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[Owlbread]

Never is a very long time in politics.

It is, but MonkeyHead is right. The Tory brand is so toxic it will never recover. It's the same in the post-industrial parts of Scotland and also England. That's not to say working class conservatives don't exist, they do; they just vote Labour or UKIP/Far Right wasted vote e.g. BNP. And it's not to say Wales is a Tory free zone either - places like Monmouth or maybe Pembroke are pretty Tory. They're completely different to the Valleys though.

[reality.auditor]

(I'm personally hoping (Finland joining NATO) that it'll never happen.)

Don't worry, our good old friend - certain former KGB operative and current el presidento of biggest banana republic in world - will do everything he can to push Finland (and Sweden that seems to be very lax at the moment) to NATO.

Then he will throw tantrum and blame everything and everyone except himself.

[Sergarr]

The word "post-industrial" is heavily associated (for me) with "post-modernism" and "post-modernism" is, well, crap (sometimes literally so).

Services are useless without someone providing the things to service people with. Ridding the country of industry = must import everything industry-produced + no jobs from industry. Double negative for a questionable positive (service jobs are highly limited, which heavily shifts the power balance to the provider of jobs away from worker, and very varied in required qualities (shifting from one to another is difficult)).

[penguinofhonor]

The word "post-industrial" is heavily associated (for me) with "post-modernism" and "post-modernism" is, well, crap (sometimes literally so).

how dare you insult Merda d'artista

[Descan]

There's a certain type of post-industrialism that is less "We have no industry" and more "We have no industry jobs."

The difference lying in that one, as you say, imports all it's industrial goods, while the other has automation in home-soil industry. Which can be good and bad. Frees up civilians for the thought economy, universities and science foundations, and other industries, while still keeping up the industrial capacity and the potential for a trade surplus. On the other hand, in the current American and American-influenced countries (Canada, Britain I think), university is so expensive that the lack of industrial jobs cuts down the ladder to afford getting into the thought economy. So you end up with a lot of people stuck in the less-good-than-industry jobs like McDonalds servers and so forth.

I'd like to think that basic income and public tuition would mitigate that, and solve a lot of those issues with a post-industrial nation while still getting the bonuses, but because it's never really been done (though Germany and Norway and some others do have no-tuition costs, even for non-nationals, you still have to afford actually living in Norway or Germany) it's hard to tell if it'd work properly on a national scale.

[Sergarr]

Thought economy? How can this even work, when thoughts/ideas must be unique to have an economical value? Certainly the whole population cannot be creating unique ideas simultaneously, it requires a very specific mindset that not all people are capable of, even with education, not to mention the very limited space where new ideas reside and the boatloads of specific knowledge you must have to even have a chance at discovering those.

It fails the important requirement of working economy - being able to provide all people with work that they can accomplish.

[penguinofhonor]

That's what the postmodernism is for! Break down the definition of art to the point where everyone can be an artist.

[Frumple]

How can this even work, when thoughts/ideas must be unique to have an economical value?

I think your problem is right there. It should be incredibly obvious that ideas totally don't have to be unique to have economical value. That basically describes the entire history of human entertainment -- almost the entirety of everything in the field is derivative to more or less degrees, and in both entertainment and industry knockoff productions command a significant portion of the respective economies.

Even with unique ideas, it's rare any one individual can actually disseminate it to any substantive degree -- people spreading someone else's idea around in parallel is of incredibly significant value (this is basically what the entire multi-billion dollar advertisement industry is, ferex).

There's a lot more to thought economy than just the production of unique ideas, basically.

[MonkeyHead]

So, this is quite fun, and gives a nice idea of how hard it will be for anyone to form an effective government following the UK general election: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32336071

[Dutchling]

Heh. That's like every Dutch government ever.

[Sergarr]

So, this is quite fun, and gives a nice idea of how hard it will be for anyone to form an effective government following the UK general election: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32336071

So how hard it is, on scale of 1 to Belgium?

[Sheb]

Yeah, last time you guys took less than a week to form a coalition, you'll manage this time.

[MarcAFK]

From what I see they have a 2 week deadline after the election to coalesce or else the government dissolves.

[SirQuiamus]

Thought economy? How can this even work, when thoughts/ideas must be unique to have an economical value? Certainly the whole population cannot be creating unique ideas simultaneously, it requires a very specific mindset that not all people are capable of, even with education, not to mention the very limited space where new ideas reside and the boatloads of specific knowledge you must have to even have a chance at discovering those.

It fails the important requirement of working economy - being able to provide all people with work that they can accomplish.

I have to admit that I agree with Sergarr, for once.

It would take a very forceful re-imagining of society for a thought economy to work. Not that I don't whole-heartedly agree with the concept. The problem stems from... well, culture. Among other things.

Damn sociocultural resistance to change.

Thought is not what makes us human. No amount of education, genetic engineering, or transhumanism will change the fact that we are physical beings in a physical universe. People need to make things, because things make people.

EDIT:

But the palpable anxiety in this country...

That's saying a mouthful. I can't quite palpate that anxiety, but I guess I'm just too Pollyannaish to notice.   

[mainiac]

Once upon a time there were psiocrats (can't spell due to smartphone) who insisted these elitist industrial proponents were wrong because everything came back to food and no number of craftsmen would change the amount of food and other farm products grown. And now we live in a world where 2% of the population farms and most of the food is made by a minority of that 2%.