There's a lot of shit flying around Brit politics Twitter this morning featuring members of the cabinet patently unable to decide on whether or note *all votes* should be counted during a democratic election. Like, they can't bring themselves to say it. Thread -> https://twitter.com/TobyonTV/status/1325368236372799490

The problem with these toy libertarians is that they are in a real, proper mess now. It was bad before, but now they're in a true pickle. Biden is Irish American and won't strike a UK/US deal if a UK/EU deal features a hard Irish border, or jeopardising the Good Friday agreement

So now they don't know what to do. There will be a pointless US recount and UK MPs are stalling for time because any way they lean now, they're going to make enemies. This was *always going to be the problem with leaving the EU* - its success relies on externalities

On a different, but related note, politicians like Raab, Gove, Patel, Truss - they're deeply wedded to an ideology now under huge pressure. If you didn't already know, some of these people *even wrote a book together in 2012 called 'Britannia Unchained' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britannia_Unchained

It's absolutely mad

Let it register - a number of the highest profile politicians in the UK wrote a book together 8 years ago about 'unshackling the UK' and various other lazy, crap economic tropes and now they're all in the same cabinet together pushing through Brexit. This was a *long* project

I read it, so you don't have to, and honestly, don't bother. I have some bias because of my political ideas but this is extraordinarily bad, first-year uni libertarian pseudo economic nonsense. Badly researched, badly written, nationalist shite: …https://stroudradicalreading.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/BritanniaUnchainedCh6.pdf

I'm honestly stupider for reading the book. They just aren't intelligent, and I don't consider myself particularly intelligent at all. It's bonkers to me how these people have ended up in a cabinet together led by BJ, a man ravenous for ambition, with no ideology of his own

Anyway, they're trying to dismantle the state for a few reasons that, in my mind, are absolutely key to keeping in mind when navigating this stuff. First - a democratic state in developed nations generally serves to protect and platform the largest number of citizens possible

The reason the state tends to legislate for things like labour rights, civil rights, civil safeties, is that without meaningful governance, there ends up being natural consolidations of unrestricted, lawless power based on exploitation, ideology and small & large acts of violence

You see this happen in developing nations, still. Tribalist, regional governance fused with a light-touch federal government that tends to result in misery and poverty. Modern states exist in many ways to attempt to put in place 'treaties' of sorts that pacify those outcomes

This works well in some ways and badly in others. For example, the state can't generally match the *pace* of innovation of private business so they end up behind in the legislation which is why we now have such colossal issues with the Internet and capital.

The truth is that generally speaking, *the laws that protect the poor are _the same laws_ that restrict the rich*. Their sphere of influence *is* restricted - by having to do boring things like pay a minimum wage, and legislate against racism, which gets in the way of 'freedom'

They don't think governance is the best way to civil safety / happiness which makes perfect sense when you discover that a lot of people who lean libertarian are white and wealthy and don't need the protections or help of the state. In fact they need it to get out of their way

Because they have money to make, and they can't do whatever they want when the state does pussy snowflake shit like stop people who work 40hrs a week still being in poverty. They wrap this in some sort of 'no government because governments are inefficient and end up tyrannical'

That would be fine if 'inefficient and tyrannical' wasn't the characteristic of a free-market economy so profoundly financialised, and now off-the-rails insane, that is only still alive after being propped up with trillions in *GOVERNMENT STIMULUS*. It's absolute absurd

Basically they want the government to fuck off so they can do what they want and then when it blows up in their faces, they're fine with the government getting involved to fix their criminal acts of malice, greed and incompetence. Charlatan shit, embarrassingly transparent

They think independence, freedom, entrepreneurship and the free market is the way to perfect social harmony, ignoring the fact that their cosmic space brain economy of millions of low paying jobs implodes every 12 years *anyway* and then needs massive socialist stimulus *anyway*

So the issue you have is that we have a gov. of people who don't actually believe in much governance, at all - put in charge of a state that needs to function to protect the vulnerable because we designed society so some people have yachts and some people sleep under bridges

These people, on a philosophical level, tend to believe that the answer to solving issues of misery and marginalisation is not through governance, but freedom. In many senses - I actually agree - government is *categorically not* the answer to many social issues

But that can only make sense if less governance didn't only benefit people *who can already exploit it* in *an environment that already perfectly suits them*. What I mean by this is that in a world of total 'freedom', the poor, the marginalised, minorities - they're out of luck

These people need the state. They need common law and a constant push on standards, equalities, safeties, they need help from the *winners* - who win disproportionately. The myth of trickle down economics is so heavily debunked that it's a marvel that we're still talking about it

So what does this mean for us in the UK? Well, we let 40 years of poverty, inequality, and a melting pot of incendiary diversity issues manifest as massive jingoistic act of nationalism that is set to remove us from the EU in the name of *freedom*

It was architected by people like Raab, Patel, Truss - and many of the people within their economic tranche to exploit a moment of profound misery and media manipulation to force through libertarian ideas that are *only set to make life worse for people who are already screwed*

And that's why they can't answer whether or not they believe votes should be counted within a democracy. They don't believe in it. They've created a monster they now can't tame and now they have no idea what to do next. Anyway happy Sunday lads