Why is democracy failing? Because we don't build things any more. An extension on the idea that most of what…
Why is democracy failing? Because we don't build things any more. An extension on the idea that most of what we call 'democracy' is really just engineering. Using this graph as a window to the real answer. /1 (source: https://t.co/7yfLBvAsGo) https://t.co/VV1t5tJpc6
US data, but not dissimilar to anywhere in the developed world. Since WW2, a huge shift in labour from actually building things, towards providing services. 'To go into service' used to mean being a servant. I don't think we connect a 'services economy' with servitude. /2 https://t.co/jKNtLUAG7x
But we should, it's just a modernised terminology for the same process. Some of this is us getting more efficient at production and manufacturing, because of technology. But much more it's about trying to redress falling profit margins after the enormous boom in consumer.../3 https://t.co/RqKcCef2nm
...demand after WW2 was satisfied. All those washing machines, cars etc. Which massive war industrial capacity re-tooled to provide, after the fighting was over. As @doctorow says, rather than settle into a stable just-enough profit with a good share to workers arrangement.../4 https://t.co/6cbLT9FHS3
...at that point, instead the West chose to utilise the ridiculously cheap labour and resources of the developing world, to keep churning out consumer goodies, but with rock-bottom wages and costs, to maintain profit margins. /5 https://t.co/TYfJPXVd9q
In the meantime Western consumers managed this loss of income and jobs by taking on massive personal debt. That's what's maintained the illusion of prosperity, while in fact most of the workforce transitioned back 'into service'. /6 https://t.co/nNcrbvuseB
The important point about this shift for me isn't the victory of 'neoliberalism' or 'capitalism'. It's the gutting of manufacturing, of building actual stuff. The glue that binds all societies, longer-term. Not parliament or elections. Building stuff. /7
Building stuff unifies societies because it commits them to the expertise and labour of designing, manufacturing and maintaining it. It gives agency to the workers who build the stuff, their expertise is a vocation. They're not just in service. /8 https://t.co/rJk1NTitBw
It's this vast group of skilled tradespeople, with their jobs long-since off-shored, whose loss of agency is being mobilised by populist demagogues. Their anger and lack of purpose if re-directed towards various scapegoats, like migrant workers, or academics. /9
Nothing shows more clearly the engineering root of social stability than this modern mobilisation by neoliberal populists of the previous 'working class' to causes that screw them even more. You can call it a 'shift to the Right', or capitalism, or whatever. /10
But practically, we just stopped building stuff. That's why our democracies are now failing, and why the cost of living is soaring. We're societies who can't sustain ourselves, we use speculative financial instruments to create an ongoing illusion of prosperity. /11
But we're ageing fast, can't produce most of what we need ourselves, and even have the gall to make the poorer countries who do make all of that stuff for us the targets of our xenophobic political slogans. The only thing that has ever maintained social stability.../12
...over historical lengths of time in societies is building things. Building stuff is the critical social activity that binds us to each other, not just the technical provision of goods. It gives the people who build stuff their central social role, and the income and.../13
...more importantly bargaining power that maintains their status. I don't think it's widely seen how engineering or building stuff is much, much more than just making widgets. As the Romans knew, it's the centre of any lasting civilisation. /end