The Prime Minister has expressed the hope of concluding within the current calendar year the negotiations aimed at defining the relationship between the UK and the EU for the future. [...] Thirdly, to further the implementation of the general will, the populist credo generally favours a strong State.11 By the same token, it opposes, as erosions of the power of the people and of the State protecting it, globalisation, free trade, supra-national and international organisations (such as the EU, the Council of Europe and NATO) and immigration into the country in numbers. [...] Economically, one seeks the optimal trade-off between the cost of information, the cost of appropriate self-protective measures and the reduction of the cost of the threat they entail.28 The cost of informing oneself varies amongst individuals and is likely to be highest amongst the least educated. [...] The first one starts with the Industrial Revolution in England, around 1770, mechanising the cotton industry and introducing the first machines; for the distribution of the new products, it led to the digging of canals and the building of toll roads. [...] Each golden age brings a change in the predominant lifestyle to which aspire the enlightened minds: the great leap in the beginning of the 19th century, the Victorian Age in the middle of that century and the Belle Époque towards its end, the American Dream after the Second World War.
- Pages
- 23
- Published in
- Canada
