A fine piece by Ian Jack in the Guardian today on the folly of privatisation and outsourcing but there is more to say. It was the nation state that brought an end in human history to thousands of years of tribalism, warlordism and the rule of the robber barons. Those who come to power in government to dissolve it risk reversing all the gains that made the West successful (as detailed by historians such as Ian Morris and Neil Ferguson) and tipping us back into the nightmare of private fiefdoms, privates armies and perpetual squalid civil strife. Only the state can run an army, a police force, have the right to tax (at present the energy utilities are taxing a helpless citizenship). If you don’t believe this you’re probably a Serco shareholder. Incidentally, it is either crass in the extreme or deeply sinister that this corporation should choose so perfectly Orwellian a name for itself.
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AuthorI'm a writer whose interests include the biological revolution happening now, the relationship between art and science, jazz, and the state of the planet Archives
March 2016
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