The tightening of the ratchet by the Statists

A few years back ... maybe even a decade or more ago ... I was speaking with my mate in Russia about how things were.  There was no need to remind him of the secret police and the climate of "denunciation" which meant that you watched your words ... very, very carefully.

In every town, in every kvartel or subsection of a huge block of houses bounded by main roads, were all sorts of things ... a crisscross of narrow lanes, open play areas with playing equipment and railings for beating rugs ... and always, near the school, the little office where you went to denounce your neighbour for absolutely anything at all.  Could be that he/she walked past you offensively.

Which then kicked off a bureaucratic nightmare for the accused. Paperwork was the least of it ... the main issue was that the laws were so many, so extensive, so overlapping, that not only could anything at all be a pretext for "the visit" (as in Terry Gilliam's "Brazil") of the equivalent of the Stasi but it was actually impossible by then to keep the law at all ... one law conflicted with another and so they had you. In complying with one traffic regulation, you could well be breaking another.

This was still so in my time there ... there was a particular corner near the city which the police watched by rotation and it meant that to get by some parked cars and the near side of a tram, you, by definition, had broken two or three laws or regulations.  They could have you if they wished but mostly they did not wish.

Unless they were on a revenue drive that week or they needed their quota by month end.

Anyway, I said we in the west were approaching that point, maybe around 2010-12, following on from Gordo's RIPA extensions and that the Tories had no intention whatever of reining in such excesses. I'd blogged about it, losing many Conservative party friends in the process.  My mate over there was in denial and comparatively (the USSR had had quite a head start), he had a point but it was certainly heading in that direction here ... the buzzword we used at the time was Statism ... and thus Orphans was born on WordPress.

Then I watched as the Libertarian Party itself ripped itself to pieces over a sheer impossibility. The issue was that the anarchist end, though in denial, were for "don't dare try to stop anything whatever I do, think or say, for any reason, in other words do as thou wilt" ... through to the more small "c" conservative classical liberalism, anti-statist, which nevertheless recognised "some" constraints of "harm to others".  The example Inused was your next door neighbour blasting music and partying to 3 a.m. every night, when you yourself had to work next morning.

Softspoken classical liberals called it "respect" and "disrespect", respectively.  And now here's the next turn of the ratchet. Interestingly, Kemisabi was the preferred choice for PM of a close friend and colleague, on libertarian grounds. Hmmmmm.

https://dailysceptic.org/2023/02/26/new-harassment-laws-will-turn-business-owners-into-banter-police/

The Government is introducing new legislation aimed at protecting employees from harassment in the workplace.

But critics fear the change will have far-reaching consequences for free speech and will lead to employers having a “legitimate legal interest in policing what members of the public say”.

An amendment to the Equality Act, backed by ministers, will make employers liable for third-party harassment – meaning from members of the public, as well as from their fellow staff members.

Under clause one of the Bill, employers will be required to take “all reasonable steps” to protect their employees from harassment of any kind, and failure to do so will leave them vulnerable to being sued by their employees in the Employment Tribunal.

The ratchet lock is never released in a statist society, it's only ever paused, pending a more conducive time to give it another wind.