X : Do you not like any Conservatives?
Me : Of course I do. Being Old Labour (Socialist), I have a closer affinity to many One Nation Tories than I do with Blairites, Thatcherites or Communists. Vice versa One Nation. We value the market as a tool, society matters more.

X : So you think the current One Nation Gov is ok?
Me : Most of the One Nation Conservatives were kicked out of the party. Largesse with the Gov purse in a "Chumocracy" is not what Disraeli meant by "One Nation".
X : I don't understand the point you're making?
Me : Both parties - Labour and Conservative - have tended to be broad churches. You'll often find agreement within groups from multiple parties and infighting between groups within a party.
... so when you say "Do you not like any Conservatives" then you're making two assumptions - that Labour is one thing and that Conservatives are one thing. It's not the case, never has been.
You choose a party, a broad church, based upon general consensus i.e. you agree with more of their policies than you agree with some other party's policies. That doesn't mean you never agree with the other party's policies or people within the other party - of course you do.
X : Does that mean we should re-organise the parties?
Me : A "new liberal" and a "social capitalism" party?
X : Yes
Me : Bad idea ...
... as we know from biological systems and the work of CS Hollings (I've tried to summarise) then diversity (including diversity of thought) is needed for resilience of a system. You don't want to encourage cults and single dogma. Broad churches are more resilient ...
... and that actually hits at one of the problem of our economic systems. We try to use one size fits all approaches, when we should be using context specific approaches based upon how evolved something is.
Which is why we should learn from China on this, they seem to have a good handle on the issue with the Gov not only acting as a VC (special economic zones etc) but nationalising utilities when needed (i.e. Alibaba). They use the market as a tool, where appropriate.
X : There are at least two strands of Liberal. You're just using Clegg style yellow book liberalism.
Me : I was keeping it simple to explain a point, the main party's are broad churches and not one thing. I agree that liberals have many facets.
Me : A fairer criticism would probably be ... "where's the SNP"?

The SNP is at least more politically relevant but as I said, I was keeping it simple.
X : Isn't socialism nearer to communism.
Me : No. Well ... that depends upon your perception i.e. economic thought is distorted between regions. You can see this by sticking to Western philosophy and comparing US to Europe and their perceptions of China and economic thinking.
X : Does that mean your map of political thought has bias?
Me : First, it's not a map - it's simply a diagram to express a point. Second it is loaded with bias from perception, even the axis (e.g. the economic axis) is loaded with bias towards a more European centric view.
X : Well, at least individualism vs collectivism is understood.
Me : Not really. In the US, when politicians talk about "together" they often mean "a group of individuals" ... these words can have very different intentions.

More from Simon Wardley

"Fifty-nine percent of those polled said they believed China will become more powerful than the U.S. within 10 years" - https://t.co/3vN4I1TjwP ... I hate to break it to you but it already is in many areas.

When I published this work (originally from 2015) -
https://t.co/GYOItA3StZ - I did tend to get a lot of pushback from US folk when presenting it.

Six years later, less so.


I expect China to start to tackle inequality this year. It's the Achilles heel of the West. We have no response, nor Governments with the required skill, strategy or practice to respond.

We will ultimately face a more advanced, more wealthy and more equal society ...

... as that example of what "is possible" / "good looks like" shift to the East, we will face a painful shift as we question our own values including our kind of democracy. But in reality, the problem is not with our values but our shockingly poor standards of leadership.

X : Is this because of Trump?
Me : No, this has been going on since the 1990s. There has been no effective counterplay to the long game that Deng Xiaoping started. Just hubris, arrogance and exceptionalism with annual Economist articles on "How China will fall".

More from Society

Tomorrow, January 6th, MAGA chuds, Proud Boys, and white supremacists are planned to descend on Washington D.C. to contest the election. Among them will be NSC-131, a New England based neo-Nazi organization. Let's welcome them by saying hi to one of their members, Eddie Stuart!


Edward Stuart, from Chester, New Hampshire, has been a member of Nationalist Social Club (NSC) since the very beginning and is a staple participant in their actions. He is known in NSC chats as "Carl Jung" and is well connected in the New England Nazi scene.
2/


NSC-131 is a neo-Nazi group that was started in Massachusetts in early 2020 by Chris Hood. You can learn more about NSC and it's members in these threads:


Eddie describes his ideology as "Esoteric Hitlerism" which is an occult form of Nazism that literally worships Adolf Hitler as a god, or, specifically, as an incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu. Here is Ed holding the RigVeda with some of his occult Nazi pals. Interesting Ed!
4/


Much of this ideological insight was gained from Eddie's Twitter, where he originally used his "Carl Jung" persona and reposts explicit neo-fascist content and racist memes. In one edited picture, Eddie can be seen at an NSC event in late June 2020 holding a Nazi Sonnenrad flag
5
Brief thread to debunk the repeated claims we hear about transmission not happening 'within school walls', infection in school children being 'a reflection of infection from the community', and 'primary school children less likely to get infected and contribute to transmission'.

I've heard a lot of scientists claim these three - including most recently the chief advisor to the CDC, where the claim that most transmission doesn't happen within the walls of schools. There is strong evidence to rebut this claim. Let's look at


Let's look at the trends of infection in different age groups in England first- as reported by the ONS. Being a random survey of infection in the community, this doesn't suffer from the biases of symptom-based testing, particularly important in children who are often asymptomatic

A few things to note:
1. The infection rates among primary & secondary school children closely follow school openings, closures & levels of attendance. E.g. We see a dip in infections following Oct half-term, followed by a rise after school reopening.


We see steep drops in both primary & secondary school groups after end of term (18th December), but these drops plateau out in primary school children, where attendance has been >20% after re-opening in January (by contrast with 2ndary schools where this is ~5%).

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