Independent thinker Robin Hanson has posted a an interesting - and concerning - piece on the tendency to autocratic global power: 'The Coming World Ruling Class'.
I comment there:
I fear you are correct about the tendency, and you are obviously right that entrenched power, bullying and corruption are a feature of smaller scale rule, right down to personal relations.
I have long thought that the EU is an empire and has co-opted our watchdogs the news media, who serve the elite and have started to intermarry with them. And of course there are the global treaties and organisations - WTO and all the rest.
Magna Carta, the English Civil War and the 'Glorious Revolution' gave us a political structure that built-in distrust of and opposition to supreme power. Our nationalism, and the recovery of a degree of sovereignty (in the face of the global network), is a campfire glowing in the dark.
Sadly our MPs, especially the Opposition, don't seem to understand their historic role - look at how the Coronavirus Act was refreshed without even a vote. They do not realise that they are a safety valve - as Peter Hitchens notes today:
'Unless at some point the real concerns of normal people find a peaceful, rational and responsible political outlet in countries such as ours, there will be serious trouble thanks to this chasm between what is promised and what actually happens.
'The ugly rise of Donald Trump in the USA is a rather mild and restrained warning of what lies ahead.'
It's all getting very Star Wars, isn't it!
Is it merely a coincidence that a remake of 'Dune' has just come out?
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