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Comment by LaurensBER

I'm not an UK citizen but as someone who lived in the UK for a while, my assessment would be that the issues that we're seeing in the UK (low trust in the politicians, ineffective of the government to address real issues, economic stagnation, etc) are actually not unique to the UK. We're seeing similar trends in The Netherlands, Germany and the Nordic countries.

If I had to take a guess, I would say that the western European political systems seems to work well in a homogenous population where you mostly need "alignment" (e.g between companies and labour unions) but seems seems to struggle with major reforms. Too many stakeholders, too many vetos and too many processes.

To give an concrete example. The Netherlands has a severe housing crisis. Despite being a relatively rich country it's not uncommon for people (sometimes even couples) to live with their parents untill they're well in their 30ies.

Yet a single guy was able to block the building of almost a hundred houses on the chance that there might be some rare(?) frogs living at the building site. While I'm all for nature conservation, surely the needs of a hundred families should go above the concerns of some hypothetical frogs.

Everyone agrees that this is crazy, seemingly very little changes.

parent LaurensBER 2 months ago

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