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Previously flagged for some strange reason: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41600388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41600388 The people behind Found

Previously flagged for some strange reason: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41600388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41600388 The people behind Foundations (and this author, since he's their buddy) are beating the same old drum: deregulation blah blah blah if only we cut the red tape and pave over everything with concrete then we'll all be rich! This essay is not that "groundbreaking" and their proposed solutions have been tried. We did Thatcherism! This feels like some right-of-center mirror of "True Communism has Never Been Tried(tm)". If only we deregulate even harder we'll be like America.

BeetleB 2y ago
> The people behind Foundations (and this author, since he's their buddy) are beating the same old drum: deregulation blah blah blah if only we cut the red tape and pave over everything with concrete then we'll all be rich! When it costs over a billion to build a mile of railway, you do have to wonder about how much red tape there is.
mike_hearn 2y ago
People make fun of the True Communism brigade because they're saying that if you did communism "right" the outcomes would be different to what actually happened. In this case people are saying that if you did Thatcherism again, the outcomes would be the same as what actually happened: the UK would catch up with the USA again, just like it did under Thatcher. So the comparison seems backwards. The essay writers aren't trying to claim Thatcher didn't do libertarianism correctly. It's easy to overlook how bad the situation was before Thatcher. Ed West has other articles where he talks about the situation in the mid 1970s. https://www.edwest.co.uk/p/the-worst-year-in-british-politics https://www.edwest.co.uk/p/the-worst-year-in-british-politic... in November 1973 ‘Heath announced his fifth state of emergency in barely four years. Floodlighting and electric advertising were banned; behind the scenes, the government began printing petrol ration cards. As the railwaymen voted to join the miners in pursuit of higher pay, it seemed that Britain was sliding into darkness. Offices were ordered to turn down their thermostats, while the BBC and ITV were banned from broadcasting after 10.30 at night. On New Year’s Day, with fuel supplies running dangerously low, the entire nation went on a three-day working week.’ As the new cabinet went to see the Queen, even the rooms at Buckingham Palace were unheated because of the energy crisis https://www.edwest.co.uk/p/britain-on-the-brink https://www.edwest.co.uk/p/britain-on-the-brink The capital had lost a million and a half people since its peak in 1939, and would continue its decline for another decade ... The country as a whole was haemorrhaging people, and in 1975 its population fell for the first time since records began. In the spring of 1974 applications for emigration to Canada went up 65 per cent, while New Zealand even felt compelled to put restrictions on people fleeing the old country. In 1950 Britain had 25 per cent of the world trade in manufacturing; by 1970 it was barely 10%, half of West Germany’s. Britain was now the second poorest country in the European Economic Community, and Tony Benn remarked that it was ‘heading for development area status in the EEC… with Germany more than twice as rich as we are.’ Robert Moss of the Economist wrote in February 1977. ‘The more I compare Britain with the countries that it still regards as it peers, the more I succumb to the uneasy feeling that [it] is becoming a Third World country.’ Britain had even become a cautionary tale, so that President Gerald Ford warned Americans: ‘It would be tragic for this country if we went down the same path and ended up with the same problems Great Britain has.’

BeetleB 2y ago

> The people behind Foundations (and this author, since he's their buddy) are beating the same old drum: deregulation blah blah blah if only we cut the red tape and pave over everything with concrete then we'll all be rich! When it costs over a billion to build a mile of railway, you do have to wonder about how much red tape there is.

mike_hearn 2y ago

People make fun of the True Communism brigade because they're saying that if you did communism "right" the outcomes would be different to what actually happened. In this case people are saying that if you did Thatcherism again, the outcomes would be the same as what actually happened: the UK would catch up with the USA again, just like it did under Thatcher. So the comparison seems backwards. The essay writers aren't trying to claim Thatcher didn't do libertarianism correctly. It's easy to overlook how bad the situation was before Thatcher. Ed West has other articles where he talks about the situation in the mid 1970s. https://www.edwest.co.uk/p/the-worst-year-in-british-politics https://www.edwest.co.uk/p/the-worst-year-in-british-politic... in November 1973 ‘Heath announced his fifth state of emergency in barely four years. Floodlighting and electric advertising were banned; behind the scenes, the government began printing petrol ration cards. As the railwaymen voted to join the miners in pursuit of higher pay, it seemed that Britain was sliding into darkness. Offices were ordered to turn down their thermostats, while the BBC and ITV were banned from broadcasting after 10.30 at night. On New Year’s Day, with fuel supplies running dangerously low, the entire nation went on a three-day working week.’ As the new cabinet went to see the Queen, even the rooms at Buckingham Palace were unheated because of the energy crisis https://www.edwest.co.uk/p/britain-on-the-brink https://www.edwest.co.uk/p/britain-on-the-brink The capital had lost a million and a half people since its peak in 1939, and would continue its decline for another decade ... The country as a whole was haemorrhaging people, and in 1975 its population fell for the first time since records began. In the spring of 1974 applications for emigration to Canada went up 65 per cent, while New Zealand even felt compelled to put restrictions on people fleeing the old country. In 1950 Britain had 25 per cent of the world trade in manufacturing; by 1970 it was barely 10%, half of West Germany’s. Britain was now the second poorest country in the European Economic Community, and Tony Benn remarked that it was ‘heading for development area status in the EEC… with Germany more than twice as rich as we are.’ Robert Moss of the Economist wrote in February 1977. ‘The more I compare Britain with the countries that it still regards as it peers, the more I succumb to the uneasy feeling that [it] is becoming a Third World country.’ Britain had even become a cautionary tale, so that President Gerald Ford warned Americans: ‘It would be tragic for this country if we went down the same path and ended up with the same problems Great Britain has.’