Government by lazy, ignorant, drunks works then
This works for us:
The biggest empire the world has ever seen was run by a small elite who partied all night, drank liters of port, and stayed in bed until the afternoon.
Tho’ we’d prefer the English of litres of port but there we are.
More than that, none of these people had ever had any technical training in anything and were rigidly educated in the classics and not much else. Perhaps some amount of the more recent poetry might be acknowledged but no more than that some.
This is where we think the error creeps into this analysis:
Despite this, the elites of nineteenth-century Britain were, by their own lights, extremely successful. For much of the century, Britain was the richest country on Earth. Its companies dominated global commerce, industry and finance.
None of that small elite had anything, at all, to do with commerce, industry or finance. That small elite were running government, true. But government itself didn’t have much, if anything, to do with commerce, industry or finance. Government didn’t, in fact, have much to do with anything at all. The Navy was run by the Admiralty, who graciously allowed a politician to pretend to attend meetings occasionally. Near everything else that happened in the society as a whole was blessedly free of central government, governance and that small elite.
In fact, anyone who either knew about the details of society or was involved in them was deliberately excluded from that elite - those who participated in trade were not invited to come share the port, liters or litres, at all. It might, maybe, be possible for a prettier one of the granddaughters to marry into the rolling acres classes but even that great wealth had to be washed by a couple of generations.
Government by lazy drunks actually worked because they were too lazy - or too drunk - to interfere. Minarchy at its finest therefore. Occasionally someone could be roused from torpor, stupor, to do what absolutely must be done and which could only be done by government - shelling the Zanzibari Sultan’s palace for 40 minutes perhaps - but the world’s greatest empire trundled along successfully by not being managed at all.
We can even pinpoint the moment this all changed. The empire’s greatest extent was 1920, after the League of Nations dispositions of the losers’ territories. Modern Greats - what we now call Politics, Philosophy and Economics - was set up as a degree at Oxford in 1920. QED. When the would be elites of the coming generation thought both that they should do something about industry, commerce and finance and also believed they knew something about the trio is when it all started to go to pot. Our useful policy is therefore clear.
Return to that Victorian settlement. Leave industry - and commerce, finance - to those rude mechanicals who know what they’re doing. Restrict the political elite’s involvement in such matters to whatever trivia they might gain the energy to do inbetween hangovers. It worked before, it will work again.
Government by lazy - and ignorant - drunks works. Vastly better than those deluded into thinking they know what they’re doing gurning at us over their slide rules. Thus let us return to the system that works - minarchy.
We’re willing to chip in a couple of pipes of port to get the process rolling……some 30 attend cabinet, two litres per person to be consumed before any decision on anything at all is taken, that’s the first 5 months or so taken care of. Who will pick up the burden after that?
Tim Worstall