Yes, I know we’re often told here that a book or article is the most important thing you’ll read today or ever!!! Sometimes, I leave the Abbreviated Pundit Roundup feeling like a freshman student after first class with The Professor Who Loves Assigning Stuff You’ve Never Heard Of.
This one, I believe, deserves the “must.”
Umair Haque is an author and consultant focusing on capitalism and the ways in which it can be practiced to better—or worsen—human lives. He is the author of several books, including A New Capitalist Manifesto and a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review.
His most recent piece, This is How a Society Dies, hammers home a stark truth we cannot but must accept: the United States and the UK, once the envies of aspiring democracies, are in a possibly irreversible death spiral, not merely to Second World status, but to Late Soviet, perpetually-failing societies.
It is not possible to convey the insights offered by Haque while adhering to the limitations of fair use, but here are a couple of grafs:
There’s a deafening silence from pundits and elites and columnists and politicians on the joint self-destruction of the Anglo-American world. Nobody seems to have noticed: the only two rich societies in the world with falling life expectancies, incomes, savings, happiness, trust — every single social indicator you can imagine — are America and Britain.
So what caused this joint collapse? How did the English speaking world end up like the new Soviet Union? To understand that point, consider the fact that you yourself probably think that’s an overstatement. But it’s an empirical reality. The Soviet Union stagnated for thirty years. America’s stagnated for fifty, and Britain for twenty. The Soviet Union couldn’t provide basics for its citizens — hence the famous breadlines. In America, people beg each other for money to pay for insulin and antibiotics, decent food is unavailable in vast swathes of the country, and retirement and paying off one’s debt are impossibilities: just like in the Soviet Union, basics are becoming both unavailable and unaffordable. What happens? People…die
Who else in a rich society denies their neighbours healthcare and retirement? Nobody. Who else denies their own kids education? Nobody. Who else denies themselves childcare and elderly care? Nobody. Who else doesn’t want safety nets, opportunities, mobility, protection, savings, higher incomes? Nobody. Literally nobody on planet earth wants worse lives excepts us. We’re the only people on earth who thwart our own social progress, over and over again — and cheer about it.
There is more, equally discomforting and undeniable. I strongly urge you to read Haque’s piece and share it widely.
They say the first step to recovery is admitting the problem. I hope Haque’s observations can help my fellow Anglo-Americans find that first step.