Looking on the bright side...
Sir — Boris Johnson’s Brexit proposals were rejected even before they were submitted. The EU never had any intention of agreeing to anything he put forward. But the great sadness of the whole debacle is that the outcome doesn’t really matter one little bit.
The EU and Britain, either together or separately, and indeed all economies of the world, are likely to be battling possibly the greatest economic crisis ever to confront the human race. The fast-approaching problem relates to “growth” being entirely incompatible with technological ability to overproduce practically everything.
It is utterly absurd to think that although we already grossly overproduce, it is possible to prosper, only, by continually striving to produce even more. Oversupply is anathema to commerce and trade and makes tariffs and trade wars inevitable as each economy attempts to prevent “cheap” imports from adding to its already oversupplied markets. Economists and politicians refuse to accept this consequence of progress. Sufficiency has replaced “growth” which in economic terms means “need to continually produce more”. Oversupply must be restrained as the economies learn to prosper without continually increasing output of everything. It is also necessary to take action to sustain secure employment with entitlements, benefits, and pensions, etc — despite enormous elimination of dependence on human labour.
The idea that technology will create as many jobs as it eliminates is utterly idiotic.
It may have been the situation since the Industrial Revolution began, but no longer applies in the modern technological age.
Modern technology is so powerful that no job is safe — and unless action is taken to secure the only real dignified method of distributing wealth, mass unemployment will destroy society, democracy and possibly the human race itself.
The shadow of another fiscal collapse stalks the world, brought about by enormous debt from futile attempts to reinvigorate “growth”.
Brexit, in comparison, is a minor irritant and will be a codicil of history; assuming of course the economic problem of adapting from “growth” to “sufficiency” is resolved and there are people around to study the history of these days. Padraic Neary, Tubbercurry, Co Sligo