerleader, Farage, possessed
of the certainty of a demagogue, replete with
assertions that in prior
times
would have been taken as ludicrous, rides high, and marshals
the hordes of the hopeful.
The result of this new world of end-stage
consumption without
production, propped up by the borrowings of a
mindless state,
empty of wisdom and sense, is nationalism and
egomania.
What then can come of this? Why is the
stock-market so high? Who
can
gain, who can lose. The answers are uncomfortable for the
supporters of UKIP – the acolytes of Farage the
Bombast.
If Britain breaks
loose from the European Union, disconnects from the
single market, frees itself from the threat of
the stock-market transaction
tax, avoids tiresome regulations and expensive
European Court
requirements, then the traders, the merchant
adventurers, the financiers,
the bankers and the hangers-on of the ‘city’
will, of course, do very well
indeed.
They will return to their 19th
century life, trade and deal across the world,
and make many a great fortune.
But London is, as I
said before, a city-state – a global ‘node’.
Britain is not; it is, in general, unconcerned
with such desires; either
because
the world of the country and provincial cities are possessed by
the relatively mediocre and incapable who
cannot work and compete
across the globe, or because they are un-free
to act directly for personal gain.
The socialised world of most of Britain, and
particularly in the poorer
regions like Wales, much of Scotland, the
northern parts of Britain, suppress
potential in the same way communism has
changed the character of the
societies in erstwhile Eastern Germany.
The mass of the
British Isles is populated by people used to receiving
precepts from London.
Wales lives in part off England, as does much of
Scotland, the state socialist redistribution
system having become so
deeply entrenched.
I would anticipate that the
London commercial engine will
thrive after Brexit, but the
reverse will be the case of much of
the rest of the country. This will put immense pressure on
the
socialist dispensation, and I do not expect
these vast wealth transfers
will continue intact.
I would be amazed if
in twenty years time after brexit, there has not been
a collapse of the economies of dozens of – in
reality – unviable towns and
cities. I would be surprised if many millions of
British people have not
relocated from failed towns and cities to
London, Manchester, and a few
other megacentres.
For the rest of the country, the future
probably holds a collapse of social
l support services, a rural disconnection, huge
unvisited regions of poverty
unseen since the pre-industrial period, and the
grouping together of the
poor,
the old, the stupid young, the rejected others, into very large,
remote zones of almost untrammelled misery.
Terry converses over lunch with some wise men in Pennsylvania, USA
Socialism is finished, as the State is
bankrupt.
Motivation will come from the dream of wealth
dangled in front of the
energetic desperate. As now happens in the
United States.
Economic apartheid will be the structure – and
mediocrity will be the
new black. Healthcare will no longer be ‘the
management of disease’
as the NHS has tried to apply universally. It
will become the optimisation
of life
for the wealthy and the asset-rich, whilst also acting to deliver the
managed
removal of the newly exhausted poor from life.
This will all be made possible by the use of mores
and ‘standards’ that
can be
rationally supported, uncluttered as society will become of moral
precepts concerned with equity.
Don’t believe me? Look at how NICE operates.
These tendencies are already happening in front
of our eyes.
Today I read the British Red Cross describes
the British NHS state
healthcare system as being an international
humanitarian crisis.
Nobody rails against it, save a few old
socialists. The political authority
refers to the healthcare first-tier management
for responsibility. People
who are in effect being murdered by a structure
designed so to do are
ignored. Unimaginable in the days of State socialism,
shared pain, a
political monoculture and ‘deferred
gratification’.
I anticipate that the
quality and quantity of life enjoyed in post brexit
Britian will be
radically less commonly experienced.
The poor will be
worked to death, and they will not know it is happening.
The rich will experience pleasurable stable
long lives free of disease.
Reality will be disguised. Ghetto life will
become universal outside the
super-nodes of wealth and intellect. The clever will know and accept
their entitlement to
everything, and have no regard for responsibility
to the rest. And
technology will manage things so the hordes of victims
have no understanding of what is happening to
them.
Vestigial government will camouflage reality,
as it does with the absurd
statistical information it now generates
concerning migration etc, and
authority will become privately based, once
again.
Brexit
will not ‘cause’ these changes, but its execution will
be a catalyst for them. Brexit is a symptom of the death
of the nation
state. It is a monument to its degraded
weakness. British ‘citizens’ are led
to
believe they can act to coerce the state’s political and economic life
and direction to their advantage.
This is a category error.
The
reality is that a new distinctly ‘personal’ economy,
based
on cultivated raw intellect, is being created. On a
canvass
much larger than Great Britain.
In this respect, Ayn Rand is probably
accurately anticipating the central
position
of the highly creative. That those political forces who accept
this view of individual human value presently coerce
the unintelligent –
and by their own analysis the inherently
valueless and expendable –
into voting for these false and unachievable
goals - is an example of
psychopathic cynicism that leaves one gaping
in admiration at the
simple nerve of it all.
The present interpretation and political
application of Randian values is
the logical conclusion of the meritocratic
society. The end stage whereby
the
super-producer is objectively considered to be of immense value.
The flip side is that most others are of
greatly reduced value.
This simple device finally cuts the legs from
the socialist state. No longer
is there a moral argument to distribute
resources from the creators to
the uncreative. Coinciding, as it does, with a
severe economic downturn
in the West, this new idea allows for the moral
acceptability of the rise of
the economy of the super-creator, resident at the
global level,
operating
in cities that sit in a global, not a local context.
Since being creative gives significance, then
being ‘simply human’ is not
any longer sufficient to endow the individual
with rights and entitlements.
It is not a coincidence that the notion of
‘human rights’ has been born of
state collectivist mindsets.
What does this mean in practice for most people?
For the brexit voter?
It suggests that, as with the depredations
visited upon the natural world
where
‘externalities’ of no commercial value are unprotected and destroyed
at will, so too will ‘valueless’ unproductive
human beings be unprotected.
No agency will be on hand to offer them
sustenance, support, survival
beyond the demise of their utility value.
The
downside of a new global economy of super-creators is a global hinterland of the
abandoned.
So be careful what you
vote for. IT will turn round and bite you.
I am Terence Field, and I approve this message. 10th
January 2017.
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