willbank

Omarchy 4.5 is finally here! Traditional desktop mode, M1/M2/M3/Neo compatibility, 50 languages, 7-second installs, and a million other features, fixes, and improvements. omarchy.org/news/2026/11/oma…

BBC suspends Civil Service fact-checking scheme after Telegraph investigation telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10…

The WSJ starting to admit the obvious: Western democracy when combined with fiscally negative immigration and a generous welfare state, inexorably creates a solvency crisis. (they didn't mention the immigration part but it's an essential ingredient in the toxic mix) their words are unusually stark: > It’s also a litmus test of a pressing question facing the West: Is it possible for political leaders to rein in spending on ever expanding welfare states? So far, the answer seems to be no, increasing the chances that countries like Britain are inching toward a financial reckoning. the welfare state + open borders model is a clear democracy failure mode and there's no obvious way out. no western European nation will reform pensions or entitlements. they are actually fundamentally incapable of doing what must be done. (the immigration aspect is virtual corollary to democracy because it creates incentives for the left to import reliable voters, so at least part of the time immigration is virtually unfettered.) the UK, with maximum, unending immigration, an aging and shrinking workforce, a tiny and overexploited base of taxpayer paypigs, highly financialized service / financial industry, a legacy of welfare as political payoffs to disenfranchised groups, an inability to cut pensions, and a stagnant, is the poster child for this disease and the worst affected but by no means the only nation in this predicament. the UK's grim fiscal state is the future of every western nation, unless something changes dramatically. aging population + increasingly discouraged working-age adults + highly mobile capital & elites that simply leave under onerous tax regimes + mass and unending fiscally negative immigration + expensive decarbonization and deindustralization + a left wing that is totally committed to immigration, over all else + a total inability to cut entitlements = fiscal crisis and eventual default in the end, the wealthy and the entrepreneur class that actually power growth will simply leave to escape the tightening tax noose. the government will become increasingly reliant on the middle/upper middle professional classes who lack the ability to leave, completely eliminating any motive to be entrepreneurial or take risks. the economy will become increasingly torpid as dynamism vanishes. the left will continue to gain power due to slow electoral build of immigration and will continue to honor their side of the deal, which is neverending handouts to fiscally useless electoral client groups. case studies like south africa, venezuela and lebanon show us that life can get worse, and worse, and worse, and worse and worse. things getting extremely bad are not a guarantee that they won't continue to get worse. don't be fooled by anticipating a sudden realization among political elites that they have employed the wrong formula. things can just get steadily worse for decades and decades with no escaping the slide. if I had to guess, I would venture that if no MAJOR (and I'm talking _major_) political reform occurs in western Europe, the continent will enter a sovereign debt crisis in the coming decade, standards of living will collapse, life expectancy will collapse, entitlements will be ravaged. I anticipate something akin to the effect that the collapse of the Soviet Union had on the local population, or worse. politics will be polarized between the ultraright and far left, each with their own radical solution to the problem (extirpating immigrants, versus actual socialism). I don't know which of the two will prevail. neither the right nor the left is willing to reform entitlements, which is the biggest problem, and so the market will do it for them. the US may escape their fate, but I am not particularly optimistic it will. our demographics and willingness to do hard things (on immigration, eg) are marginally better, but our spending and fraud-based entitlement economy is almost just as bad. no major party will even contemplate uttering that boomer luxury communism must end eventually. it's not even a topic in the midterms nor will it be in '28. the productivity boost from AI might grant European nations a slight reprieve in the medium term, but it wont salvage their bleak fiscal situation in the end. this is because almost no European nation controls the industrial inputs to AI (beyond ASML), so their gain is limited to the productivity uplift from deployment of the technology, while they remain vassals to the nations which actually control the deeper stack. moreover, a GDP and tax revenue boost from AI can easily be outspent. these nations have a spending problem, not a revenue problem. they can always dream up utterly farcical new handout schemes, like the UK's "motability". additionally, while AI creates a legion of highly productive entrepreneurs, they will all tax optimize and the benefits of new firms will largely not be captured by their respective governments. capital and startups are more portable than they have ever been. AI simply accelerates the pareto-ization of the economy whereby a shrinking minority of founders produces more value whilst more and more are idle and depend on handouts from the productive few. however, capital and human capital mobility destroys this fragile arrangement and strips the idle many of their benefactors. AI buys Western Europe at most a few years of delay to the inevitable crisis.

Angela Rayner’s new policy on ‘Empty Dwelling Management Orders’ is one of the most outrageous, authoritarian overreaches by a British government ever. It gives the state the power to confiscate private property if left unoccupied for six months. It is literally legalised theft and yet the left-wing media luvvies lapped up her party conference speech and let it slip by without so much as a whimper of protest. When people realise how pernicious Rayner’s ‘Empty Dwelling Management Orders’ are, the inevitable outcry will be too late. First and foremost, it will be the state that decides if your house is ripe for confiscation. The local council will deploy ‘Empty Homes Officers’, for which there is about to be a recruitment drive, who will spy on your property. These state snoops will visit your property, check your mail, take photos of your house and obtain your water and energy usage.  Armed with this information, like some second-rate private investigator, build a case on whether you’ve been living there.   Then when the state seizes your property and rents it out, who gets the payments? You guessed it, it goes directly to the local council. And they get to decide if they want to use the rent for repairs, building works and any health-and-safety upgrades to make the house habitable. They will then take out any money needed to cover the council's letting agent fees and property management costs. Only then, if there is anything left, will the actual owner get something.   The state will be able to confiscate your property for seven years.    Of course, the property owner will still be responsible for paying the mortgage if there is one - even if they are getting no income. The council, despite taking the rent, won’t cover the mortgage payments.  But should this lead to a default, the bank can repossess the property, so the owner will potentially lose everything. That isn’t the end of the scandal, because should the tenant, which the council found, stop paying rent, the council can’t evict them as they have full legal tenancy rights. Leaving the property owner with even fewer rights than the non-rent paying tenant.    People have complicated lives which means they may end up with an empty property - for example if an elderly parent dies, a messy divorce or a house you hoped you could one day do up.   Housing Secretary, Angela Rayner, too has a complicated housing arrangement. She divides her time across three accommodations - her Westminster one, her constituency home in Ashton-under-Lyne, and her new controversial Hove apartment (the one she didn’t pay full stamp duty on over which she had to resign).   No doubt the state won’t be looking to seize her private property.  In this Socialist nightmare we are living through, some are always more equal than others.

Two deeply symbolic & disturbing events over the last 24 hours: 1. The French & British shepherd 100+ illegal migrants into Britain. The authorities' only action is to impose a WW2 'papers please' dispersal order on an entire town to stop protest. thetimes.com/article/a1f4581…