Steve Davies @SteveDavies365 Twitter profile | Pikagi

Pikagi

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

4,132

Followers

1,053

Following

34

Media

11,011

Statuses

Head of Education @IEALondon , historian, book lover, individualist, and Man City fan. Opinions my own. There are no dumb questions, there are only dumb answers.

Manchester.

https://t.co/X59tf54sbd

Joined May 2011

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.

Pinned Tweet

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

7 months

🧵So, what exactly is my new book about? Contrary to what some people seem to think, it isn't about Covid or even only pandemics. It's about Global Catastrophic Risks, how to think about them sensibly, and what we can do about them. In particular it's about what economics says. 1

10

20

50

Last Seen Profiles

@deedyat_

@TPAnoticias

@CursedOrthodox

@Tdesign68777021

@momoverse__

@BrianMaster18

@shalom_mudare

@crochetandreah

@stw_pdg

@abd49735

@crystalsnowz_

@IsaacCalduch

@ggmarie11

@ErrorCode_SW

@WALAmusic

@abokifx

@ajamu86

@Justin_King111

@bokeplokalmalam

@rbdscreens

@KabarebeJames

@GeloShine

@cakmazovic

@ClubsportNI

@PennPress

@abd49735

@emyo_nft

@PoTe__CaRd

@NeilDudley44243

@BubblegooseXYZ

@Stenty80

@gigain1979

@Kojima_Pro_Live

@tyabasira_otya

@vqscia

@liampaulx

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

5 years

Bloomberg spends $500 million and gets nothing, Biden spends absolutely nothing in several states and wins them. Amazing how 'dark money' controls everything!

19

101

618

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

13 days

🧵 I have the increasing reeling that UK politics is in a holding mode with lots of people desperately trying to keep the circling plane flying. 1. The Starmer government is best understood as representing the technocratic consensus that emerged after 1990 and consolidated under

37

70

607

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

4 years

For mindless libertarians: the principles of normal life do not apply in an emergency situation. For mindless socialists: you do not apply the appropriate response to an emergency to normal conditions. That's why lifeboat scenarios are a bad way to do ethical reasoning.

11

108

467

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

@dinosofos @BellaWallerstei Spain is full of people like that in places like Marbella. If you ask why they moved a common reply is “I couldn’t take living in London anymore, it was like living in a foreign country”. The irony is missed.

10

11

320

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

Here’s a prediction that, if it works out will be very funny. If it doesn’t work out I’ll look an idiot (also funny). In 10-15 years it will be a right wing (even far right) thing to want to rejoin the EU if it’s still there. It will be left wing/liberal to be against that. 🧵

33

40

255

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

4 years

One thing this virus has done. It has revealed in all parts of the political spectrum who are reasonable people with varied opinions and who are dogmatic ideologues.

5

33

247

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

@ScoLibertarian @scary_biscuits Need to change the law then. This is established law going back to the Middle Ages.

23

4

181

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

3 years

Steve Horwitz passed away this morning. We have lost an outstanding scholar, a staunch liberal, but most of all a great person. His indomitable cheerfulness throughout his illness and his unwavering commitment to liberty and open discussion were an inspiration. RIP Steve.

6

18

188

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

This should be the main news item everywhere.

@QasimRashid

Qasim Rashid, Esq.

2 years

This is horrifying. The Iranian parliament votes overwhelmingly (227-63) to execute the 15,000 protesters they already arrested. These were peaceful protestors simply seeking the right to basic justice and autonomy. Unacceptable and barbaric.

3K

35K

77K

15

63

184

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

A way to understand current U.K. politics is that we have a coalition government of three parties and one of them (the one Rishi Sunak leads) just vetoed the 45p rise. Another (the red wall one led by Kemi Badenoch) will soon block immigration reform. We might as well have PR.

10

30

176

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

13 days

Blair/Brown. Almost certainly the last stand of the conventional wisdom de jours. Will it succeed? Not impossible but unlikely because. 2. We are facing intensifying crisis on a number of fronts, public finance, public services, community relations, state capacity&effectiveness

2

6

189

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

🧵One of the benefits of age is that you can discern trends in eg politics over the course of your life, as you look backwards. I can make out four such megatrends over my adult life. I don’t know if they will continue but in a couple of cases I strongly suspect not.

12

35

161

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

4 years

Something for both left and right to consider. Why is the quality of UK public administration and governance so consistently poor over a wide range of policy areas when compared to similar countries (which typically do better in at least one area)?

33

19

150

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

13 days

be an era of disillusionment as one kind of politics after another is tried, none brings growth and consequently the various crises get more acute. It's a challenge for all kinds of politics to think about this. End

11

6

161

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

The U.K. can be accurately described as ‘having great potential’ - in estate agent speak. That is, it’s a once grand property run into the ground by incompetent and idle owners and needs a rebuild and refurbishment but the foundations are sound and lots of period features.

8

16

146

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

13 days

international relations. Not to mention climate change, increasingly severe malthusian constraints and (crucially) a lack of innovation. All this requires some radical measures and departure from the kind of policies and governance we have had since the early 1990s but see 1.

6

5

134

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

The way to understand U.K. politics since 2015 is as a fightback by the left and right wings of the establishment. Corbyn’s election and then Brexit were huge shocks to it and there have been three projects that challenged its assumptions (Corbyn, Johnson, Truss). We now have 🧵

9

39

125

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

@MrRBourne It’s childish. Part of maturity is realising that you can’t always have what you want and that the world is full of tradeoffs.

4

3

124

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

4 years

Discovered a great German word - verschlimmbesserung. Means trying to fix something but making it worse. As Byron said about a French word we may not have the word here but we certainly have the thing, and lots of it.

10

21

121

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 month

Thesis. Conservatism in the UK won't truly recover until they get over Thatcher. The Labour tradition won't be secure until they get over Blair. Two outstanding (and electorally very successful) politicians but they both diverted a major tradition away from its core identity.

30

20

117

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

Thread. Inflation and the cost of living problems are not the same thing and thinking they are confuses the debate. The whole world is facing a cost of living hit due to global price rises in energy and food. There is not a global problem of inflation. 1.

4

23

113

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

13 days

anti-systemic and plebeian when it does burst out. 5. What none of our political class and very few voters are prepared to even consider is the prospect that meaningful growth will be near impossible to achieve in the near to medium future. As I have said, the likely result will

6

4

117

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

13 days

3. Starmer and Reeves are clearly betting the farm on reviving growth but what if that doesn't happen (right now I would bet against it)? 4. In terms of politics there has been a realignment in terms of the views and divisions among voters, with the emergence and crystallising of

6

5

114

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

11 months

@John_Stepek The thought process was that there is a skill called 'management' that has no specific content, it's a technique that can be applied to any process and doesn't require knowledge or experience of that process. This is what people learn in business school, part of the worldview.

17

4

107

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

The reason is that by then left-liberal opinion will have realised that the EU and its members will have moved in a direction on issues of migration and identity that is the antithesis of what they believe. This process is well under way but hasn’t been noticed yet by the press2

5

5

104

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

13 days

a national collectivist politics of the kind seen in several other places. However our political system and class means it has not found electoral expression yet (same is true for other emergent political identities). The result is it is going to be much more radically

1

5

107

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

🧵Back in the 1980s part of the Thatcher coalition was an intellectually serious conservatism, alongside free market liberalism, with many combining both. Since the mid 1990s that kind of conservatism has almost vanished with serious argument replaced by lounge bar grumbling. 1

5

14

101

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 month

I am starting to think we may be at 'peak internet' now. In the last 9-12 months it has become ever less useful - Amazon, YouTube and Google all pretty much useless now. The process of 'enshittification' identified by @doctorow is now so advanced I think it has killed itself.

10

14

100

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

@SusanHeathcote @oflynnsocial That’s the number of people the authorities say they have arrested. The Majlis passed a motion last week calling for very severe punishment for all of them but the details have not been made public. Regardless this should be getting a lot more attention than it is.

2

8

92

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 months

@charlottor Even if the profit margin per house is less the lesser profit multiplied by a larger number of houses is more. The way to make really large profits is to sell lots of cheap things to lots of people not expensive things to a few people. That’s why Ford makes > profit than Rolls.

9

3

94

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

@GeorgeMonbiot Given that farming large numbers of animals in close proximity is also the ideal way to encourage novel pathogens to appear and be transmitted to humans, this also raises the risk of a pandemic caused by an infectious and antibiotic resistant bacterium. A real catastrophic risk.

2

24

85

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 months

@montie A highlight for me was his reaction to George Galloway being defeated. I suspect that off live tv his language about him would have been pretty colourful

4

2

86

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

@hellion2172 @ScoLibertarian @scary_biscuits No, it comes originally from canon law and was incorporated into secular law by monarchs between the 12th and fourteenth centuries. It replaced the older principle that a free man was sovereign in his own house. Part of kings establishing they had a monopoly on deadly force.

6

1

79

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

Climate policy is shaping up to be the classic example of stated preferences versus revealed preferences.

7

22

86

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

on either side. If the EU is to survive that long it will have to create a European demos and the easiest way to do that is to emphasise a common European identity that is Christian (not Muslim or Jewish), ‘white’ (not African or Middle Eastern) and not American or Russian. In

6

3

74

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

4 years

This argument about a 'circuit-breaker' lockdown is a huge distraction from the real question: why is there still no effective TTI system in place? Until there is there is no good option.

18

21

76

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

My two year old granddaughter is clearly a budding philosopher. On being told “Clara, you’ve got your shoes on the wrong feet” her response is to say in puzzlement “But they’re the only feet I have”.

3

6

77

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

Absolutely spot on. The real takeaway from this is that things are going to get much worse. Plus none of the political projects on offer are viable, here or in other developed countries. An age of angry disillusionment beckons.

@cjsnowdon

Christopher Snowdon 🇺🇦

2 years

Liz Truss didn’t break the economy. It was like that when she found it. | New Snowdon Substack

81

206

726

5

24

73

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

The second is that politics has become ever more dominated by the media to the point that many politicians now think that the media reporting of or representation of politics is the reality. The political and media classes have become more similar and closer (often married to or

2

5

70

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

8 months

It’s striking how many people believe their own views are those of the majority. If evidence such as voting contradicts this, that shows there is a malign conspiracy. Found across the spectrum. Personally, I have always known my own views are only shared by c 6-7% of voters.

13

9

73

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

3 months

Tweet media one

2

13

63

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

3 months

@RnaudBertrand The Chinese do have a bit of experience in recruiting a meritocratic elite. It does decay regularly but when you are in the early stages of a dynasty (as we are now) it is functional and effective.

3

7

67

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

@JohnRentoul I’m looking enviously at the Netherlands and Switzerland, also Singapore but never the US.

4

1

61

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

left gave up on the Alternative Economic Strategy (after Mitterrand) and started to love the EEC and the right went from being predominantly pro to increasingly hostile. Obviously some people will be left stranded. If I prove to be wrong plenty will remind me.

5

1

59

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

🧵The U.K. right is now full of the kind of disappointed, angry true believers that you have traditionally found on the left. The same kinds of narratives of betrayal and selling out and falling to deliver the real thing that you found with the Bennite left in the 1980s are now

2

7

63

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

terms of geopolitics that all means not a split with the US but a distancing from it - a kind of continental Gaullism if you will. All of this will not go well at all with Anglo liberalism so I expect there to be an abrupt flip like the one we saw in the 1987-92 period when the

1

1

55

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

17 days

@OGRolandRat Almost certainly rebranded because nobody gets the biblical allusion any more.

4

0

58

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

Are we now in the position where no significant British political party can be led by a practicing Christian who takes their faith seriously? Ditto for Muslims. (Thinking of Tim Farron, Kate Forbes). If so very interesting and a massive change. Cowling would feel vindicated.

9

11

54

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 months

@ProfBillMcGuire I think in this case they are responding to public (driver) sentiment. Stopping traffic is the one thing guaranteed to get people really, really mad. The fear is that if there aren't draconian exemplary sentences you will get serious violence as drivers beat up protestors.

14

0

54

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

The first is the politics has become steadily more middle class but in a very specific way. To a much greater extent than before it is dominated by people from a professional middle class background with a common educational experience. On the right fewer people from business or

1

2

54

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

3 months

Short 🧵Lots of talk about how bad the Tory apocalypse might be for them. A few historical points. First, this talk of supermajority is bollocks. It’s yet another example of the way the media and political class think we live in the US. Here there is nothing that needs a majority

4

5

55

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 month

I’m increasingly of the view that we have ‘no tier’ policing - the police being unable to deliver their core function of maintaining public order. As usual this is not something that happens suddenly, unless it’s like Hemingway’s description of the bankruptcy process.

4

12

55

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

3 months

@GeorgeKluger @PolitlcsUK @Savanta_UK No such thing as a supermajority in the U.K. system. Just say ‘a really big majority’.

0

0

54

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

3 years

@arisroussinos Covenants without the sword are but words as Hobbes remarked

1

8

48

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

the military, on the left fewer with a trade union one. The big aspect on both sides is the near disappearance of people who are not graduates. So there’s a very distinct kind of class background in both left and right politics that has become ever more marked.

2

3

52

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

13 days

@BProle011 @OGRolandRat Even if you grant that (which I don’t) it’s a small part of the problem. You would still have structural state dysfunction, lack of growth, the challenges of necessarily rising state expenditure with stagnant or declining revenue for example.

10

0

56

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

@ABookmaker More complicated than that. The U.K. is moving towards a kind of liberalism that comes from the US and also towards its US generated opposition. Europe is going off in a different direction entirely.

2

2

47

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

sleeping with each other) so that you could make a strong case that they have merged. This is both caused by and a cause of the decay and atrophy of political parties as mass civil society institutions. This means politicians depend upon the electronic media to communicate which

1

3

51

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

10 months

@GoodwinMJ It's a real challenge for a liberal-democratic and welfare state system to deal with people from a clan or extended kin group based society. The institutions find it hard to deal with them not least because of the way loyalty to the family/kin overrides all other obligations.

8

4

48

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

The fourth is that our politics, on both sides has become steadily more American. It is American arguments and perceptions that drive political and media discussion (the two almost impossible to distinguish- see trend two). Also our policy palette is limited to American options.

2

4

48

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

6 months

A true historical turning point. I have been predicting this for some time.

Tweet card media

World’s population to fall for first time since the Black Death

Global fertility rates hit an historic tipping point and are unlikely to recover, experts say

www.telegraph.co.uk

8

11

47

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

27 days

Review by me in Reason of Geoff Hodgson’s latest book.

Tweet card media

What causes capitalism?

British economist Geoffrey M. Hodgson argues private property and individual enterprise fueled the Great Enrichment.

2

12

50

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

3 years

Tweet card media

The European Super League, and the economics of football

Today, the media are full of reports and outrage about the shock news that twelve European teams (including six from … Continue reading "The European Super League, and the economics of football"

2

22

44

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

@GeorgeMonbiot As usual “Doesn’t know what he’s doing” has a higher probability of being true than “Has a cunning and evil master plan”. In real life cunning plans are usually of the Baldric variety.

7

1

44

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

10 months

@AaronBastani The three you mention were masters of metapolitics - working at the level of sensibilities rather than abstract ideas. To be effective in government or legislation though you need both. True of all kinds of politics.

1

2

46

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 month

🧵 Several people I follow such as @paulmasonnews are arguing that the trigger for all the riots was the Tories losing the election, on the analogy of January 6th in the US - Paul's argument is that these people feel they no longer have cover or support from a governing party. I

10

15

44

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

Right across the ideological spectrum there is an infestation of magical thinking. The main sign is a refusal to face reality and the choices it imposes. Decisions are put off or waved away and ‘something will turn up’ is the position. This isn’t any particular ideology.

2

10

42

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

Isn't it time to put this white elephant out of its misery? Notice that trains are now 'expected' to run into Euston in 2041-43. Also a smaller terminus than intended, with fewer platforms.

Tweet card media

Revised plans for HS2 Euston terminus would cost almost £5bn, says watchdog

NAO warns cost of station in London almost double initial budget and pause on work could push it higher

www.theguardian.com

9

7

41

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

🧵A thoughtful piece by @robinhanson arguing that AI fears are overstated. The contrary view has been put by @ESYudkowsky .

Tweet card media

What Are Reasonable AI Fears?

Although there are some valid concerns, an AI moratorium would be misguided.

3

6

39

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 months

🧵Economists and most politicians think that the answer to the question “Do you want to be richer/better off?” Is always and obviously “Yes!”. That is one of the main reasons why, since about 1946, politicians everywhere have made economic growth the central goal of their policy

12

12

43

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

I wonder how many people who were relaxed about Farage will be the same about @thatginamiller . Her case is actually worse in its implications because, as she says, it means it will be near impossible for an insurgent political organisation to get banking facilities.

8

9

39

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 month

These riots have shown yet again that many people do not get the reality of spontaneous order. The riots are organised, through social networks, mobile phones, social media. But they aren’t coordinated or planned in the sense of being run by a central authority. Organised/= plan

2

13

41

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

3 months

Reading @Samfr excellent profiles of the seats in this election I’m struck by the frequency with which the words “former SPAD” appear. A real insight into the nature of our political class. (The seat profiles are also scattered with very funny lines).

2

6

41

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

Today lots of people reiterating the myth that the NHS is funded from NI. Only a really small fraction is, it is a free at point of use service funded by general taxation so not an insurance scheme. That was explicitly stated when it was set up. As opposed to the Beveridge 🧵

4

7

38

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

6 months

In all the commentary about Galloway what hasn’t been getting attention is his robust cultural conservatism. It doesn’t take much digging to find this out - if you were shown his comments on things like abortion, transgenderism, sexual assault, gay marriage, education you 🧵

8

9

41

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

11 months

@whatifalthist Not secular. What is distinctive is the lack of a notion of a personalised divine power. Tons of specific gods but the relationship with them is transactional. T’ien is often translated as God but means something more like The Force, the source of things and a principle of order.

2

0

38

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

elderly and other social groups that dissent from part of the overall package - hence the blocks on radical measures of any persuasion. This can’t go on, so ultimately it won’t but it can still go on for a long time.

0

2

40

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

@whatifalthist To do with historically being part of different states/kingdoms. Czechs part of HRE/Austria, Slovakia of Hungary. West Ukraine part of Poland/Lithuania till 1939, East Ukraine part of Russia but a borderland. Serbia under Ottoman rule, Croatia Hungarian. Has a legacy. As for

1

0

39

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

attention. The third trend is that politics has become steadily more liberal. The right has become identified with economic liberalism, the left with radical cultural liberalism. In both cases the liberalism has taken on a technocratic and managerial aspect.

3

3

39

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

4 months

@meadwaj To be fair to GG he has never hidden his views or denied them (unlike some other politicians I can think of). There's a clear constituency for the combination of left economics, social conservatism, and opposition to Western foreign policy.

5

10

39

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

I think the epidemic of magical thinking in all parts of politics these days is because ALL of the major ideological tendencies are refusing to accept material realities of various kinds. Instead you either get denials of reality or claims that there's a magical solution. 🧵

2

7

39

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

🧵A couple of months ago I tweeted that we and other developed countries were headed into an age of disillusionment. This is now clearly underway. Over the next 15-20 years a whole series of ideologies will be given a runout. Each one in turn will crash - nothing will work. 1.

7

9

38

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

@Guy21Nerdy Our media and societal fixation with the US means neither left nor right knows much about any European country. The liberal left here likes the EU because it was a way of consolidating their policy position here (social liberalism + free markets). They’ll realise no longer true.

1

3

37

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

8 months

@MattPolProf Revive this. UK high school reports: “George’s being at this school is depriving a village somewhere of its idiot”. “Jane always does her best. Sadly, her best is not very good”.

1

0

38

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

@danwaterfield Yes. Because in English collapse means something climactic and sudden we think that’s what it’s like historically when it’s actually a drawn out process of gradual breakdown. Also there’s the persistent influence of the idea of apocalypse, that history can only end that way.

0

5

38

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

I now think this isn’t true for about 40% of voters. It’s not that they oppose growth but that they are against all of the measures that are needed for growth. “Growth means lots of houses being built, more immigration, and more status for non-academic skills”. No growth thank u2

2

4

37

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

@mane3sha Who on earth wears outside clothes in bed?! Never heard of that. The others, yes big differences. I was married to a Pakistani lady and I noticed all of these. Made me realise how individualistic and not family oriented Anglo-Saxons are.

1

1

37

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

4 months

@jfwduffield The interesting thing is that other Muslim groups are not obsessed (they don’t like what Israel is doing but not to that degree). I think it’s because of Pakistani identity being defined exclusively by Islam (unlike Bangladeshi) plus the huge Saudi influence there since 1979.

6

1

36

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 months

@antonhowes That is a really good choice. Because it coincided with the Spanish conquest of the Americas it transformed the world monetary system. So the effects were global. Underrated because from Hamilton onwards historians see the importance of American silver but miss the technology but

2

2

38

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

@Steve_Sailer Not to mention almost no black people in Argentina. Maybe they think it’s more like Brazil?

1

0

34

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

@timurkuran I suspect it’s driven by a combination of the state of the Turkish economy and fear of Iran, which is now clearly aligned with China/Russia.

3

3

36

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 months

Amid all of the political news, something more important in my view. James Scott has died. One the greatest contemporary social scientists and one of those rare scholars admired and influential across the ideological spectrum. Seeing Like a State and Against the Grain great books

3

4

37

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

@PippyBing @ClarkeMicah @mailplus It’s part of a wider phenomenon. We overestimate the importance of formal institutions such as schools and overlook the role of things like families and other social institutions. If they are undermined by eg technology, the institutions can’t make it up easily.

2

4

36

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

5 months

Short 🧵. A recent essay by @moveincircles argued that the future of right wing politics lay in what N.S.Lyons has dubbed 'right wing progressivism'. That is a kind of politics that is progressive in the sense that it is all for technological development and innovation, wants to

6

6

36

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 months

Public reason has collapsed. We have truly fallen down a rabbit hole.

@other_mrs

jojo77

2 months

Lucky or staged? I’m going staged. If it was meant…his head would have been blown clean off..

333

53

840

7

2

36

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

1 year

Will these continue? I don’t think the third will and I have doubts about the others, particularly the third. I have undoubtedly lived through a radical transformation however. End.

4

2

35

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

10 months

Further to the soap opera nature of U.K. politics, I see @oflynnsocial has already noted that all of 2016-2023 has become a Bobby Ewing shower scene. Now we just need Cameron or Sunak to jump over a shark while on water skis. We should end news bulletins with the end of Soap.

0

7

33

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

11 months

@FischerKing64 Where did this voir dire thing come from? Here in the U.K. there’s nothing like that - a jury is a genuinely random selection of people with only a few narrow excluded categories. Both sides have a limited number of challenges but they are peremptory (no questions).

5

3

33

@SteveDavies365

Steve Davies

@SteveDavies365

2 years

The market reaction to the Budget reminds me of a speeded up version of what happened to Mitterrand. If you aren’t the US your range of policy options is very limited. That meat you have to do the structural supply side stuff first before you get tax cuts. A fortiori right now.

4

9

34