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The Brexit Possibility

113 points by thanatosmin 10y ago

jkot 10y ago
This reads like old 1918 Soviet Constitution.
- deleted 10y ago
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djaychela 10y ago
As someone who (after considerable deliberation) voted to Remain, and now feels that my country is being dragged to the edge of a very high precipice, this makes for interesting reading. I sincerely hope that there will be an (unexpected) upside to leaving the EU, but I think that is a forlorn hope. Most of the people I have spoken to about it who voted to Leave have done so on the most narrow-minded of reasons - typically either "stop immigration" or "take our country back" - both of which are definitely in the "old view" of the world in this article. No-one I know of who voted Leave gave even a moment's thought to the immense amount of work needed to unpick 40 years of integration; to the practicalities of it that will mean it will be the work of Parliament for years to come to simply get to the point where we are today. I am someone who had severe reservations about the European project (i.e. the development into a plan for a superstate, rather than the originally presented idea of a common market), so I really hope that the information in this article turns out to be true, and that somehow the knuckle-dragging imbeciles that I saw on the news last night (Canvey Island piece, if anyone watched it?) have somehow created a masterstroke in political maneuvering which will at least give my step-kids a stab at a decent future. I know none of them think that is the case at the moment.
- 7952 10y ago
  Surely the easiest solution is to simply retain most EU law and regulation as they are intact. Government would then have the oppurtunity to weaken, or even strengthen those laws and regulations in the future. Suddenly abandoning things like product safety standards or environmental protection could be hugely contentious and not actually neccessary to appease the Brexit voters. The race to the bottom can happen after future elections where government can make promises.
  - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
    A lot of those laws came from the UK in the first place, this is the least of our problems.
- _puk 10y ago
  The UK has always had the "islander mentality". The development of a European Superstate would either have had to drag the UK along unwillingly (barring apathy), or happen without them. The positive I am taking from it all is the fact that for once people are actually talking politics again. The next general election won't be as apathetic as the last few, which is likely why Boris won't call one if he becomes leader of the party. This article pictures a gig economy built upon a universal income as a pre-requisite, which I just don't see happening. Given the current state welfare system, there is potential for something like this to be gradually introduced, such that those on lower/no income could start building the gig industry on top of any basic state benefits (as opposed to earn a pound, lose a pound in benefits). That would require a huge shift in current mentalities though, possibly greater than the admission that maybe we would be better off as an integral part of any EU superstate.
  - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
    If Labour don't sort themselves out expect an election pretty quickly.
- tim333 10y ago
  I just watched the Canvey piece I think http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36646709 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36646709 They seem quite sophisticated compared to the voters in Merthyr Tydfil https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCP0R3Z6T58&feature=youtu.be&t=2m9s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCP0R3Z6T58&feature=youtu.be... That said I don't think anyone including the PM or the Brexit leaders really thought it through. This from the Economist: >IT WAS a troubling exchange. On live television Faisal Islam, the political editor of SkyNews, was recounting a conversation with a pro-Brexit Conservative MP. “I said to him: ‘Where’s the plan? Can we see the Brexit plan now?’ [The MP replied:] ‘There is no plan. The Leave campaign don’t have a post-Brexit plan…Number 10 should have had a plan.’” The camera cut to Anna Botting, the anchor, horror chasing across her face. For a couple of seconds they were both silent, as the point sunk in. “Don’t know what to say to that, actually,” she replied, looking down at the desk. Then she cut to a commercial break. ... >As Mr Cameron reportedly told aides on June 24th when explaining his decision to resign: “Why should I do all the hard shit?”
- sevenless 10y ago
  Posting this in the faint hope you will see it. A post you wrote a few months ago made me think you would be eligible to participate in this survey. I feel there's a serious social issue that researchers need to catch up to. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SCX9RZY https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SCX9RZY
apalmer 10y ago
Brexit is a little over-focused on at this point. As far as the article, the beginning half was pretty good, relatively straight forward and even if you disagree with the conclusions the thought process behind them is well laid out and reasonable. the second half, which is everything after 'TECH AND A NEW SYSTEM' is just ideology, without much foundation in empiricism... again whether you agree or disagree, its just not coming from a place of reasonable logical conclusion built on basic empirical data. ...
- 1337biz 10y ago
  " is just ideology, without much foundation in empiricism" That's pretty much how politics work nowadays...
  - Bromskloss 10y ago
    I think that most political issues (as well as personal ones) are matters of opinion anyway, not lending themselves well to mathematical quantification.
    - bduerst 10y ago
      That doesn't mean the facts and predictions from economic experts should have been ignored in this vote. This was an issue with some pretty clear ramifications.
      - botfly 10y ago
        Well really the opinions of economists on this DID have real, quantifiable backing. It's not just ideological conjecture when economists assert that backing out of a trade union will have negative consequences.
      - Bromskloss 10y ago
        I was talking about politics in general. In this particular case, some economic aspects might be matters of fact to which one can apply forecasting techniques, whereas other aspects (e.g. whether one does or does not accept that power over one's country is given to the EU, and whether one wishes to strive towards or away from being one country with the other European Union countries) are more matters of opinion.
FussyZeus 10y ago
This is an excellent read, and the only thing that I really want to add is at this bit: > Each of these factors is critical: a universal basic income alone offers some degree of financial security, but it does not offer dignity to the recipient, or any return for society beyond a reduction in guilt. It's time we re-thought the idea that you need to work for your fill. Speaking as a strong capitalist, it's simply not the reality anymore. To put it in the context of the tribe working to survive that most people think is a good metaphor, this is akin to having 3 incredibly good hunters in the tribe who catch enough food to feed the tribe 4 times over yet still requiring the other men to go hunting and not letting them eat if they don't catch anything on a given day. Why? We have the resources to feed everyone, and all the lower ends of the economic classes doing all the busy-work they could possibly do in a day cannot generate the kind of wealth that workers at the upper end create with a regular work day on a bad day. The notion that you MUST do SOMETHING to earn your money is quickly becoming a barrier to efficiency, and with automation on the rise, it's only going to get worse. Simply "getting a better job" is not a sufficient answer for the vast groups in the population that we're set to unemploy.
- xg15 10y ago
  To stay with the metaphors, what if the hunters at some point decide to break off and make their own tribe? The other members of the tribe will be forced to join the new tribe, because they wouldn't be able to survive on their own. Similarly, my fear is that a world in which a few elites provide everything for a large "idle class", people of that idle class would have no practical rights against that elite. I agree with you that the current "work ideology" won't be usable in the future and in fact seems contradictory. However, I think seeing centralisation as the solution could lead to an even worse society.
  - FussyZeus 10y ago
    Our basic human rights already protect us against that sort of thing though. Basic income implemented well (as just literally giving people money to survive) has no control-ability attached to it. Compare that to our current system where food stamps can only be used for certain kinds of food, or where rent subsidies are only available in certain kinds of housing. I would argue a basic income would increase personal freedom, not decrease it.
Bartweiss 10y ago
This is a thoroughly worthwhile read. Push through the opening if it seems boring; the opening is standard market/governance theory but things perk up afterwards. There's a coherent vision of a new social footing: UBI funded with high taxation, supported by low regulatory burden and a gig economy. Unfortunately missing from the piece is any acknowledgement of just how strongly we seem to be trending away from this outcome. Supranational corporations have neatly sidestepped taxes, so UBI is unaffordable. Regulatory burden and protectionism trend steadily upwards (in opposition to a high-upside, high-tax-value tech industry), while credentialism, debt, and licensing cripple the labor side of a gig economy. It's certainly an interesting worldview, and I'd love to see a more formal treatment of it. But I'd also love to see a good breakdown of how it compares to the trends we actually face.
- RobertoG 10y ago
  "Supranational corporations have neatly sidestepped taxes, so UBI is unaffordable" That's not necessarily true and depends of your conception of money. States with their own currency are not the consumers of money but the source of money. I know that it's a strange idea but it's how it really works. The reason we don't heard a lot about that, it's because then, the things that you are describing become possible and people could start asking for them. http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2014/06/24/modern-money-theory-the-basics/ http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2014/06/24/modern-money-t...
  - poof131 10y ago
    States being the source of money and not a neutral arbiter of it’s value is the major problem in my opinion, not the solution. With a set amount of money (or a slow fixed increase) markets are stable and operate efficiently (assuming minimal other burdens) in the allocation of resources and goods. But when governments ‘make’ money, the markets don’t allocate it, a small set of people do. This micromanagement of the economy leads to declining productivity and stagnation as money flows to the politically connected. The former USSR being a good example in the extreme. So money becomes politics. We’ve seen that those with money have used this to make even more: regressive taxes, bailouts, corporate inversions, etc. But the spread between rich and poor is becoming worse, so now the talk about UBI. The affect of this money distributed by bureaucratic fiat is that the middle class dies. The rich get richer with access to the new money, the poor get poorer and live off handouts, and those surviving in the middle get pushed to the poor side or figure out how to get to the rich side. A fairly standard state of affairs throughout history (lords and serfs), but not the future I’d like to see.
madaxe_again 10y ago
He's right, but he's wrong. The eutopia he describes is feasible, the arguments are rational, the historical understanding of what he covers is good. What he misses, however, is social inertia and reactionary forces. The technocratic ideals he espouses have been espoused before, in similar periods, yet they have never flourished. The failing has not been technical - rather, human. Before any of what he describes is installed, we will descend into chaos - and from chaos, conservatism and adherence to "old ways" grows, as certainty becomes the principle desire of an uncertain people. Conservatism, if strong enough, manifests into nationalism, the desire for strong leadership, for a return to the glorious past - and from this a whole host of totalitarian regimes have been born. The two best known examples are Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. Why chaos, you ask? Well, the vote has legitimised behaviour that last week was not legitimised, and the populace is becoming rapidly bitterly divided. This leaves the government in a quandary - if they continue with brexit, they face a brain drain and strong, possibly violent opposition from the remain camp. If they halt the exit, the same from the exit camp. If they stay still, the current situation will spill out of control. We will see the IRA resurge and Scottish nationalism flourish, particularly given the opposition to them having referenda from Westminster, so the division becomes geographical as well as social. I'm afraid to say there isn't a happy way forwards for the UK from here - every path leads to one form or another of damnation, further division, and potential descent into civil war. I've already fled the country - I'm not sticking around for this one.
- illumin8 10y ago
  I agree about the brain drain if brexit continues, but would there seriously be a brain drain if brexit is halted? I'm fairly certain the UK would be better off if most of the leave voters left the UK completely. The demographics seem to trend towards older pensioners and those on some type of government assistance.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    EU funding for research in UK is now precarious. I can't see why EU would fund research in UK if UK isn't properly in EU. I see Brexit as EU being able to say "properly in, or out, but no more half measures".
carlmcqueen 10y ago
I found the way the author put together how the system came to be amazingly well written, very quickly stated of a very complex reality. As he got into universal income and a gig economy I was lost, not because I think they're terrible ideas but the ideas presented just don't stick in my mind. Regardless, a good read to hear a different way of thinking from my own.
johnrob 10y ago
In the 'new system', the government gives basic income to labor, which pays taxes back to the government. It's probably likely that more goes out via basic income than comes in via income taxes, so one has to wonder: do income taxes really make sense in this model?
- lmm 10y ago
  They do, because successful individuals in this future have very high incomes.
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
  When business can shift profits around the world the biggest change we need to make is to shift away from corporation tax, probably towards more land, purchase and income tax.
rwhitman 10y ago
Even this is outdated and backwards. By the time it would ever become a reality the "Government" portion of this system will have already been replaced with "Tech". We are already at a place where software could successfully manage many of the functions of government. We simply haven't found a nation to prototype it, yet. But I think the test case would be less the UK and more Venezuela
- kbenson 10y ago
  In what way is tech supposed to replace the legislative duties of government? Whatever you say about lawmakers, I think they have a higher than average understanding of the laws and how they interact, and the consequences of certain actions (even if "higher than average" isn't that high). I don't believe a true democracy where everyone votes yields a better system, just a more democratic one. For example, brexit. It was truly democratic, but that doesn't mean it was a good idea, or that if everyone was presented with an impartial, truthful display of the facts the same people would have voted the same way. There are some negative aspects of our psychology that we haven't found a good way to curb yet.
  - 7952 10y ago
    I don't think it is tech exactly that is the great hope, but the culture that it can engender. We all hate laws and regulation but constantly depend on strict standards to make things work. Just rendering a web page requires an insane amount of agreement and cooperation, all goverened by mutual interest rather than compulsion. The hope is to align buisness in such a way that comapanies work together to promote quality and interoperability. Needing government to set standards and regulation is just too slow.
    - kbenson 10y ago
      Regulations are just sets of rules agencies adopt to enforce the law. This is needed because people are not like computers, and do't just blindly follow a standard or best practice. If there's a way to gain more at the expense of others, some people will attempt to do so without some negative consequence (and some will still attempt to do so). Laws are to clearly define what is not allowed. Regulations just make it clear how to operate in a way compliant with the law. > The hope is to align buisness in such a way that comapanies work together to promote quality and interoperability. Needing government to set standards and regulation is just too slow. The only way people and companies are able to interact with other people and companies on any basis that requires future action is because the laws regulate exactly what is expected under certain circumstances. Two parties can agree on whatever they want, but without an impartial third party to review violations in their agreement, enforce penalties, and rule on new situations, this breaks down. I don't think we've seen the last of the cases regarding commerce that requires high level legal review, so I don't think we're done with lawmakers.
bwb 10y ago
fantastic post!
IsaacL 10y ago
Stratechery has many insightful posts but I don't think this one is accurate. The author writes that the new order will be made up of government, tech and individuals. "Corporations" are intentionally absent from the new order. But people will still need to form organisations to achieve collective goals, which will need legal documents stating their purpose and governance, i.e. "corporations". Corporations will still have to be funded by either selling goods and services, donations, or state funding, ie be for-profit, nonprofit, or governmental. I don't think the gig economy is a replacement. Unless AI gets much, much better than the state-of-the-art, I don't see skilled professionals or managers being replaced any time soon. All this automation/AI/DAO hype assumes that AI is much more capable than it really is and that most jobs are much simpler than they really are. For a concrete example, visit a large and busy McDonalds and notice how much work the shift managers have to do to deal with surprise situations and blockages (there's a rulebook they follow, but it's nontrivial to apply to reality). That's just one job which couldn't be handled by a deep learning algo. And McDonalds is a well-oiled machine, most businesses are much more error-prone and inefficient.
altern8tif 10y ago
Insightful read and an interesting thought experiment. Unfortunately, executing this in reality is much harder than it seems. While he rightly observes that the new order will largely be built on supranationals (like Google & Facebook), it is still difficult to run away from nationalistic & economic realities (Brexit is a case in point). Different nations, states, regions and people are experiencing growth at vastly different rates (in the old order). And it is this widening gap between the haves and the have-nots that is preventing us from achieving the utopia the author speaks about. We see this in the US, the UK (as seen in Brexit poll results), Europe in general (with Eastern Europeans moving west in search of opportunities), and also in Asia (which sees a growing gap between the affluent and those left behind). It's well and good to think about ideals, but the real question is really what is the route we must take (and the obstacles we have to overcome) to reach that objective.
Animats 10y ago
The solutions are the usual bullshit. Deregulation, etc. "There should be a significant loosening of the regulations and taxation around business creation." This is YC. Anybody in the US having problems filling out their incorporation forms? Getting a business license? Getting an employer identification number? Getting permission to connect to the Internet? Didn't think so. "The bookkeeping requirements are far too onerous" usually means "we can't go public with the creative accounting we used while private." The Sarbanes-Oxley bookkeeping requirements don't kick in until you go public, and by then you should be big enough to have a real accounting department.
- rqebmm 10y ago
  "We could create more jobs if we just got rid of these onerous regulations that require us to hire accountants!"
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panglott 10y ago
Praising the "gig economy" means he knows nothing about what the "gig economy" means for ordinary workers. The gig economy is when you have to spend more time scrounging up odd jobs than actually working to get paid. The gig economy is having to work multiple part-time jobs since companies won't hire full-time workers—except each of the part-time jobs expect you to be on-call 24 hours/day. The gig economy is non-compete agreements for part-time low-wage service workers. The gig economy is hiring friendly white people for the purposes of branding, then firing them all to cut wages once your image is established. The gig economy is offloading costs of business onto your employees. In short, the "gig economy" is a rebranding is corporate exploitation of low-wage service workers in the context of high unemployment and lack of regulation. Saying "these sorts of jobs provide the upside to a universal basic income’s floor: our goal should be to make it vastly easier for individuals to better themselves if they choose to do so" is just blaming unemployed people for losing their jobs when the financial industry cocked up the economy with "financial innovations" (i.e., fraud).
- golergka 10y ago
  You describe the things that you would miss in the gig exonomy in a language that suggests that you're entitles to those things. May I ask why?
  - zaccus 10y ago
    Can you point to an example in the parent post where such language is used? I'm not seeing anywhere saying "I would miss entitlements x, y, and z".
  - panglott 10y ago
    I'm not claiming that anyone is entitled to anything; I'm simply pointing out that the labor market is a shit sandwich for a very large class of workers. The OP frames nonparticipation in the "gig economy" as a failure of moral rectitude on the part of those who lack "the desire to better themselves." Economics concerns the simple exchange of resources, and is unconcerned about whether it is "fair" for a drought to cause famine and death. But we humans live in societies that require a high level of trust, social cooperation, and an expectation of fairness. Those who would tear up the social contract ought well consider what wind they would sow.
tim333 10y ago
I think he misdiagnoses "the 2009 rise of the Tea Party on the right, and the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement on the left." as being down to globalisation. Those both arose in the aftermath of the 2006-2008 crash which is rather reminiscent of the 1929 crash and the depression of the 30s. In both cases a lot of money was borrowed in the boom against assets that looked valuable but then ceased to be. In the collapse people were left with large debts, spending and hence employment and tax revenues went down, the environment became deflationary as prices were subdued due to low spending and anti immigrant groups arose blaming the lack of employment and money on immigrants and the like. I hope it all plays out better than in the 30s. At least this time round the economists understand it much better. I agree with the ending "a crisis is a terrible thing to waste" and maybe it could lead to saner anti deflationary policies reducing the crappiness of life in the industrial heartlands, through smart government spending as opposed to WW2 as happened in the 30s.
saynsedit 10y ago
The assumption that exporting manufacturing to the third-world is generally good for humanity is a bit hard to stomach.
flyovernobody 10y ago
The rich made the poor poor. You stole the purchasing power of the dollar through inflation and the Federal Reserve. You shipped the jobs out of the country. You flooded the country with people of the 3rd world driving down wages. You dumb down the education system with money making schemes like Common Core, financed by Bill Gates! You got rid of the usury laws allowing payday loan shops to proliferate. You benefited from the stock market ponzi scheme and QE 1,2,3, to infinity and beyond! What you are seeing in the west are whites being liquidated for cheaper brown hordes. That is globalism and multiculturalism. The elite of the west are no longer interested in the best interests of their citizens or society and it is time to replace them.
spyckie2 10y ago
My reading of the article: 1) "Tech industry" is infrastructure that leads to mass efficiency at scale. When this happens it means that individuals can now compete on a cost basis with corporations. Brands will retain their power as long as they retain their relevancy, but I suspect even branding can be made more efficient through tech. Corporations will have to go 1 of 3 routes: - become infrastructure (reduce goods and services until they become part of the tech industry) - be an infrastructure/goods + service hybrid (develop their own tech infrastructure while keeping their brand) - become a goods and service provider that relies on tech infrastructure (become part of the gig economy) Corporations will benefit from access to volume discounts, but the big winners will be the tech platforms. 2) Tech is already too profitable and will suck the world dry in the same manner as corporations since globalization. It's about what generates the best efficiencies. Previously, economies of scale drove it. Now, tech is driving it and will drive it into the future. 3) Being too profitable is not the issue; being too greedy is. Tech, by nature, will be extremely profitable compared to the rest of society. To restore that balance on a social level, tech should pay more taxes, not less. Otherwise, the rest of society will revolt as history has shown. 4) Government is the mediator that moderates efficiencies and society. It exists to make sure massive efficiencies don't suck society dry, and that society doesn't revolt because of it. It does this by siphoning off the wealth of extremely efficient industries and individuals and redistributing it through basic income. 5) With this view, the world is not split between the lazy and hardworking (which has never really been the case), but the efficient and inefficient industries and workers.
hasbroslasher 10y ago
While I agree with the tenets of this article (global capitalism is bad and needs to be replaced with technological socialism (which, in my view, would ultimately enable the formation of a true Marxist society)), there's some really bad assumptions being made that I have to point out: > Companies like Apple and Google should strive to be technology leaders, not tax avoidance ones... Yeah, they should, but... it's not going to happen. The executives of Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. benefit from a system of political and economic highway robbery where their massive influence in their respective markets allows them near monopolies. These institutions have become so powerful that they can flip off the government/"we the people" to their hearts' content (e.g. when the USA wanted an iPhone backdoor, when Verizon decided to just give the government everyone's phone calls without permission, when many of the world's workers have little choice but to work in a so-called sweatshop to make the goods that Amazon sells). These are not the type of people who care about what they "should do" - they're businessmen who are in it to make money, after all. Assuming some degree of morality from the executives of multinational corporations is essentially the height of naivete. > What makes today’s world so different than the 1950s are the means with which ambition and creativity can be realized... This is just blatantly wrong - it might be correct if you're an American white person whose parents can help pay for college and you have the natural aptitude to excel in a technical or business field. But if you're like a lot of people, your opportunity to start the next Facebook is close to zero: you don't have the skills, money, free-time, friends or family support you need to succeed. > It would be against the self-interest of both consumers and politicians to hold tech back... The problem is that "tech" isn't just one thing or one group of companies - pretty much every multinational corporation has a deep interest in technology. It is in these companies self-interest to avoid paying taxes, eliminate labor from the production pipeline, create consumers who depend on their products entirely, and maximize their own outcomes at the expense of anything else they can externalize costs unto. It is then in the both the interest of consumer (whose money will fuel global inequality, destruction of the environment, corruption) and the interest of the government (or society as a whole) to limit the influence of these super-corporations: they care only for themselves, despite their vaguely liberal public appearances. They exist to serve the stock holders, nothing more. To suggest otherwise is, again, the height of naivete.

113 points by thanatosmin 10y ago

jkot 10y ago

This reads like old 1918 Soviet Constitution.

deleted 10y ago
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djaychela 10y ago

As someone who (after considerable deliberation) voted to Remain, and now feels that my country is being dragged to the edge of a very high precipice, this makes for interesting reading. I sincerely hope that there will be an (unexpected) upside to leaving the EU, but I think that is a forlorn hope. Most of the people I have spoken to about it who voted to Leave have done so on the most narrow-minded of reasons - typically either "stop immigration" or "take our country back" - both of which are definitely in the "old view" of the world in this article. No-one I know of who voted Leave gave even a moment's thought to the immense amount of work needed to unpick 40 years of integration; to the practicalities of it that will mean it will be the work of Parliament for years to come to simply get to the point where we are today. I am someone who had severe reservations about the European project (i.e. the development into a plan for a superstate, rather than the originally presented idea of a common market), so I really hope that the information in this article turns out to be true, and that somehow the knuckle-dragging imbeciles that I saw on the news last night (Canvey Island piece, if anyone watched it?) have somehow created a masterstroke in political maneuvering which will at least give my step-kids a stab at a decent future. I know none of them think that is the case at the moment.

7952 10y ago
Surely the easiest solution is to simply retain most EU law and regulation as they are intact. Government would then have the oppurtunity to weaken, or even strengthen those laws and regulations in the future. Suddenly abandoning things like product safety standards or environmental protection could be hugely contentious and not actually neccessary to appease the Brexit voters. The race to the bottom can happen after future elections where government can make promises.
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
  A lot of those laws came from the UK in the first place, this is the least of our problems.
_puk 10y ago
The UK has always had the "islander mentality". The development of a European Superstate would either have had to drag the UK along unwillingly (barring apathy), or happen without them. The positive I am taking from it all is the fact that for once people are actually talking politics again. The next general election won't be as apathetic as the last few, which is likely why Boris won't call one if he becomes leader of the party. This article pictures a gig economy built upon a universal income as a pre-requisite, which I just don't see happening. Given the current state welfare system, there is potential for something like this to be gradually introduced, such that those on lower/no income could start building the gig industry on top of any basic state benefits (as opposed to earn a pound, lose a pound in benefits). That would require a huge shift in current mentalities though, possibly greater than the admission that maybe we would be better off as an integral part of any EU superstate.
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
  If Labour don't sort themselves out expect an election pretty quickly.
tim333 10y ago
I just watched the Canvey piece I think http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36646709 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36646709 They seem quite sophisticated compared to the voters in Merthyr Tydfil https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCP0R3Z6T58&feature=youtu.be&t=2m9s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCP0R3Z6T58&feature=youtu.be... That said I don't think anyone including the PM or the Brexit leaders really thought it through. This from the Economist: >IT WAS a troubling exchange. On live television Faisal Islam, the political editor of SkyNews, was recounting a conversation with a pro-Brexit Conservative MP. “I said to him: ‘Where’s the plan? Can we see the Brexit plan now?’ [The MP replied:] ‘There is no plan. The Leave campaign don’t have a post-Brexit plan…Number 10 should have had a plan.’” The camera cut to Anna Botting, the anchor, horror chasing across her face. For a couple of seconds they were both silent, as the point sunk in. “Don’t know what to say to that, actually,” she replied, looking down at the desk. Then she cut to a commercial break. ... >As Mr Cameron reportedly told aides on June 24th when explaining his decision to resign: “Why should I do all the hard shit?”
sevenless 10y ago
Posting this in the faint hope you will see it. A post you wrote a few months ago made me think you would be eligible to participate in this survey. I feel there's a serious social issue that researchers need to catch up to. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SCX9RZY https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SCX9RZY

apalmer 10y ago

Brexit is a little over-focused on at this point. As far as the article, the beginning half was pretty good, relatively straight forward and even if you disagree with the conclusions the thought process behind them is well laid out and reasonable. the second half, which is everything after 'TECH AND A NEW SYSTEM' is just ideology, without much foundation in empiricism... again whether you agree or disagree, its just not coming from a place of reasonable logical conclusion built on basic empirical data. ...

1337biz 10y ago
" is just ideology, without much foundation in empiricism" That's pretty much how politics work nowadays...
- Bromskloss 10y ago
  I think that most political issues (as well as personal ones) are matters of opinion anyway, not lending themselves well to mathematical quantification.
  - bduerst 10y ago
    That doesn't mean the facts and predictions from economic experts should have been ignored in this vote. This was an issue with some pretty clear ramifications.
    - botfly 10y ago
      Well really the opinions of economists on this DID have real, quantifiable backing. It's not just ideological conjecture when economists assert that backing out of a trade union will have negative consequences.
    - Bromskloss 10y ago
      I was talking about politics in general. In this particular case, some economic aspects might be matters of fact to which one can apply forecasting techniques, whereas other aspects (e.g. whether one does or does not accept that power over one's country is given to the EU, and whether one wishes to strive towards or away from being one country with the other European Union countries) are more matters of opinion.

FussyZeus 10y ago

This is an excellent read, and the only thing that I really want to add is at this bit: > Each of these factors is critical: a universal basic income alone offers some degree of financial security, but it does not offer dignity to the recipient, or any return for society beyond a reduction in guilt. It's time we re-thought the idea that you need to work for your fill. Speaking as a strong capitalist, it's simply not the reality anymore. To put it in the context of the tribe working to survive that most people think is a good metaphor, this is akin to having 3 incredibly good hunters in the tribe who catch enough food to feed the tribe 4 times over yet still requiring the other men to go hunting and not letting them eat if they don't catch anything on a given day. Why? We have the resources to feed everyone, and all the lower ends of the economic classes doing all the busy-work they could possibly do in a day cannot generate the kind of wealth that workers at the upper end create with a regular work day on a bad day. The notion that you MUST do SOMETHING to earn your money is quickly becoming a barrier to efficiency, and with automation on the rise, it's only going to get worse. Simply "getting a better job" is not a sufficient answer for the vast groups in the population that we're set to unemploy.

xg15 10y ago
To stay with the metaphors, what if the hunters at some point decide to break off and make their own tribe? The other members of the tribe will be forced to join the new tribe, because they wouldn't be able to survive on their own. Similarly, my fear is that a world in which a few elites provide everything for a large "idle class", people of that idle class would have no practical rights against that elite. I agree with you that the current "work ideology" won't be usable in the future and in fact seems contradictory. However, I think seeing centralisation as the solution could lead to an even worse society.
- FussyZeus 10y ago
  Our basic human rights already protect us against that sort of thing though. Basic income implemented well (as just literally giving people money to survive) has no control-ability attached to it. Compare that to our current system where food stamps can only be used for certain kinds of food, or where rent subsidies are only available in certain kinds of housing. I would argue a basic income would increase personal freedom, not decrease it.

Bartweiss 10y ago

This is a thoroughly worthwhile read. Push through the opening if it seems boring; the opening is standard market/governance theory but things perk up afterwards. There's a coherent vision of a new social footing: UBI funded with high taxation, supported by low regulatory burden and a gig economy. Unfortunately missing from the piece is any acknowledgement of just how strongly we seem to be trending away from this outcome. Supranational corporations have neatly sidestepped taxes, so UBI is unaffordable. Regulatory burden and protectionism trend steadily upwards (in opposition to a high-upside, high-tax-value tech industry), while credentialism, debt, and licensing cripple the labor side of a gig economy. It's certainly an interesting worldview, and I'd love to see a more formal treatment of it. But I'd also love to see a good breakdown of how it compares to the trends we actually face.

RobertoG 10y ago
"Supranational corporations have neatly sidestepped taxes, so UBI is unaffordable" That's not necessarily true and depends of your conception of money. States with their own currency are not the consumers of money but the source of money. I know that it's a strange idea but it's how it really works. The reason we don't heard a lot about that, it's because then, the things that you are describing become possible and people could start asking for them. http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2014/06/24/modern-money-theory-the-basics/ http://www.economonitor.com/lrwray/2014/06/24/modern-money-t...
- poof131 10y ago
  States being the source of money and not a neutral arbiter of it’s value is the major problem in my opinion, not the solution. With a set amount of money (or a slow fixed increase) markets are stable and operate efficiently (assuming minimal other burdens) in the allocation of resources and goods. But when governments ‘make’ money, the markets don’t allocate it, a small set of people do. This micromanagement of the economy leads to declining productivity and stagnation as money flows to the politically connected. The former USSR being a good example in the extreme. So money becomes politics. We’ve seen that those with money have used this to make even more: regressive taxes, bailouts, corporate inversions, etc. But the spread between rich and poor is becoming worse, so now the talk about UBI. The affect of this money distributed by bureaucratic fiat is that the middle class dies. The rich get richer with access to the new money, the poor get poorer and live off handouts, and those surviving in the middle get pushed to the poor side or figure out how to get to the rich side. A fairly standard state of affairs throughout history (lords and serfs), but not the future I’d like to see.

madaxe_again 10y ago

He's right, but he's wrong. The eutopia he describes is feasible, the arguments are rational, the historical understanding of what he covers is good. What he misses, however, is social inertia and reactionary forces. The technocratic ideals he espouses have been espoused before, in similar periods, yet they have never flourished. The failing has not been technical - rather, human. Before any of what he describes is installed, we will descend into chaos - and from chaos, conservatism and adherence to "old ways" grows, as certainty becomes the principle desire of an uncertain people. Conservatism, if strong enough, manifests into nationalism, the desire for strong leadership, for a return to the glorious past - and from this a whole host of totalitarian regimes have been born. The two best known examples are Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. Why chaos, you ask? Well, the vote has legitimised behaviour that last week was not legitimised, and the populace is becoming rapidly bitterly divided. This leaves the government in a quandary - if they continue with brexit, they face a brain drain and strong, possibly violent opposition from the remain camp. If they halt the exit, the same from the exit camp. If they stay still, the current situation will spill out of control. We will see the IRA resurge and Scottish nationalism flourish, particularly given the opposition to them having referenda from Westminster, so the division becomes geographical as well as social. I'm afraid to say there isn't a happy way forwards for the UK from here - every path leads to one form or another of damnation, further division, and potential descent into civil war. I've already fled the country - I'm not sticking around for this one.

illumin8 10y ago
I agree about the brain drain if brexit continues, but would there seriously be a brain drain if brexit is halted? I'm fairly certain the UK would be better off if most of the leave voters left the UK completely. The demographics seem to trend towards older pensioners and those on some type of government assistance.
- DanBC 10y ago
  EU funding for research in UK is now precarious. I can't see why EU would fund research in UK if UK isn't properly in EU. I see Brexit as EU being able to say "properly in, or out, but no more half measures".

carlmcqueen 10y ago

I found the way the author put together how the system came to be amazingly well written, very quickly stated of a very complex reality. As he got into universal income and a gig economy I was lost, not because I think they're terrible ideas but the ideas presented just don't stick in my mind. Regardless, a good read to hear a different way of thinking from my own.

johnrob 10y ago

In the 'new system', the government gives basic income to labor, which pays taxes back to the government. It's probably likely that more goes out via basic income than comes in via income taxes, so one has to wonder: do income taxes really make sense in this model?

lmm 10y ago
They do, because successful individuals in this future have very high incomes.
tonyedgecombe 10y ago
When business can shift profits around the world the biggest change we need to make is to shift away from corporation tax, probably towards more land, purchase and income tax.

rwhitman 10y ago

Even this is outdated and backwards. By the time it would ever become a reality the "Government" portion of this system will have already been replaced with "Tech". We are already at a place where software could successfully manage many of the functions of government. We simply haven't found a nation to prototype it, yet. But I think the test case would be less the UK and more Venezuela

kbenson 10y ago
In what way is tech supposed to replace the legislative duties of government? Whatever you say about lawmakers, I think they have a higher than average understanding of the laws and how they interact, and the consequences of certain actions (even if "higher than average" isn't that high). I don't believe a true democracy where everyone votes yields a better system, just a more democratic one. For example, brexit. It was truly democratic, but that doesn't mean it was a good idea, or that if everyone was presented with an impartial, truthful display of the facts the same people would have voted the same way. There are some negative aspects of our psychology that we haven't found a good way to curb yet.
- 7952 10y ago
  I don't think it is tech exactly that is the great hope, but the culture that it can engender. We all hate laws and regulation but constantly depend on strict standards to make things work. Just rendering a web page requires an insane amount of agreement and cooperation, all goverened by mutual interest rather than compulsion. The hope is to align buisness in such a way that comapanies work together to promote quality and interoperability. Needing government to set standards and regulation is just too slow.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    Regulations are just sets of rules agencies adopt to enforce the law. This is needed because people are not like computers, and do't just blindly follow a standard or best practice. If there's a way to gain more at the expense of others, some people will attempt to do so without some negative consequence (and some will still attempt to do so). Laws are to clearly define what is not allowed. Regulations just make it clear how to operate in a way compliant with the law. > The hope is to align buisness in such a way that comapanies work together to promote quality and interoperability. Needing government to set standards and regulation is just too slow. The only way people and companies are able to interact with other people and companies on any basis that requires future action is because the laws regulate exactly what is expected under certain circumstances. Two parties can agree on whatever they want, but without an impartial third party to review violations in their agreement, enforce penalties, and rule on new situations, this breaks down. I don't think we've seen the last of the cases regarding commerce that requires high level legal review, so I don't think we're done with lawmakers.

bwb 10y ago

fantastic post!

IsaacL 10y ago

Stratechery has many insightful posts but I don't think this one is accurate. The author writes that the new order will be made up of government, tech and individuals. "Corporations" are intentionally absent from the new order. But people will still need to form organisations to achieve collective goals, which will need legal documents stating their purpose and governance, i.e. "corporations". Corporations will still have to be funded by either selling goods and services, donations, or state funding, ie be for-profit, nonprofit, or governmental. I don't think the gig economy is a replacement. Unless AI gets much, much better than the state-of-the-art, I don't see skilled professionals or managers being replaced any time soon. All this automation/AI/DAO hype assumes that AI is much more capable than it really is and that most jobs are much simpler than they really are. For a concrete example, visit a large and busy McDonalds and notice how much work the shift managers have to do to deal with surprise situations and blockages (there's a rulebook they follow, but it's nontrivial to apply to reality). That's just one job which couldn't be handled by a deep learning algo. And McDonalds is a well-oiled machine, most businesses are much more error-prone and inefficient.

altern8tif 10y ago

Insightful read and an interesting thought experiment. Unfortunately, executing this in reality is much harder than it seems. While he rightly observes that the new order will largely be built on supranationals (like Google & Facebook), it is still difficult to run away from nationalistic & economic realities (Brexit is a case in point). Different nations, states, regions and people are experiencing growth at vastly different rates (in the old order). And it is this widening gap between the haves and the have-nots that is preventing us from achieving the utopia the author speaks about. We see this in the US, the UK (as seen in Brexit poll results), Europe in general (with Eastern Europeans moving west in search of opportunities), and also in Asia (which sees a growing gap between the affluent and those left behind). It's well and good to think about ideals, but the real question is really what is the route we must take (and the obstacles we have to overcome) to reach that objective.

Animats 10y ago

The solutions are the usual bullshit. Deregulation, etc. "There should be a significant loosening of the regulations and taxation around business creation." This is YC. Anybody in the US having problems filling out their incorporation forms? Getting a business license? Getting an employer identification number? Getting permission to connect to the Internet? Didn't think so. "The bookkeeping requirements are far too onerous" usually means "we can't go public with the creative accounting we used while private." The Sarbanes-Oxley bookkeeping requirements don't kick in until you go public, and by then you should be big enough to have a real accounting department.

rqebmm 10y ago
"We could create more jobs if we just got rid of these onerous regulations that require us to hire accountants!"
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panglott 10y ago

Praising the "gig economy" means he knows nothing about what the "gig economy" means for ordinary workers. The gig economy is when you have to spend more time scrounging up odd jobs than actually working to get paid. The gig economy is having to work multiple part-time jobs since companies won't hire full-time workers—except each of the part-time jobs expect you to be on-call 24 hours/day. The gig economy is non-compete agreements for part-time low-wage service workers. The gig economy is hiring friendly white people for the purposes of branding, then firing them all to cut wages once your image is established. The gig economy is offloading costs of business onto your employees. In short, the "gig economy" is a rebranding is corporate exploitation of low-wage service workers in the context of high unemployment and lack of regulation. Saying "these sorts of jobs provide the upside to a universal basic income’s floor: our goal should be to make it vastly easier for individuals to better themselves if they choose to do so" is just blaming unemployed people for losing their jobs when the financial industry cocked up the economy with "financial innovations" (i.e., fraud).

golergka 10y ago
You describe the things that you would miss in the gig exonomy in a language that suggests that you're entitles to those things. May I ask why?
- zaccus 10y ago
  Can you point to an example in the parent post where such language is used? I'm not seeing anywhere saying "I would miss entitlements x, y, and z".
- panglott 10y ago
  I'm not claiming that anyone is entitled to anything; I'm simply pointing out that the labor market is a shit sandwich for a very large class of workers. The OP frames nonparticipation in the "gig economy" as a failure of moral rectitude on the part of those who lack "the desire to better themselves." Economics concerns the simple exchange of resources, and is unconcerned about whether it is "fair" for a drought to cause famine and death. But we humans live in societies that require a high level of trust, social cooperation, and an expectation of fairness. Those who would tear up the social contract ought well consider what wind they would sow.

tim333 10y ago

I think he misdiagnoses "the 2009 rise of the Tea Party on the right, and the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement on the left." as being down to globalisation. Those both arose in the aftermath of the 2006-2008 crash which is rather reminiscent of the 1929 crash and the depression of the 30s. In both cases a lot of money was borrowed in the boom against assets that looked valuable but then ceased to be. In the collapse people were left with large debts, spending and hence employment and tax revenues went down, the environment became deflationary as prices were subdued due to low spending and anti immigrant groups arose blaming the lack of employment and money on immigrants and the like. I hope it all plays out better than in the 30s. At least this time round the economists understand it much better. I agree with the ending "a crisis is a terrible thing to waste" and maybe it could lead to saner anti deflationary policies reducing the crappiness of life in the industrial heartlands, through smart government spending as opposed to WW2 as happened in the 30s.

saynsedit 10y ago

The assumption that exporting manufacturing to the third-world is generally good for humanity is a bit hard to stomach.

flyovernobody 10y ago

The rich made the poor poor. You stole the purchasing power of the dollar through inflation and the Federal Reserve. You shipped the jobs out of the country. You flooded the country with people of the 3rd world driving down wages. You dumb down the education system with money making schemes like Common Core, financed by Bill Gates! You got rid of the usury laws allowing payday loan shops to proliferate. You benefited from the stock market ponzi scheme and QE 1,2,3, to infinity and beyond! What you are seeing in the west are whites being liquidated for cheaper brown hordes. That is globalism and multiculturalism. The elite of the west are no longer interested in the best interests of their citizens or society and it is time to replace them.

spyckie2 10y ago

My reading of the article: 1) "Tech industry" is infrastructure that leads to mass efficiency at scale. When this happens it means that individuals can now compete on a cost basis with corporations. Brands will retain their power as long as they retain their relevancy, but I suspect even branding can be made more efficient through tech. Corporations will have to go 1 of 3 routes: - become infrastructure (reduce goods and services until they become part of the tech industry) - be an infrastructure/goods + service hybrid (develop their own tech infrastructure while keeping their brand) - become a goods and service provider that relies on tech infrastructure (become part of the gig economy) Corporations will benefit from access to volume discounts, but the big winners will be the tech platforms. 2) Tech is already too profitable and will suck the world dry in the same manner as corporations since globalization. It's about what generates the best efficiencies. Previously, economies of scale drove it. Now, tech is driving it and will drive it into the future. 3) Being too profitable is not the issue; being too greedy is. Tech, by nature, will be extremely profitable compared to the rest of society. To restore that balance on a social level, tech should pay more taxes, not less. Otherwise, the rest of society will revolt as history has shown. 4) Government is the mediator that moderates efficiencies and society. It exists to make sure massive efficiencies don't suck society dry, and that society doesn't revolt because of it. It does this by siphoning off the wealth of extremely efficient industries and individuals and redistributing it through basic income. 5) With this view, the world is not split between the lazy and hardworking (which has never really been the case), but the efficient and inefficient industries and workers.

hasbroslasher 10y ago

While I agree with the tenets of this article (global capitalism is bad and needs to be replaced with technological socialism (which, in my view, would ultimately enable the formation of a true Marxist society)), there's some really bad assumptions being made that I have to point out: > Companies like Apple and Google should strive to be technology leaders, not tax avoidance ones... Yeah, they should, but... it's not going to happen. The executives of Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. benefit from a system of political and economic highway robbery where their massive influence in their respective markets allows them near monopolies. These institutions have become so powerful that they can flip off the government/"we the people" to their hearts' content (e.g. when the USA wanted an iPhone backdoor, when Verizon decided to just give the government everyone's phone calls without permission, when many of the world's workers have little choice but to work in a so-called sweatshop to make the goods that Amazon sells). These are not the type of people who care about what they "should do" - they're businessmen who are in it to make money, after all. Assuming some degree of morality from the executives of multinational corporations is essentially the height of naivete. > What makes today’s world so different than the 1950s are the means with which ambition and creativity can be realized... This is just blatantly wrong - it might be correct if you're an American white person whose parents can help pay for college and you have the natural aptitude to excel in a technical or business field. But if you're like a lot of people, your opportunity to start the next Facebook is close to zero: you don't have the skills, money, free-time, friends or family support you need to succeed. > It would be against the self-interest of both consumers and politicians to hold tech back... The problem is that "tech" isn't just one thing or one group of companies - pretty much every multinational corporation has a deep interest in technology. It is in these companies self-interest to avoid paying taxes, eliminate labor from the production pipeline, create consumers who depend on their products entirely, and maximize their own outcomes at the expense of anything else they can externalize costs unto. It is then in the both the interest of consumer (whose money will fuel global inequality, destruction of the environment, corruption) and the interest of the government (or society as a whole) to limit the influence of these super-corporations: they care only for themselves, despite their vaguely liberal public appearances. They exist to serve the stock holders, nothing more. To suggest otherwise is, again, the height of naivete.