Thread by @z_rose

Let’s do some good old fashioned live tweeting!

Today: capitalism and civilisation with
@ntinatzouvala
and public finance/parliamentary constitutionalism with Will missed-his-surname. #cipl

Ntina: lawyers don’t define concepts, they call on concepts to justify arguments. So the concept of civilisation isn’t one that lawyers control.

Will: why are the institutions of public finance so similar in nations where English is spoken?

Ntina: the core of the book is that ‘civilisation’ is an argumentative pattern in international law, not a concept.

2 concepts: 1. The logic of improvement 2. The logic of biology.

The second infinitely defers the promise of the first.

The internal instability is: if you are determining admission to the club, you are bestowing on yourself the role of judge.

Capitalism homogenises people, but also differentiates - into hierarchies.

Capitalism is powerful enough to create the schism but not powerful enough to resolve it.

Between equal states, force decides.

Law is not rules, it’s argumentative practice. Therefore it can never be transparent.

What a great question for a researcher:

‘What about this was bothering you?’

Will: the idea that parliament controls public money.

The UK bank bailouts - £24 billion - were done in violation of (missed the name of the act). So the parliament did not, in fact, control the public money.

Before WW1, all government (and spending) is military. Civil govt is tiny.

WW1: massively extractive taxation

WW2: welfare state - on extractive tax base

Then, inversion. Spending public money becomes what government *does*.

Democratic politics becomes less and less involved in the spending of public money.

Parliament doesn’t vote on whether to fund the NHS every year.

It may be incompatible to have Both a welfare state and parliamentary democracy at the same time.