What a Riot

While England recovers from its latest night of broken glass and the traditional finger-pointing begins (bad parents, laziness, computer games etc. etc.) I thought I'd share a quote from a fellow Fifer. Book one, chapter one. Something that's been in print since 1776 and which surely one or two of our millionaire cabinet members will have read.

"It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions, in a well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people."

Adam Smith, The Wealth Of Nations

A friend of mine made the observation that pretty much any civilisation's golden age (Roman, Egyptian, British, French...) begins with massive industry, productivity and "universal opulence", and ends with an enormously rich and powerful elite that have normalised their own corruption and have become far removed from the society they were chosen to govern. It seems to be the nature of things that, rather than trickling downwards, wealth and power gradually percolates to the top.

The corruption of the elite becomes so engrained that we begin to accept it as the truth by which we all must live. So we accept being robbed by well-groomed, smooth-talking men and women in expensive suits, but we are somehow shocked and angered when a tiny minority of hoodies and chavs take control of large parts of the country for a couple of days.

Sigh.

Rioting for Fun and Profit. A practical guide to the redistribution of wealth. This photo was looted from the Daily Mail, a self-styled "newspaper" with right wing leanings, printed in England.

"What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable."


The Wealth Of Nations, Book I Chapter VIII