Interesting essay by the economist Kenneth Rogoff. Commenting on the fierce pushback against Senator Elizabeth Warren for daring to suggest that even if many services seem to be provided for free, there might still be something wrong, he writes:

There was the same kind of pushback from the financial sector fifteen years ago, and from the railroads back in the late 1800s. Writing in the March 1881 issue of The Atlantic, the progressive activist Henry Demarest Lloyd warned that,“Our treatment of ‘the railroad problem’ will show the quality and caliber of our political sense. It will go far in foreshadowing the future lines of our social and political growth. It may indicate whether the American democracy, like all the democratic experiments which have preceded it, is to become extinct because the people had not wit enough or virtue enough to make the common good supreme.”Lloyd’s words still ring true today.

At this point, ideas for regulating Big Tech are just sketches, and of course more serious analysis is warranted. An open, informed discussion that is not squelched by lobbying dollars is a national imperative. The debate that Warren has joined is not about whether to establish socialism. It is about making capitalist competition fairer and, ultimately, stronger.

Yep.

Perceptive essay by Umair Haque about what has replaced the military-industrial complex. Sample:

The hate industrial complex is made of four elements. The first is companies. The second is personalities — luminaries, celebrities, all of a certain bent. The third is ideologies. The fourth is a certain kind of attitude, a rhetorics. Let me illuminate each one in turn — so that we know what we are fighting.

Sensible people these days abjure Fox News. But the truth is that YouTube and Facebook and Twitter are much, much worse. As far as radicalizing people goes, Fox News basically tells your racist grandpa he’s right. It’s YouTube and Facebook (and Twitter and Reddit and so on) which turn lonely teenage losers into vengeful supremacist shooters. Which show no interest whatsoever in being decent members of a civilized society. So what reason do we have to let them go on being part of one?

In summary: How YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have become the New Fox News (But Worse)

The age of party democracy has passed. Although the parties themselves remain, they have become so disconnected from the wider society, and pursue a form of competition that is so lacking in meaning, that they no longer seem capable of sustaining democracy in its present form.

From Peter Mair’s Ruling the void: the hollowing out of Western democracy.

Zoomable version here

Source

Says it all, really.

No comment necessary.

Source

Terrific, perceptive Guardian column by Rafael Behr:

The people’s vote campaign often gets the argument about how to keep EU membership and whether to do so the wrong way round. Anyone who wants a second poll already hates Brexit. People who liked Brexit in 2016 but think it might have gone sour need something more positive to believe in than parliamentary process and referendums. The pitch has to open with the image of a happier, confident Britain, relieved of the grinding burden of endless Brexit bickering, taking its rightful seat at the top table of continental power, ready to lead. If enough people think that is the country we want to be, the case for a public vote makes itself as the way to get there.

That doesn’t mean everyone should learn the Ode to Joy and paint their face blue. It does mean that remainers must challenge the conventional wisdom that British voters are culturally immune to pro-EU arguments. There are too many MPs waiting for the architects of Brexit to soil themselves so thoroughly in absurdity and paranoia that their cause is ruined and their ideas discredited forever. But the humbling of leavers and the obstruction of their plans is not all good for remain. Not if it can be cast as the work of a conspiracy by Brussels, Whitehall and parliament.

Extension to the article 50 period is the most probable next move, which looks like a tactical gain for pro-Europeans. But engineering a situation where Britain’s EU membership survives beyond the original 29 March deadline was the easy part. The hard bit is making it look like a victory for common sense, not a defeat for national pride. Otherwise a setback for leave is no advance for remain. The crisis in British politics is severe enough that both sides can be losing at the same time.

Yep. The crisis is systemic. Even if we had a second Referendum and Remain won, the toxic divisions will continue to fester. And vice versa.