It's almost as if Europe entirely gave up sometime in the 70s. People used to have vision for the next 50+ years, now they care about the next 3-5 years because they know they'll bounce to another position. That's why everything is seemingly slowly crumbling away (healthcare, industries, culture, education), we're putting bandaids here and there to maintain the illusion but I think everyone can tell the general trend
I always got the feeling as a child that I was growing up in the ruins of a once strong nation. I thought it was because my city (Coventry) was devastated after world-war-2 (the blitz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Blitz), the collapse of the British car industry (which, primarily affected Coventry) and then the closing of the coal mines leading to lower income tax money to the council for roads and things.
However I just returned last night from a trip to London (I live in Sweden now) and I have to say, the decline is precipitous and pronounced, London gets all the investment so if it's decaying this way then I shudder to think about the rest of the nation.
I think a lot of people outside the UK believe that because the UK had an empire that everybody was rich. This is decidedly not the case, the first people the British elite subjugated was the British themselves, that's why most of the food we're mocked about is so bland: it's poverty food, so when I say that it feels like a decline, please keep it within the context that most of us have our entire family tree in the underclass - not because we were once rich.
Most infrastructure has not been invested in during my lifetime, and it was old when I was a child.
>>I always got the feeling as a child that I was growing up in the ruins of a once strong nation
I live in the UK and not in London either, and it constantly feels like everything is just decaying and the country lives in the past not the present. Everything is just dilapidated, falling apart, or shut down. The streets are full of rubbish, dirty and local infrastructure doesn't get fixed up for months if someone damages it. Local councils are saying they will shut down care homes soon because there is no money for anything. And it's not even a private vs state funded issue - our local pharmacy literally looks like something out of afganistan, you walk in and there is actual dirty carpet on the floor, the shelves are 50% empty and there are several broken lights in the ceiling - with 4 people working behind the counter packing prescriptions. And that's operated by a private company! Which I believe is only doing it because they are required by an NHS contract, otherwise they would have shut the place down. And don't even get me started on the NHS - a friend with suicidal thoughts was told he needs to see a psychiatrist, the current wait time for one is 260 weeks(just short of 5 years). Honestly if I were cynical I'd say the system prefers if he kills himself, less of a burden.
Honestly, I feel so weird. One one hand, I work from home on a tech worker salary and I'm very comfortable financially - but I take a step out of my house and you don't feel like the 5th wealthiest nation in the world. Our local library had to be closed due to lack of funding recently. A library. What kind of 3rd world behaviour is that? And honestly I don't think even 3rd world countries are closing down libraries, it's just unthinkable.
I'm very jaded about it, I keep trying to find positives and there are some but generally I've learnt to expect that things are broken, forgotten or just in poor state in some way or another, because there is never any money to do anything. It's a poor country cosplaying as a superpower.
Poor country through which a lot of wealth passes, or is held. But there's also a lot of very British defeatism. A sort of squashed spirit which is against the possibility that things might be better, because then they'd be different. And of course the easy blame on foreigners.
I do think there used to be more middle class public/civic pride, and you can see this in some places that have retained it and cleaned themselves up. I see the various "transition towns" (Totnes, Bristol etc) as one way forward: they have a vision of a future involving local people, not just a vision of the past.
> Our local library had to be closed due to lack of funding recently. A library. What kind of 3rd world behaviour is that?
Closing things down in order to avoid having to put up taxes is extremely first world behavior now.
Europe as a whole didn't give up in the 1970s, but the 1970s was famously bad for the UK.
That said, I think this was more a case of when the rot in the UK became visible rather than when it started; the British government hasn't been competent for a very long time, and still isn't. With the caveat that I'm not a historian and have only an amateur knowledge of the events, I'd say the problems set in even before the peak of the British Empire, which itself I place at just before the outbreak of WW1 owing to how Pyrrhic that victory was.
It feels like the British establishment is particularly good at one thing: Being pragmatic enough to stay in power.
That appears to take precedence over anything else. It may have "saved" the UK from revolutions or major clearouts of its governing structures and legal system, and results in a system that is delightlyfully quirky on the surface.
But it's also a way of governing that seems to lead to managing decline over fixing things because managing decline is less risky in the short term.
If you think the British Empire was ever competent then I strongly recommend you listen to the episodes of the Empire podcast that cover the British Empire (there’s a lot of different episodes across the series).
With the exception of the Royal Navy, the British Empire was spectacularly incompetent. It’s a running joke that the British stumbled into being the largest empire in history.
That said, I don’t think it’s unique to Britain. The Roman Empire has many tales of staggering incompetence and wild idiocy throughout its expansion. If you have the time, The History of Rome is an excellent podcast that covers the entire time period.
I suspect it’s the truth of human nature that it isn’t possible for such large organisations to be competent throughout, just by virtue of how many people they take to operate.
> With the exception of the Royal Navy, the British Empire was spectacularly incompetent. It’s a running joke that the British stumbled into being the largest empire in history.
Hm. Well, I can't say I know any better than that, I was rather assuming that becoming the biggest empire was itself due to something approximating competence.
Certainly, if one takes the view that all large organisations are mediocre, the British Empire is unambiguously an example of "large organisation".
Edit:
Just to check, the Empire podcast by Anita Anand and William Dalrymple?
People have a very clear vision of 50 years in the future, it has been a major fight playing out for decades. One side wanted cheap energy and lots of industry, the other side wanted green energy and not much industry. That debate has been ongoing and everyone involved was pretty up-front about what the consequences would be.
The turn away from nuclear power around the turn of the century was probably the decisive moment. From then on it hasn't been possible to articulate a vision of a prosperous society with a realistic path to get there.
Nuclear energy belongs in the "unaffordable industries which failed to adapt" category. They could have maybe eventually reconciled with the safety question and the weapons question, but getting undercut by renewables means that's the way forwards to green energy.
Nuclear has a negative learning curve: the more plants get built the more expensive they have turned out to be.
> Nuclear has a negative learning curve: the more plants get built the more expensive they have turned out to be.
Which is a policy choice that people were pretty clear on when they bought the policies in. That is basically the only way to get a negative learning curve on an exciting new tech like nuclear. Bet you that China is seeing a more natural learning curve.
China seem to be following a "yes and" policy for power: demand is so huge that they're just building all possible types of generation to avoid bottlenecking the construction of any one in particular. Even they seem to have slowed slightly on nuclear since Fukushima and the bankruptcy of Westinghouse (who were supplying one of the designs).
There is very little new with nuclear except bubble money. It’s fundamentally a ton of capital spend with high operational cost and risk.
Would be energy barons like it because it really begs for concentration of generation from a political perspective, as every marginal unit of distributed generation hurts the P&L of the nuclear generator.
Europe? I'm building high tech vessels in Europe right now. Even most of the hulls are made in Europe.
Are you sure this isn't about Britain, and how the finance industry gave that county its own version of "Dutch disease", making it comparatively unprofitable to do anything but managing assets?
I think it's in part generational (a bunch of western countries have a quasi dead-locked democracy because boomers will vote whatever suits them short term, they will be dead when the bill comes anyway) and part due to the lack of accountability that democracy has brought to the upper echelon of society, or lack of skin in the game for the ruling class.
Revolving doors, blatant corruption, and downright incompetence lead to absolutely no repercussions; what's there to lose? Schröder is the poster child of this.
We are creating generations of people with no stake in society (no housing, no family because it's costs too much and no time anyway) while at the same time having a complete lack of ethos as a civilization, with a terrible ruling class. Europe (and the UK) are in a horrible position.
The upper class has none to little stake in society either, or so they seem to believe. I bet in practice, if the shit really hits the fan, it won't be so fun for them either. Other countries may also have problems at the same time.
Colonies disappeared quickly post ww2. US imperialism did continue strongly for a while with Cia/political meddling to allow American companies to continue resource extraction.
" People used to have vision for the next 50+ years, now they care about the next 3-5 years "
This sounds like a modern version of Golden Age nostalgia. First, I am not at all sure that people had longer visions; some probably did, but the entire nations? Not so sure.
Second, there is a certain wisdom in accepting that you don't know how the world will look in 50+ years. 50 years ago, China was an extremely impoverished country that no one would take seriously as a competitor for global influence, Iran was US-friendly and the USSR was on the peak of its power.
> This sounds like a modern version of Golden Age nostalgia.
When France built their nuclear programs, or railways, it was a massive investment, the people in charge when these decisions were taken were long gone by the time the projects were completed. It wasn't seen as a cost but as a national interest, now we're cutting everything down because everything is seen as a short term cost regardless of the long term benefits.
> I am not at all sure that people had longer visions; some probably did, but the entire nations? Not so sure.
Nations don't matter, the 10 or so people truly in charge do, when they have a spine at least, now that we have business men thinking about the next quarter it's more complicated.
> Second, there is a certain wisdom in accepting that you don't know how the world will look in 50+ years
History doesn't just happen... countries with long term visions make history, of course if you check out of the race you're at the mercy of whatever other people decide for you. China didn't automagically get where it is today, the planned economy helps in that regard.
In Europe, we are in the middle of a very expensive and long term decarbonization push, an order of magnitude (if not two) more expensive that what France did. In fact, it is so expensive that the question if we can even pull it off is still open.
That does not seem to support your idea that "everything gets cut down over short term costs now". There is a massive amount of long term spending happening right now.
Oh sure we do spend, on foreign tech, foreign factories, &c. That's not what I call long term vision, if anything it's the opposite. Germany was Putin's bitch because of gas, now the whole EU will be China's bitch for panels and batteries, amazing!
FYI: China produces >70% of windmills blades, solar panels and lithium batteries
What I meant by vision is securing the long term independence of your country through home grown technologies, for example France got cheap/clean electricity and nukes from their program. What you're describing is just the continuity of the lack of vision we had since the 70s, we outsourced everything to Asia and kept "services", which aren't worth much when shit hits the fan.
It's not really nostalgia, when 95% of infrastructure was constructed in the 70's and not maintained (something you see a lot in the UK outside of the south-east) you can feel this; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-war_consensus
