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I would hardly consider Britain a failed state compared to the utter poverty, religious violence, and sexual inequality tens of millions face daily there.

ben_w 6y ago
I have to agree, despite having a strongly negative outlook for the U.K. — there are massive gaps between the two nations, made up for only by the enormous absolute population of India. Things may change quickly and surprise me, but even my 90% estimate for the U.K. is Brexit-related incompetence (as opposed to COVID-related, so yes things can go sideways for new and exciting reasons at short notice) is that the U.K. as a whole ends up at least as strong as Wales is now, and Wales is doing about 13 times better by GDP than India. And yes, I know GDP isn’t everything, and I know that hypothetically the whole of the U.K. getting into internal conflicts equal to The Troubles in Northern Ireland (my gut says 5% chance of that) could be utterly devastating to the entire fabric of the nation… but that hasn’t happened yet, 5% isn’t very likely, and the more likely internal conflicts within the U.K. are highly regional.
- selfhoster11 6y ago
  > I know that hypothetically the whole of the U.K. getting into internal conflicts equal to The Troubles in Northern Ireland (my gut says 5% chance of that) could be utterly devastating to the entire fabric of the nation… but that hasn’t happened yet If I had to guess, I'd say the conflict is much much likelier to come back post-Brexit. Now that we're out of the EU, the "open movement" hack made possible by mutual EU membership no longer works without knock-on effects (customs checks, blah blah). I can't see Boris Johnson falling on the sword to safekeep the peace in NI, so if the push comes to shove, NI is more likely to be left to fend for themselves.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    I’m guesstimating P(The Troubles | limited to just the range and belligerents as last time) ~= 0.75 The thing I’m saying is p ~= 0.05 is P(The Troubles | scaled up from NI to whole UK), which would be ~123,500 dead and ~1,662,500 injured. This is one of several reasons why I no longer live in the U.K.

ben_w 6y ago

I have to agree, despite having a strongly negative outlook for the U.K. — there are massive gaps between the two nations, made up for only by the enormous absolute population of India. Things may change quickly and surprise me, but even my 90% estimate for the U.K. is Brexit-related incompetence (as opposed to COVID-related, so yes things can go sideways for new and exciting reasons at short notice) is that the U.K. as a whole ends up at least as strong as Wales is now, and Wales is doing about 13 times better by GDP than India. And yes, I know GDP isn’t everything, and I know that hypothetically the whole of the U.K. getting into internal conflicts equal to The Troubles in Northern Ireland (my gut says 5% chance of that) could be utterly devastating to the entire fabric of the nation… but that hasn’t happened yet, 5% isn’t very likely, and the more likely internal conflicts within the U.K. are highly regional.

selfhoster11 6y ago
> I know that hypothetically the whole of the U.K. getting into internal conflicts equal to The Troubles in Northern Ireland (my gut says 5% chance of that) could be utterly devastating to the entire fabric of the nation… but that hasn’t happened yet If I had to guess, I'd say the conflict is much much likelier to come back post-Brexit. Now that we're out of the EU, the "open movement" hack made possible by mutual EU membership no longer works without knock-on effects (customs checks, blah blah). I can't see Boris Johnson falling on the sword to safekeep the peace in NI, so if the push comes to shove, NI is more likely to be left to fend for themselves.
- ben_w 6y ago
  I’m guesstimating P(The Troubles | limited to just the range and belligerents as last time) ~= 0.75 The thing I’m saying is p ~= 0.05 is P(The Troubles | scaled up from NI to whole UK), which would be ~123,500 dead and ~1,662,500 injured. This is one of several reasons why I no longer live in the U.K.