David Harrison

Everything is pretend now From a comment under my post on string theory: I work in finance. Some time ago an invoice crossed my desk. A client in property rental had paid a consulting firm to help one of his buildings get an EU eco-certificate. They planted some trees. They put bees on the roof. Certificate granted – and with it, better access to EU-linked financing. Follow the chain. Someone invented the certificate, and got paid for it. Someone founded a consultancy to help you obtain it, and gets paid for it. Someone audits whether you deserve it, and gets paid for it. And finally the owner pays to modify the building so it fits the boxes. Everyone has a job. Everyone has an invoice. GDP goes up. And nothing was produced. Not one more flat, not a better roof, not a cheaper rent. The bees are not there for honey. They are there for the certificate. This is how the EU’s soft power works. No need to force a law through, with a vote, a debate, a court. Just attach a condition to the money. Follow our recommendations, collect our certificates – or no financing, no subsidies, and you can’t compete with those who did. You are free. Just not funded. A law you can fight – in court, at the next election. A condition on money you can only accept, or lose. Power without a signature, without accountability, without anyone to vote out. The same with universities: research follows the grant, and the grant follows the agenda. The same with cities. We saw it in Polish towns where councillors had to revoke resolutions – "legally meaningless", they were told – because EU funds were on the line. If it was meaningless, why the threat? Because it was never about the law. It was about who decides. Everything is pretend now. Pretend ecology – bees for paperwork. Pretend science – theories that can never be wrong. Pretend self-government – councils that vote until the money disagrees. Pretend work – reports nobody reads, written to satisfy rules nobody needed, checked by people whose job is checking. Pointless? Not for everyone. It keeps posts. It keeps positions. It keeps the structure of power standing and the people inside it paid. That is its real product. The only thing the system produces efficiently is more of itself. And someone pays for all of it. Not Brussels – the tenant, in the rent. The buyer, in the price. The worker, in the tax. Every pretend job is carried on the back of a real one. Meanwhile a young couple does the maths and stops at two children. Often at one. The building can afford bees on its roof. The family can’t afford a third child under its own. That is what rot looks like. Not collapse – collapse is at least honest. Rot is a structure that still stands, still issues certificates, still hires consultants, while the inside goes hollow. Green on the outside, like a tree. Everything is pretend now – except the decline. That one is real, and it compounds. And a compounding decline ends up going pretty quickly.