Why do great and powerful nations which appear unbeatable decline and fall? One might immediately conclude that they are simply overcome by the growth of inevitably superior forces despite all the advantages in resources which being powerful has brought them.
The best known example is Rome which enjoyed extraordinary abilities in organisation and in the technology it could apply by the standards of the day yet still collapsed.
Mancur Olson (1932-1998) was an American economist who addressed this question from the point of view of how things work in societies as a result of the formation of groups pursuing particular interests. How do incentives to combine together in self-interest affect what happens?
The virtue of democratic government at first sight is that any group which feels itself disadvantaged can form a coalition and lobby to improve its position. That is certainly the version of democracy purveyed by politicians on the stump. It’s in principle correct if you ignore the obstacles placed in the path by a system protecting its power interests against interlopers.
But there is a paradox here, Olson argues. It is logical to think that if enough people are discontented and agree on a common interest that they will act in concert and influence how things work. In reality they often do not.
For more than a generation nationalists have tried to organise resistance to mass immigration among a population within which it enjoyed growing support in principle. Yet the numbers coming forward to actually do anything have been minor. This was, of course, smugly explained by those in power as meaning that the population were happy with what was being imposed on them. Nationalists, on the other hand, often interpreted inability to draw large numbers as meaning that the people were asleep. Neither analysis is correct.
The reality, Mancur Olson says, that is that the incentive to combine together against a perceived evil diminishes the larger the number affected by the evil. Whew! Let’s just say that again while we get our bearings. The more people are affected badly by something the more difficult it is to get anything done. Surely that can’t be true!
The reason is incentives. An individual opposing mass immigration or indeed pursuing any other cause concerning millions has little inducement to get involved. His time risk, and trouble may be great and yet if successful he will only enjoy the tiniest proportion of the gains to the group as a whole. Why not ‘let George do it’, as Olson says, then sit back and enjoy the benefits having contributed nothing.
Economists call this the ‘free rider problem’.
When attempts were made to form unions in the 19th century, at a time when workers were often treated abominably, it took a very long time for them to generate any effective power or to form a successful political movement in the form of the Labour Party. The state was also ready to remind anyone who did participate that it would not make resistance to its policies an easy ride – as the Tolpuddle combinationists discovered.
Experienced nationalists know very well that Tolpuddle feeling! Every obstacle including arrest – if any pretext can be found – is thrown in the path of the activist. The campaigner will have it indicated to him by the state that he should restrict himself in voicing his complaints to approved and useless methods. One wonders whether policemen are told on training courses to tell people who are unhappy with the way the country is run to ‘write to their MPs’. Is it worth it will be the thought in the minds of those asked to join the fray.
But the position of small groups of people with a cause to pursue and plenty to gain is quite different from that of mass concerns. This is the core of Olson’s analysis as to how societies actually work looking behind the veil of what appears at first obvious – that numbers are power.
The fact is that minority groups with a common interest can often gain enormously by combining together. Politicians are a prime example. Professional groups, employers and all manner of special interests likewise. Participants can see a huge personal benefit from their efforts in combination. The costs of what they can seize are however spread over the mass of the population left without a similar individual degree of incentive to resist the enroachment. In left-wing terms, the capitalists have more worthwhile lobbies than those of the masses.
We are left with the bombshell conclusion that the social bargain which actually emerges can leave out the majority! Nowhere can this be seen more clearly in our time than in regard to the effects of immigration. Our people are en masse being systematically replaced.
We are foreigners in our own capital city yet where is the mass movement one might expect to have arisen in response? Mostly at home muttering ‘let George it’. This is actually, and in strict terms, logical behaviour by the individual. Few humans are self-sacrificing beyond the minor socially approved gesture like putting a coin in a collecting box. The wealthier Romans became increasing unwilling to serve in the army as time went on. Some even had a thumb cut off to avoid military service at one point.
The brutal fact is that democracies tend not to oppress the minority but that the mass end up being oppressed by the minority. It’s all a question of incentives and the workings are all too horribly clear in Britain where the ‘minority’ is worshipped as a God to the exclusion of the welfare of the whole.
What can or will ever upset increasing incrustation of a society by coalitions of minority groups which may in the end destroy the whole edifice? That is certainly our position in Britain. The movers and shakers cease to worry about filling the wine cellar. They merely concern themselves with drinking as much as possible of a declining stock of bottles.
We are told that one of the glories of Britain is its political stability. That combined with a tradition of giving everyone a vote must mean that we have a system rightly envied by the world. But too much political stability, argues Mancur Olson, is not a virtue at all. It’s very bad news. It means that vested interests can increasingly dominate life to the point of suffocating the entire project.
Radical political upset helps to reboot a society. It rids itself – at least for a while – of incrustation by distributional coalitions trying to get more of the cake without earning it. This can explain rapid recovery from the war by Japan and Germany.
To complete the picture there is something else which requires explanation. How can it be that mass movements which originally struggled endlessly to establish themselves in the face of the individual incentive problem become parasitical over time?
The Labour Party, which was started to represent working people, has in fact in recent years done everything it could to damage them. In the case of the white working-class, eradication is the policy. Quite of few of them can’t believe it and suppose what they see to be a misunderstanding. So they still vote Labour. Astonishing!
Once established, mass movements tend to fall into the hands of narrow interests. The operators of these groups are far nearer the incentives bowl than the ordinary members. The very fact of their establishment brings power and resources to keep them in business however far they drift from their original purpose.
In a situation of chronic decline and decay like ours the astonishing thing is that everyone is behaving rationally from their own perspective. The majority have little wish to resist personally since they have too much to lose and only the small hope of personal gain. The minority are drinking happily from the remaining wine.
This is actually a classic ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ as game theory calls it. If everyone cooperated all could be better off but there is no incentive to do so.
How societies can extract themselves from this paralysis is that, once decline reaches a certain point, the impact upon the ordinary person becomes big enough to provide an incentive to change things. We may now be in that position in Britain. We may be in with a chance at last.
But nothing is guaranteed. Roman society was perfectly unable to reform itself until it was too late. Rome did not however have flash communication systems like ours which can spread ideas like wildfire. We do and those in charge fear it.
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(Party Member) Having read our Policies and constitution I hope Nationalists do unite, within the British Democratic Party.
I think that the main reason for the apparent inertia as regards immigration on Britain is the rigid unfairness of our system of democracy.
The first past the post system allied with the constituency principle leads to people to vote for a party, not because they want to, but because they fear that if they don’t, some other party which they like even less will be let into power.
Allied to this is the practice of buying votes with electoral promises of ever increasing handouts monopolised hitherto by New Labour, which leads people to overlook their concerns about mass immigration and vote according to their perceived selfish interests. Then, People living in areas less affected by immigration seem to be less concerned about it, because they do not realise the full Impact of it and how it will increasingly affect them in the future. It’s the boiled frog syndrome.
Overall there is a ‘normalcy bias’ which leads people to assume that , because the country has been a great place to live in the past, it will continue to be that in the future, even when warning signs to the contrary are flashing right and left.
The first past the post system is an archaic fraud that should have been dumped many years ago. As the system is totally based-upon geographical constituencies and unlike the Single Transferable Vote system of PR like they have in the Republic of Ireland we only have one MP per seat, we really don’t have general elections in Britain but 650 odd by-elections to the House of Commons held on the same day.
When people vote they vote for their favoured party and NOT for the representative of the party they most like in their seat so the votes for each party should add-up ALL OVER THE COUNTRY as it would be under a system of PR.
FPTP only really works well democratically if you have two major parties that garner over 90% or more of the national vote between them and we haven’t had that in Britain since the 1950’s. FPTP now persistently misrepresents the British people’s democratic will and that is a disgrace and needs to be rectified.
http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk
Concerning voting, if you vote for radical parties as an individual you are likely to gain nothing since they won’t get power. But you’ve then lost your opportunity to pick least worst among those established and capable of winning power.
So it comes back to a matter of incentives as Olson says. The incentive for an individual is not to support change. The average voter simply says ‘Let George do it’ and vote for small radical parties,
May I emphasise how important Olson’s analysis is and how it lies uncomprehended by nationalist groups who can’t understand why floods of people never came forward. Incorrectly interpreted as a lack of awareness of the national disaster.
“But nothing is guaranteed.” – wise words.
(Party Member) Yes Mike, but what also is uncomprehended by Nationalist groups is that most people, at the end of the day, vote for FINANCIAL POLICIES of Party’s that suit their selfish personal circumstances. Even if they feel strongly about other issues, these remain the domain of pressure groups. To move from being a real party that people will vote for and not a pressure group, we need a raft of financial policies, based on our beliefs of National Preference, traditional British values, fairness and common sense.
This is totally correct. Many people are against our membership of the EU but are reluctant to vote for UKIP because of that party’s extreme embrace of the most radical kind of neo-liberal and globalist economics. This is no doubt the reason why many Labour voters despite being hostile to EU membership won’t vote for UKIP en masse. UKIP is an ultra-Thatcherite party and that narrows its possible social appeal. Their worship of economic neo-liberalism is one of UKIP’s most significant flaws as a party.
It would be best if our party adopts a non-globalist and more centrist brand of economics. We approve of capitalism and free markets but we don’t support a completely unhindered form of it that works against the national interest.
A national economy can exist outside the model of total ‘laissez-faire’ and countries like Japan and South Korea demonstrate this.
The economy should be to the forefront of our party’s literature and campaigning as it is this issue above all that determines how people vote and this is particularly so for the ‘swing voters’ that move from one party to another at general elections.
Steven, you are of course right the economy should be at the forefront of the party’s literature and campaigning. This is the issue of paramount concern to most ordinary voters, and a Nationalist party of movement should be radical in its policies.
The corrupt free-trade neo-liberal system we have needs to be replaced by an economic system that works for and benefits the british people and not a small clique of parasitic plutocrats who thrive on usury, open borders, removal of tarrifs, free movement of people and capital around the world.
The usurious debt-based money system needs to be reformed to unchain the people from debt-servitude and replace it with sovereign money created by the state for the benefit of the people and not userers.
Never should so-called lack of money be an excuse for men laying unemployed and idle, when tools and resources are readily available and a need of the people can be satisfied by their use.
If something is physically possible and there is a need for that something to be done it should be done, money should be just the medium of exchange after all!!!!
Yes, the concept of national preference is a nationalist principle and is one that genuine nationalist parties like Marine Le Pen’s FN in France have running through their policies and this includes a non-globalist approach to the economy of France. The FN, unlike Britain’s UKIP, is a genuine nationalist party and therefore supports economic nationalism and not economic globalism like Thatcherite Tories.
“It would be best if our party adopts a non-globalist and more centrist brand of economics. We approve of capitalism and free markets but we don’t support a completely unhindered form of it that works against the national interest” I agree and would add “outside the EU”.
Their addiction (just like the Lib/Lab/CON party’s) to globalist economics is UKIP’s fatal flaw and is the area of policy we can be most successful in attacking them on. If we do this and we are credible on other issues and present ourselves well, I am sure that many of those who are currently voting for UKIP but who should be voting for genuine nationalists like us will stop voting for this ragbag bunch of ultra-Thatcherite Tories and vote for us instead.
“Why do great and powerful nations which appear to unbeatable decline and fall… The best known example is Rome which enjoyed extraordinary abilities in organisation and in the technology it could apply by the standards of the day yet still collapse”.
The Roman Empire in the west fell in 476 AD when Romulus Augustus was defeated by the German prince Odovacan. But it survived in the east until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. Roman civilization then returned to Europe as the Renaissance and gave us the artistic, scientific and economic structure by which we are still living. Great civilizations do not disappear – they adapt to changing circumstances. We must do the same.