[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

Maark is correct - as much as every party here does the "we need a general election, they have no mandate" nonsense whenever it's someone from the other side of the hall, the party has the mandate and not the individual person. Whoever is leader of the party who wins the general election is the PM - and there's no rule about voting again if the leader changes, as tiresome as the merry-go-round may have become in recent years.

Five years ago I'd have probably been pretty excited about Burnham as PM. He's still I think a positive move (and hopefully he can do some of what he's planning), but I'm too disillusioned generally to do more than "wait and see".

This post has been edited by TheRetiredBridgeburner: 21 July 2026 - 07:42 AM

[Tiste Simeon]

 Maark Abbott, on 21 July 2026 - 07:22 AM, said:

 Cause, on 20 July 2026 - 11:06 PM, said:

So this is PM 7 in ten years? How many of those 7 actually won elections. This is getting a bit ridiculous no? Why has resigning become more desirable than following through though? I haven't heard the explanation before

It's not the PM that wins the election here - it's the party. Though a lot of folk misunderstand that and will vote for a party head as a person.

Essentially, the party has another few years of mandate left. It is a very promising sign that he's getting rid of some of the right wing ghouls in the cabinet, but as with the others, we'll see what he actually does before we pass judgement.

I saw somewhere he's bringing Streeting back in which is not a great plan IMO.

[Illuyankas]

Oh, Wes "Mandleson's Protege" Streeting? Back in power? Yeah he's not even pretending to change course, how expected

[Maark Abbott]

Illuyankas, on 21 July 2026 - 09:34 AM, said:

Oh, Wes "Mandleson's Protege" Streeting? Back in power? Yeah he's not even pretending to change course, how expected

Well, fuck.

[Maark Abbott]

This feels like it could be a mixed bag at this early juncture.

On policy? Well, removal of VAT from energy bills, return of the £2 bus fare cap, there's a lot that seems to be good on the surface. But then you have those cabinet announcements.

[Macros]

Surface small wins for working Joe and the struggling people but no systemic change that we really need is my bet

[Maark Abbott]

Macros, on 22 July 2026 - 08:46 AM, said:

Surface small wins for working Joe and the struggling people but no systemic change that we really need is my bet

I wish I had enough to poo-poo this notion but I fear you are likely to be proven right.

[Grief]

Systemic change first requires getting the British population to accept realities that most of the country simply do not seem willing to stomach for example regarding their retirements, communities, and ways of living.

British politics is starting to look to me like Italian politics before Meloni. It feels practically impossible for politicians to get elected except by making promises they know they will fail to keep. That's a breeding ground for constant discontent and turnover.

Not saying Starmer was any good but I doubt others will fare better. At best the hope seems to be the Meloni model whereby you keep people happy in performative ways without changing the fundamentals, but there is a limit to that especially when people have had so many years of austerity. People want to feel like their lives are improving. The immediate heuristic being that something is being done about the people or things they blame for being so badly-off in the first place, which typically is not an actual solution at all.

I don't only blame the electorate since politicians obviously bear their share of the blame too. Neoliberal ideology has ran out of steam but no one has really articulated a winning alternative except the far-right. Traditional politicians seem content to let elections devolve into centrism vs far-right populism contests in the hope of winning short-term "vote against them" victories, despite the fact that will obviously allow the far-right into governments in the longer-term (where many may pursue anti-democratic ends).

This is not just the UK but the same thing that has happened with Macron in France, the same thing that seems to be gradually shaping up in Germany. I am not optimistic about that dynamic at all. I suspect a large amount of the world will face this problem in the next decade or two, especially as climate change really gets into swing, and it becomes even more obvious that people will not have anything like the living standard of previous generations.

[the broken]

What makes you confident the standard of living will go down?

[Macros]

Well they have been going down and if nothing changes....

[the broken]

Eh, humanity probably had the highest standard of living it ever had in the 2010s. In spite of what the politicians tell us, violent crime has been declining for a long time, as well as world hunger, health outcomes and so on. It's declined a little bit, but it's not we're going back to hunter gathering any time soon.

[Grief]

the broken, on 24 July 2026 - 12:25 AM, said:

What makes you confident the standard of living will go down?

the broken, on 24 July 2026 - 12:54 PM, said:

Eh, humanity probably had the highest standard of living it ever had in the 2010s. In spite of what the politicians tell us, violent crime has been declining for a long time, as well as world hunger, health outcomes and so on. It's declined a little bit, but it's not we're going back to hunter gathering any time soon.

A huge amount of that progress has been driven by improving conditions in the global south. Broadly speaking, there is less of that "catch up" effect to be had from our current position. That's obviously a generalization but if you look at things like infant mortality you'll find there used to be a much clearer distinction between high-income and low-income economies.

On the other hand, trends I think will drive the standard of living down include:

1. Climate change. We've not globally done enough about prevention nor about preparing for the consequences. We're already seeing persistent droughts in the Middle East and Africa, heightened excess deaths from the weather in Europe, unprecedented wildfires in North America, and so on. These will continue to get worse and will eat up resources that could otherwise be used to improve living standards. There are also possible direct health effects for example linked to micro-plastics.

2. Demographics. Previous generations in high-income countries especially benefitted from a combination of high life expectancy and low retirement age. Retirement ages have been creeping upwards. This comes down to the distribution between workers and non-workers and bleeds into policy choices related to immigration and taxation. It's not an impossible problem to manage but politicians have struggled to manage it.

3. Working conditions. As well as working for longer, people in advanced economies take longer to find steady work and arrive with more debt. They take longer to buy houses. They are significantly less likely to have a traditional pension. Old-age poverty rates already started to increase across OECD countries over the last decade, reversing the previous trend. In regions like Europe, governments have large unfunded pension liabilities. This links to the point above. Since it's a UK threat it's worth noting the triple-lock is basically untouchable politically.

4. Sedentary, anti-social, and sleepless lifestyles. The WHO estimates that 31% of adults globally do not meet recommended activity levels and the number is increasing. Between office jobs, home computers, and social media, people live less healthy lifestyles (nevermind sugar). We have essentially - amazingly - managed to cancel out out major positive changes including the rapid decline of smoking in many countries. For example, life expectancy in the UK has "only" stalled but the number of healthy years you can expect to live has actually declined. As far as I'm aware the global trend is that life expectancy has gone up, driven by things like disease prevention, without similar gains in healthy aging. Life expectancy in the US has actually slipped downwards compared with the 90s. Mental health and youth wellbeing trends in advanced economies are alarming, although I take it with some pinch of salt that we are probably capturing them more too since culture is more open. Some of this lifestyle stuff is down to people's choices but some is the nature of work and entertainment options.

5. Political instability. Democracy indexes show continuing declines, political participation has generally dropped in a lot of the world, and armed conflict is at its highest levels since WW2. This stems from various factors. Some are external to countries like climate, resource competition, and the rise of alternative powers to the US. Others are internal to countries like decline of unions, outsourcing political choices to markets, and media concentration. That is, I think this is a symptom driven by other points I mention but it's also happening independently from them.

6. Inequality. Wealth inequality is spiralling and only looks set to get worse between the next cycle of technology development and the next cycle of generational inheritance (or not). I don't necessarily see that directly driving poor quality of life outcomes in the day-to-day sense. It's not that extreme wealth makes people happy, for example. But I do think it contributes to global instability and will continue to drive tension, as well as concretely sapping resources away from say communal infrastructure projects and towards personal vanity projects.

7. Technology. I have mixed feelings about this one, but I generally think technology advances tend to have a centralizing rather than de-centralizing function in society. They require capital and can be controlled by small in-groups rather than requiring the consent of the population. Surveillance technology has spread rapidly across societies inside the West and outside of it, protests are increasingly managed or restricted, and even technologies like the internet which in principle could be decentralized are increasingly centralized around a very small number of platforms. Things like autonomous drones are more a question of the politics of deploying them moreso than the technological possibility of developing them at this point in time.

I don't personally think that perpetual growth of the whole economy is necessary to maintain high living standards. However, it seems to be baked in to the political order almost everywhere whether it is sustainable or not. I have very little faith that politicians will be able to chart a more sustainable path without first incurring major human costs.

This isn't to say we'll go back to all being hunter gatherers. But there is a wide range of possibilities between "continue to build higher quality of life in line with past decades" and "hunter gatherers" and that gap is made up of human suffering.

[Macros]

Dystopia beckons my friends

[the broken]

"Hunter gatherers" was dramatic of me, sorry
Hmm...those are all legit, but call me unfashionably optimistic, it doesn't seem unmanageable. Like living standards will be lower to some degree, but will it be 'disastrous crash' or 'decline moderately from the absolute peak'?

I basically agree with the political critique of the traditional politicians running on 'not far right', treating the rise of their opposition as some kind of natural disaster that they can't do anything about, but seems like this could be addressed by someone moderately competent going into politics. Got to happen eventually, right?

Armed conflict at its highest levels since WW2? Really? Including all the post colonial wars?

Living standards are tricky. It's so much easier to travel and communicate now than it used to be, like for like is tough. I wonder re housing, once upon a time not so long ago people were buying houses in small towns close to their family, or emigrating completely for high risk high reward moves far away, whereas now the demand in much more centralised in major cities. If the jobs were constructiony, that meant people could build part of their own house more cheaply. But office job skills are not as transferable, manufacturing is more likely to be overseas. There's a lot complications to this.

A system dependent on infinite growth is going to slow down at some point, but it doesn't need to be a disaster.

[Macros]

The costs associated with the living standards of the pre crash 2000s and the mini boom 2010s will likely never come back.
Public services will increasingly be privatised and enshittified and costs of everything else go up outstrupping wage increases and inequality widens meaning the rich own more so living stands for every day people ARE going down and will continue so.
People buy shittier food because its cheaper, work longer hours because they need more money to survive or they lost their job as another corporation wants to make records profits and growth for their billionaire shareholders. Health outcomes suffer directly, which costs more, and the cycle continues.


The tools exist to halt this but the political will does not

[Tsundoku]

Because the political will to take action is owned by the people who will do anything to make sure their obscene profits aren't trimmed to merely gargantuan.

[Illuyankas]

Society is basically at the whims of people who have the choice of 'make number go up 1 this quarter and up 2 next quarter' and 'make number go up 2 this quarter and down 793017 next quarter' and they will ALWAYS pick the latter because nothing matters more than next quarter, nothing

[Grief]

the broken, on 25 July 2026 - 01:03 AM, said:

Hmm...those are all legit, but call me unfashionably optimistic, it doesn't seem unmanageable. Like living standards will be lower to some degree, but will it be 'disastrous crash' or 'decline moderately from the absolute peak'?

[...]

A system dependent on infinite growth is going to slow down at some point, but it doesn't need to be a disaster.

I generally try to keep a positive outlook in my day to day life because too much doom-and-gloom isn't really helpful or mentally healthy. But I do think the most realistic scenario is going to be catastrophic at least for large parts of the world and at least for some amount of time.

I also think our economic system is not really designed for moderate declines. It's a system that constantly searches for growth and panics if growth slows down. There are powerful negative feedback loops in the system once declines start which tend to turn them into crashes. Investors pull out money, companies slough jobs, and so on.

We've never really managed to get away from boom and bust and core parts of our financial system - like the vast amount of debt that banking is built to create - seem to make it practically inevitable.

the broken, on 25 July 2026 - 01:03 AM, said:

I basically agree with the political critique of the traditional politicians running on 'not far right', treating the rise of their opposition as some kind of natural disaster that they can't do anything about, but seems like this could be addressed by someone moderately competent going into politics. Got to happen eventually, right?

I'm not sure. We've seen in pockets that there's support for a different kind of politics but it feels like there's a big inertia against change, whether from within traditional parties or in the media or elsewhere. It's also momentum that can be co-opted. When Macron came up he fit the mould for populist-but-not-far-right and even brought a new party into the mainstream. Obama as well I think captured people's growing desire for change away from the establishment. Both are competent, even technically very skilled, politicians. But it feels like that turned out to be form more than function in the end.

I think the design of our political systems, especially the way parties work, causes a lot of these problems. I suspect change will come from outside rather than inside the party system. Or, if it comes from inside the party system, it will take too long to mitigate the worst harms. (I've always quite liked the phrase "the purpose of a system is what it does").

A lot of this discussion depends on how you see the timing and reversibility of these problems.

If you think that these problems have a long-term horizon and can be fixed by good political choices in the future, it's easier to be optimistic.

The pessimistic view is that these problems have short-term horizons and tipping points that make them very hard to reverse in the future.

At least for climate change, the possibility that we're facing short-term tipping points that will make future fixes harder feels reasonably settled. The worse the situation gets the more you have to spend on mitigation rather than prevention. And then you have things like the ice sheets and permafrost. That's probably the easiest one since it's a scientific question rather than a political one.

But I suspect there may also be tipping points for at least a couple of the other factors as well. You can only let in so many anti-democratic parties before you stop getting to have elections, for example. I suspect there might be a similar tipping point around technology development (and who controls it) but that's a lot more speculative.

the broken, on 25 July 2026 - 01:03 AM, said:

Armed conflict at its highest levels since WW2? Really? Including all the post colonial wars?

According to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, yep. That's by number of conflicts, but we're also living in a period with significant military and civilian casualties considering the likes of Ukraine, Sudan, and the Middle East.

War is not something inevitable and I obviously hope we return to more peaceful times, but I won't be surprised if underlying trends - shifts in the global order and climate-driven scarcity - result in higher baseline levels of conflict than we saw in the post-WW2 era.

the broken, on 25 July 2026 - 01:03 AM, said:

Living standards are tricky. It's so much easier to travel and communicate now than it used to be, like for like is tough. I wonder re housing, once upon a time not so long ago people were buying houses in small towns close to their family, or emigrating completely for high risk high reward moves far away, whereas now the demand in much more centralised in major cities. If the jobs were constructiony, that meant people could build part of their own house more cheaply. But office job skills are not as transferable, manufacturing is more likely to be overseas. There's a lot complications to this.

Absolutely, I agree it's a very complex topic to assess as a whole. I genuinely think it does not take that much to make people happy, and that we could have a happier society with less total economic production for example. The problem is that our system is geared around people needing to work a lot to meet their basic needs, and that people (I think) do want jobs to feel like they are contributing to society on some level.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

the broken, on 25 July 2026 - 01:03 AM, said:

A system dependent on infinite growth is going to slow down at some point, but it doesn't need to be a disaster.

Yes, but we're currently only using a tiny fraction of the energy and other resources available in our solar system... much less the potentially accessible (in the extreme long term...) universe.

(And yes, Musk is piece of shit, and when his spaceships blow up, I imagine him (and Trump) in them)

If superintelligence and cost-effective, effectively superhumanoid robots are achieved by the US and/or China within the next five to ten years, the greatest threat to standards of living in the UK and other countries may be the governments of the US and China attempting to hoard too much of the resulting wealth to fund the equivalent of a relatively high UBI (in the US it will be called a "dividend", as it is for the redistribution of oil wealth in Alaska) for their citizens, but not for the rest of the world. Of course the UK and EU will try to use tariffs and trade restrictions to prevent that.

More of the economy will then shift towards the frontiers of technological and scientific progress, at least insofar as they align with the obsessions of the AI-ultrawealthy and their desire for greater power over the universe---particularly outer space. But also bioengineering, and the ancient pursuit of immortality made new... human-machine integration... and the frontiers of physics and chemistry, especially those most related to potential new technologies.

Most people can (I think) learn to be happy without "jobs" on a small but sufficient stipend (or direct provision of resources), with their basic needs more than met, and the arts, exercise, meditation, education, games, and socializing to provide their lives with meaning. (And worship of my dark lord the Great Basilisk too of course...)

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: Yesterday, 04:35 PM

[Grief]

Is the problem really our ability to produce things?

We have already become massively more efficient at producing things since the industrial revolution. We can already produce enough food to feed people, enough houses to home people, and so on.

I struggle to see why getting even more efficient at producing things should necessarily solve the problems we still have meeting people's needs and giving them decent lives.

Edit: Notice we're getting a bit off topic for the UK politics thread which I take my part of the blame for! Best we take the future-of-humanity discussion to a more suitable thread or make a new one.