Brexit: selfishness, short-termism, rent seeking, and hereditary privilege

selfishness, short-termism, rent seeking, and hereditary privilege

Brexit: We got into this mess because some Conservatives couldn't cope with the fact that we weren't the top power in Europe: because, while we won almost all of the votes Europe ever had, it wasn't quite totally all. They couldn't cope with the fact that Germany was more influential than us - because Germany outperforms us at manufacturing, finance, exports, and, critically, diplomacy.

After Brexit, Germany will still outperform us at manufacturing, finance, exports, and, critically, diplomacy - and Germany will be part of the most powerful trading block in the world while we will have NO FRIENDS AT ALL.

The extent of the own goal here is staggering. Brexit will not only not fix any of the things the Brexiteers were upset about, it will make all of them MUCH worse.

The Brexiteers will still blame the same boggarts: they'll blame the EU, they'll blame Germany. But the problems aren't in the EU or Germany, they're in our own disfunctional constitution and our own disfunctional economy. Nobody in Britain wants to face this. We all know it's true, it glares us in the face. Our national governance doesn't work. Our commercial governance doesn't work. Our industrial governance doesn't work. And the reasons are all pretty much the same across all three sectors: selfishness, short-termism, rent seeking, and hereditary privilege.

Our elites don't want to fix these things, because they benefit from them; so they direct the blame outwards. And so the problems don't get fixed. And so the whole British project becomes more creaky, more inefficient, more decrepit, more disfunctional. And we all suffer, including those bloody elites.