Over the last couple of months, I have endured a new experience. For the first time since I started writing the blog, I find myself short of inspiration. I started the discipline of writing three times per month nearly ten years ago and it has served me well, forcing me to develop a pipeline of ideas while emphasising execution. In all these years I have found that maintaining a balance has been quite straightforward. Rarely has the list of ideas become so long that I have had to ignore topics of interest to me. And rarely have I been scratching around looking for copy.
I am wondering whether the current drought might be significant in some way. Perhaps it is about the season, with its lack of interesting news and energy sapping humidity. Perhaps an overriding factor is my weariness with the USA, which I try not to allow to dominate the blog but which does consume a lot of my thoughts. Perhaps my brain is slowing down somehow, or I am not doing enough to stimulate it. Or perhaps it is just chance.
In the meantime, I am pleased today to be able to go back to a new staple, that of The Economist leaders. I am more than ever grateful to The Economist. To me, its writing seems to get better and better, while little else in media seems to inspire me at all: as an example, my opinion of the PBS Newshour is becoming rather jaundiced. Last month I was travelling and missed out on The Economist for a single week, and I felt its absence keenly.
As usual this week, the six leaders cover a wide space, but part of the value can arise from looking for themes and connections. One rather sad point to note is the absence of any leader about the war in Ukraine. Has this become an unremarkable part of everyday life now, just like the war in Syria did before? It is does portend well for the Ukrainians if that is true.
As usual this week there is one leader about money, and as usual it is the least interesting. The topic is the future of private equity. Having ridden a boom using leverage and cost cutting to make a quick buck, and then another one using zero interest rates and an ocean of capital to bid up tech valuations, the article wonders where the next opportunity will come from, noting that the smart owners of private equity firms have already diversified to increase their chances.
If this article has any wider relevance, it might be about how wealth and finance drive US policy these days. The economy needs debt leverage and optimism to thrive, and policy makers know that they cannot turn off the taps. One place fed by the flood of capital has been China, which poses a key dilemma to the US, given that, having milked the place for decades, it seems to have declared an unofficial war on the Chinese.
The other seeming outlier among the leaders is a scornful rebuttal of Chile’s proposed new constitution, as hopelessly complex, utopian, and left leaning. Sadly, The Economist is probably right. The forces of the left do have a habit of squandering their opportunities, becoming mired in factional agendas and struggling to turn laudable but vague goals into effective policy.
One wider relevance of this might be to link back to US politics. In the world of microscopic attention spans and sound bites, a well-funded machine can succeed only with something to rail against, and the woke left falls into that trap time and again.
Not surprising for a London based periodical, the opening leader celebrates the fall of Boris Johnson. A rather dull piece argues that Britain, and the Conservatives, have deeper problems than the obvious ones removed by the defenestration of a serial liar with no agenda beyond power. David Brooks on PBS made the interesting point last month that politics nowadays tends to be more about celebrity than policy, and Boris Johnson is the epitome of that trend. He leaves behind chaos, a complete absence of vision, and the continuing wreckage of post-Brexit Britain.
The third leader was the strongest condemnation of today’s USA that I have read in The Economist, a magazine that has always played up America’s strengths, notably its economic dynamism. All the claims of US exceptionalism are refuted, leaving only its ungovernability as its remaining unique trait. In my current anti-USA mood, I happily lapped up every word. On my trip to Europe, a series of bemused Brits asked me whether the USA could be in as hopeless a mess as the news headlines indicate and asked me if I saw any hope. My replies were consistent: yes; and none. The article supports my view that things have to get a lot worse in the USA before they might be able to improve, and that politics can only hinder matters – which leaves war or revolution as the remaining solutions.
Two articles later in the magazine only support this negative prognosis. The excellent Lexington returned in despair from a visit to flooded Miami, observing how even a wealthy enclave cannot act in its manifest interest. There was also an article noting how the “new right” is becoming entrenched in key institutions, so that the next Trump might be able to have more impact than Donald. I tried to work out what the guiding principles of this “new right” might be, beyond a cynical use of power to pursue corrupt personal interests. I failed.
These depressing tracts about the West set the context for a fascinating leader sandwiched between them, about Tiktok. The growth path of Tiktok is truly astounding, and, predictably enough, it is now looking to turn followers into advertising dollars and to diversify into e-commerce and news feeds.
The first lesson here is how China always wins in the end. Their first attempts to copy Western technology and business are ridiculed, but the educated, humble, and commercial Chinese learn and come back stronger. Facebook has been eclipsed already.
Then there is the debate about whether Tiktok is dangerous and how the West, and China itself, may react. The article points out the two obvious dangers, before discounting privacy concerns as overblown. But the concern that the Chinese censors could influence the global news feeds is real and immediate.
In one way this gives me cause for schadenfreude. Western news feeds have been bought by Rupert Murdoch. People like me hate that, and Trump too, but don’t complain when “our” Jeff Bezos buys The Washington Post and heave a sigh of relief when maverick Elon Musk pulls out of a deal for Twitter. We have given our brains over to the super-rich: could the Chinese communist party be any worse? Sadly, it probably can. And perhaps the stage is set for Tiktok to be the defining battleground of the new Sino-US cold war. Here is my guess at the outcome. China wins. And we all lose. The 2022 lost opportunity for reconciliation may be the last one for a long time.
The fourth leader offers the ultimate context for all this. Starting with a lovely HG Wells quote that history is a race between education and catastrophe, the leader looks at the state of education around the world. The good news is that many more kids are now in classrooms. The bad news is that they do not seem to be learning much, and in many places lost education is a horrible legacy of Covid. With such technological riches available, this is one challenge that should be soluble, and indeed this is a reason for much needed optimism.
The leader does not offer data, but I think I read that China is where education has improved the most, while Europe has a growing lead over the USA, with other developing nations advancing only slowly.
In the context of the miserable picture elsewhere in the leaders, it is good at least to see a topic that might ultimately turn things around. The politics of China, the USA, Britain, and leftist Chile don’t seem to have much chance, though China’s great run will continue for a while, dragging more generations out of poverty. And at least the scions of private equity will still be able to find ways to get even richer.
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