BRAZILIFICATION - KNOW FUTURE.

Brazilification, vb. The widening gulf between the rich and the poor and the accompanying dissapearance of the middle classes.

(Douglas Coupland, Generation X)

Last night I witnessed my first major power cut. It wasn't in my area, but the district next door; a small community by the name of St. Werburgh's. First thing I noticed (I was on my way home) was that the subways' lights were off. This I am used to- I guess the Council figures the muggers need more incentive. Then I noticed something else- the motorway lights were out. Somewhere, I could hear alarms; and coming from St. Werburghs there was an overwhelming lack of light.

No streetlights. No house lights; odd bits of emergency lighting. No traffic lights; dead Belisha beacons and pelican crossings like altars to obsolete gods. Burglar alarms going off everywhere. I doubt if anyone in that part of town got a minute's sleep; although of course you couldn't tell as, well, the electric was off. And as I left the power cut zone, the areas where there was service seemed to come back in ragged bits; you'd have streetlights for a block, then none, but business premises with lights; then streetlights but dead business premises, the wailing of an alarm and a flickering emergency light.

All in all, another ordinary night in the future.

The point about living in a world in which the tragedy of the commons is universalized is precisely that; everything public falls apart. The roads in my native city are so bad that people regularly don't notice when their vehicles are falling apart; they hear a knock or start to skid around a bit, and just assume they've hit a rough patch of road, i.e. all of it. Buildings, neighbourhoods, entire districts are starting to fall out of use, to become abandoned. The yuppie flats and new corporate HQ's out in Temple Back look more brave and sad by the minute; each one is bordered by facades of blue barricades, behind which, yep, you've guessed it, the ever present wasteland, the bouganvillia, the derelict city...

I'm amazed the computer and phone networks still work, to be honest. I think a lot of it has to do with the personal commitment of the engineers to keeping them going, even against the wishes of management if need be; remember that tall tale about the telephone and computer engineers barricading themselves into a building for a couple of weeks, 'cause the bailiffs wanted to go in and basically just switch off half the internet? It's probably true.

I digress... My city is falling to bits. It is a victim of Brazilification- the bringing in to line of Western societies with Brazil by free market lunatics. If London is Britain's answer to New York, then Bristol is Britain's answer to Rio De Janeiro. A phsysically and socially disintigrating zone in which time actually seems to be flowing backwards. Social provision- abandoned. No-one can get council housing; all the state does about this is to blame immigrants. Divide and rule.

Law and order is a joke- things are a little better since the cops started stalking the dodgy areas with submachine-guns, but that's pretty much the kind of level things are at. This town's the main import zone for crack into the UK, and there's very little you can do about that short of invading Latin America and the Carribean.

Perhaps the most chilling aspect of the Brazilification of my home town is the emerging sanitation problems; rats and mice breeding like locusts in the abandoned properties, spreading disease, you see them crossing the streets like well-trained dogs. And the sewers keep backing up- not catastrophically as yet, but enough that you find the disgusting stench of week old feces following you down the street on a regular basis. Of, course, nobody gives a shit, because, yep, that's right, public health isn't part of the program for Bristol's economic growth.

Now this just sounds like somebody complaining and bitching about the misfortunes of their little town, but actually there really is more to it. Brazilification isn't something that just happens; it's something that's done to a region, sometimes at a very local level, as with the cutting of the city's budget (despite the highest local taxes in the country) until the housing system collapses and the roads go and the sewers explode- sometimes as a result of global conditions, like Bristol being the UK's premier drug port.

But it isn't like the situation in Birmingham, say, where there is a tremendous amount of poverty and political incompetence and corruption, but basically everyone gets their dues, the roads are fixed and the trains run on time. There are yuppy apartments and stuff, sure, but at least this reflects an actual demand. What kind of Yuppie would want to come live in this shithole?

What's happened here is far more disturbing. It's been done to us, as I said, and by a Labour council at that (although it is now hung); and it's telling that they've been spewing the same sort of crap as their masters in central government- we have to be even more reactionary than the Conservatives because.... (insert rationalisation here).

Basically, what has happened in Bristol, will very very soon be happening everywhere. The only thing that can stop it is if people like you, dear reader, get off your arses and put a stop to it.

The government are always trying to make out that the collapse of our society is a natural process, perhaps at worst a result of people's inherent selfishness, and that their policies- or rather, the policies of the businessmen who allowed them to be elected - have nothing to do with it. (It is a precept of this column that big business has enormous and undue influence on the democratic process, to the point where we're like a Communist country but without the social goodies- perhaps I'll do another column on that soon)

The first thing the informed citizen must remember is that the society-falling-apart-due-to-people-being-bad number is a fat lie. Call me boring and old fashioned but Original Sin has no part in modern political discourse. Cause and effect, however, does.

If you spend twenty five years cutting wages and welfare, you are going to get enormous slums which are breeding grounds for crime. If you cut city budgets year on year because you've spent all the money on crack, or whatever, you're gonna get cities that are falling apart at the seams. This is not an accident.

It is the result of an application of monetarist economic theory. One of the tenents of this theory is that since third world countries have higher growth rates than developed countries, the way to increase growth in the developed world is to turn back the clock there; to primitivize and smash up the economy so that there is more room for growth.

So you have situations like in the US, where there is no social provision and people still do the jobs of vending machines, because the US economic model is to have a low-tech, low wage economy. And you have entire regions like Europe where American economic theorists are swiftly smashing up the economy on a state by state basis... I think they've got as far as Germany now.

This is the future. It can be averted. It is still possible to cause massive upsets for the system on a local level, simply because the electoral system on small scales is too complex for the big corporations to fully control as yet, at least in the UK. So you have ex-anarchists and guys in gorrila suits and crazed robocops running for mayor, and actually getting somewhere. If you have such a candidate running in your home prefecture- unless they're actually running for a fascist party, obviously- bloody well vote for them. If you're a disgusted Councillor- go independant! Your constituents will thank you at the ballot box.

Most importantly, use your vote because you can. They're already starting to talk about limiting democracy- to come right out in the open and tell us that, sorry, but we are now an authoritarian regime. They're already starting to say things like "What are the limits of democratic dissent?" on TV (Newsnight, 11/11/03. Before the Bush Visit protests), it's inevitable that we will lose more and more of our rights as time goes on. Blair has already proposed banning "frivoulous" candidates from running in elctions, as well as raising the deposit money you need to put down to become a candidate. If we don't assert our rights, nobody who isn't a corporate shill will be allowed to run in an election. Full stop.

After all, the point of their globalisation isn't to make everywhere like Orange County, California; after all, we could live with that. It's to make everywhere less like America or Europe or China or Russia or wherever... and more like Brazil.

Bad News Wade

HOME