Comment by rubyAce

> This view (“the Bourgeois’, etc.) seems to imply there’s a group of very clever manipulators somewhere, overtly planning and executing this (presumably in a dark room with armchairs and cigars). But I just can’t imagine this, in the UK’s example.

If you read any history about any daring military action during WW2, a lot of it was done by men thinking up of stuff in dark rooms while smoking cigars. Why is this so unbelievable now?

BTW, The UK ran the world's largest empire and until recently this was in living memory.

> What I see instead is the other side of Hanlon’s razor —incompetence— coupled with a political class riven with pockets of self-interest, and very few seemingly with an intellectual hypothesis to explain the UK’s current predicament, or to chart a path out of it.

Hanlon's razor IMO is nonsense. It is honestly believe it was invented so people could explain away their malice.

Anyone who is relatively intelligent will work at out some point, that if they don't want to do something they can passively aggressively work against the authority while working withing the rules. My father (who builds luxury yachts and is near retirement) was telling me how he maliciously complies with various companies rules to make his superior's life more difficult, this is a way to get back at them for their poor planning.

Even if you accept that Hanlon's razor is mostly true. It cannot be applied when you are dealing with political actors. Political actors, the media and anything related are literally trying to manipulate you. In fact it is a good rule that whatever they tell you that it is, assume the opposite and that is typically true.