Countries must work together on managing populations and resources evenly
This is a topic that drives me insane, and has done for years. Many people are often quick to brush off any attempt to characterise the climate crisis as an overpopulation crisis (which it is). They want to say that population isn’t a problem at all. They insist that if the wealth accumulation of the richest people in the world, and their gargantuan consumption habits were curtailed; then that would be enough to stop the climate crisis getting out of control. I’ll come back to this shortly to discuss why. First, I will briefly cover why promotion of what we could reasonably at this point call traditional climate policies is foolish.
We’re all familiar with talk about recycling, choosing to fly less and make individual decisions. We’ve been told for decades about how small things like these, plus renewable energy and electric powered everything will be enough to bring the raging climate under control; without the vast majority of us having to change our lifestyles at all. These days it seems like they mainly advocate for easy measures like putting solar panels on our roofs and plugging in our private cars rather than filling them with explosive, fossil derived liquid. It’s all very simple stuff. They try to not scare the public.
I’m not going to go to deep into why basic green technology solutions, individual small choices, and maybe vegan diets are not enough by themselves to solve the climate crisis in this article. It’s frankly a boring topic that’s been done to death. I’ve talked a lot previously about why we need to reimagine how we’re going to live in future in every way. Just modifying how we already do things today, but powering the same things with electricity, is obviously not going to cut it. The changes we now need to implement in order to make a dent in the crisis will blow your mind if you haven’t considered this before.
As a very quick recap of my ideas from previous articles, this means ideas along the lines of, for example:
Smaller homes and communal rather than private land
A vegetarian (and eventually vegan) food system which takes the individual choice (to buy expensive organic produce) away from citizens, and makes food high quality, delicious, and universally available and affordable.
No private cars (unless absolutely necessary)
Less personal stuff and pointless junk
Items such as tools that are shared in communities and built to last
Better public transport, but also a focus on less travel; and slower travel when we do go places
Severely restricted long distance travel (except for family emergencies etc)
The concept of tourism as we know it being redefined completely
Now that’s out of the way, and we’re clear that only massive changes to our consumption habits are necessary to even touch the sides of this crisis; I want to bring population back in.
Why the population critics are so wrong
Not only do these people and organisations deny that the current global population is a catastrophic problem for the climate; they don’t even acknowledge the need for almost all of us to make massive changes to our consumption habits and way of life.
Anyone who’s placing responsibility for this entire crisis at the feet of the rich, while making everyone else feel excused from having to act, is at best irresponsible, and at worst, downright dangerous. We need as a society and as a world to get serious now about how bad things are; how bad they’re going to get even if we start doing everything right; and then we need to figure out the next practical steps that all of us can take toegther.
I hate the rich as much as anyone. But it’s way too easy to blame them and go about our own overly consumptive lives in blissful ignorance while the world around us goes to shit. That’s the last thing we can afford to do now. We’ve had enough of greed and indivualistic thinking. It’s time for unselfishness and collectivist thinking to take over.
I highly recommend watching GREENWASHED, the excellent film on this subject, released last year by Dr Sofia Pineda Ochoa on YouTube. It gets deep into the statistics and the climate situation (although things will have worsened significantly in the year or so since it was made). It features well known experts on the natural world like Chris Packham, as well as climate, population and economic experts. They did their homework so well that it felt unnecessary for me to do a bunch of my own research for a blog that hardly anyone is going to read anyway. The vast majority of people in 2026 don’t care to read a thoroughly researched piece about an important topic. Let’s be honest. You and me are the odd ones out who still care about this stuff.
One statistic from the film that really amazed me was the calculation by Cambridge University based Ecological economist Partha Dasgupta that the Earth could sustainably carry 3.3 billion people if every single person was on a salary of $20k.
Pretty much anyone should be able to grasp that 3.3 billion people (a bit less than a third of the current global population), each consuming the global average of someone on that kind of low income (from a western perspective), is a very, very long way away from where we currently are. And it’s very obviously not possible to achieve that just by forcing the richest people’s consumption down to the levels of the upper-middle class as it exists now for example.
It requires, as I said earlier, a total reimagining of every element of how we live our lives and how our societies function. Nothing less than total transformation will suffice. Anyone who says anything other than that, is frankly full of shit.
And that’s just people who advocate for what I call the traditional type of climate action I mentioned earlier. The mainstream discourse around population is actually dominated by the false talking point that low birthrates in many countries threaten our existence and our economies. Obviously these types of people want GDP growth for their ideologies and their own personal bank balances. But I’m far from convinced that a lower birthrate will even lead to lower GDP at this point, because of the advance of robotics and AI. Even setting aside immigration. So their obsession with birth rates is probably more down to stupidity and the typical fear associated with the conservative psyche than anything actually real. Also, the idea that a decreasing birthrate would lead to our nationalities ceasing to exist in future is just for the birds. It wasn’t that long ago that the UK population was approximately 20 million less than it is today. According to the ONS, it was 50,381,500 in 1950 (which is impressively specific). No one back then was saying our population was too small to do what we needed to do. No one was worried about the British identity disappearing. No one probably even thought about it.
To sum up – The climate crisis is now so severe that we need to decide to have significantly fewer kids as humanity; and we need to all change the way we live dramatically (but also for the better). Not just the rich. All of us.
Anyone who says anything different is either ignorant, or lying to you. It’s really that simple.
I’m not a streamer myself, but I’ve always been a fan of what I perceive to be the authentic nature of live streaming as a medium. Especially when it’s coming from an individual or small organisation, rather than from mainstream media or a corporate entity. It’s the same when it comes to recorded videos on YouTube too. Sometimes complex editing and additional graphics are important. But often times, one unedited take of one person in a room talking can be the most effective means of communicating a message; and definitely the most authentic. Streaming frequently has moments like this, and that’s a big reason why I’m drawn to it. Along with it being off-the-cuff in the same way an unedited video would be. Come to think of it, you very rarely see unedited YouTube videos these days. We live in a time of excessive editing and short, snappy videos (although the attention spans are getting too short even for these to be effective). You very rarely get someone talking in a room for 30 minutes, but you do in the streaming world. And it’s always going to be that way; because even the streamers who pack the most activities into their streams are going to have quiet moments. Times when they’re travelling to a different location, or in the hotel room, or when setting up the next scheduled highlight of the day. You can’t always be doing an activity during a 12 hour stream.
The problem with streaming though is that while you gain in simplicity and authenticity, you lose in terms of having to put up with the worst of individualism and capitalism on the internet. If you look at platforms like Twitch and Kick; especially these days, you’re unlikely to see much other than people with “dono goals” for a trip, or a car, or some other item they’d like to have but don’t really need. And even if they need it, they shouldn’t be directly asking the chat to pay for it. There’s a lot of entitlement. A lot of fake, shameless people, and very little authenticity going on aside from those in-between moments – though there is significant variation. And it seems like this dominant form of streaming impacts practically everyone in some form. There have been countless examples of people who start out very innocent, nice and humble; who end up years later poisoned by the toxic, right wing streaming culture.
It’s like reverse busking. If you’re busking, you don’t ask passers-by to pay you money before you start playing. You play your music and people donate if they like it. Streamers should know this better than anyone else, because quite a few of them are busking musicians / performers themselves. But when they get home, they forget that, and put up a progress bar asking for $4000 to pay for their next overseas trip.
Of course, living in the age of extreme neoliberalism that we do, earning money is much harder than ever before. So I understand the sponsorships, the dono goals, and the constant pushing for more subs to some extent. And especially gifted subs given the extreme nature of inequality in 2026. It’s close to impossible for small streamers to get by without millionaires making regular, sizeable contributions. Especially if they’re not living with their parents. So I do sympathise somewhat, depending on the streamer in question and how they operate. Despite the fact that I hate a lot of what goes on, and how dumbed down and individualistic everything has become.
But what do you do if you’re like me personality and values wise, and you also want to stream? How do you square that circle?
I think the first thing you would have to do is be ok with never having much money (even less than the streamers scraping by with support from rich individuals and corporate sponsors). If you’re an INFP or similar personality type like I am; then that’s probably not going to be a problem to accept. Although, having said that, some INFPs end up with more libertarian politics than socialist. I suppose those people should probably go elsewhere if they’re reading this. It’s unlikely to be for you. Along with any other committed right wingers who have stumbled on this article.
As far as how you actually run a stream ethically, once you’ve decided on doing so; you have the following areas to consider:
Category
Monetisation
Community / Culture
These are the main, most important elements of an ethical stream that come to my mind. It’s perhaps not an exhaustive list. But these three cover more than enough to make a socialist / communist feel as comfortable streaming on Twitch or similar platform as you’re ever going to be in this end-stage neoliberal world.
While I personally have no experience of streaming, I have watched a lot of different streams and streamers, and I’ve learned a lot about the capitalist streaming world and how to make the best of it while maintaining your dignity. Therefore I hope I can offer some useful tips on how to go about it.
Category
While you could stream in an ethical way playing games or as a kind of local IRL streamer; depending on where you go, how you get there, and what you do there; it would be next to impossible to be an IRL streamer who travels frequently. Especially if it involves flying. Someone like Jinnytty couldn’t maintain her current jet-setting lifestyle while trying to be ethical and sustainably minded. In the current paradigm, you’d be relying on huge individual donations, and would obviously be responsible for massive emissions created by flying, buying and replacing items you frequently consume, break or lose. The types of things you don’t need to buy or replace anywhere near as frequently when you stay more local to where you live.
As far as particularly suitable categories in order to ethically stream, here are a few that come to mind.
Socialist politics
Local independent news / citizen journalism
ASMR
Music
Art
Other creative pursuits
Socialist politics is an obvious one, because that’s kind of what someone like Hasan Piker already does as one of the biggest streamers in the world. I wouldn’t personally promote socialism while living in a mansion, but that’s a personal choice. I don’t want to harp on that point. Fundamentally, Hasan does a great job these days, with a lot of pressure on his shoulders as almost the sole voice of the left in the mainstream. He eliminated ads on his channel, and he doesn’t do any kinds of dono goals or rewards for gift subs or anything like that. He just gets on with the job and streams for 8 hours a day. In terms of the stream itself, it’s hard to fault it. He did obviously run ads before, so I would personally criticise that as a socialist / communist. It’s wasn’t exactly a decision to agonise over by the time he made it; when he was getting so many subs during the broadcasts. Clearly he doesn’t need the ad revenue these days. But I did hear anecdotally that the biggest streamer on Twitch was running 20 minute ads per hour, which I believe is the highest you can select. That’s the same as big budget TV broadcasts run. Clearly that shows a huge ideological divide in favour of Hasan. So even if I would not use ads from the beginning, there are people hugely worse than Piker, and clearly operating in a greedy fashion. In terms of travel, he does fly quite a lot, but when it’s for something as important as political events, speeches and campaigning, I think it’s clearly justifiable. Even from my perspective, as someone who doesn’t fly and tries to reduce my own consumption as much as I can.
The other categories I mentioned are relatively affordable, low consumption, and don’t require significant carbon-intensive travel. While ASMR and local journalism don’t really require significant investment – A pretty basic microphone and camera is ok for ASMR; and a phone and a bicycle for local / citizen journalism; music and other artistic endeavors do tend to cost quite a bit of money for instruments, computers, audio equipment, additional cameras, amps, headphones – maybe even a place to play.
I tend to always give music and the arts in general a pass when it comes to sustainability and consumption. I think more art in the world is always a good thing. Especially when right wingers across the world (and especially in the UK) are constantly defunding and attacking it. I’m more willing to compromise my principles for the arts than in any other area. For that reason, I’m more accepting of different methods of monetisation too.
Monetisation
There’s a South Korean all-female rock (and most other genres) band / streamer group. They stream almost every day on YouTube as well as a couple of Korean platforms I’m not familiar with. Most of their streams seem to be with 1 or 2 of the band members; but sometimes they do full band streams, local IRL streams with all the members, and also upload videos of them performing covers of various songs. Some of these may not be directly captured from the live stream though. I’m not entirely sure. Because of the time zone difference, I’ve not managed to see them performing a cover live yet.
But even if none of their covers are performed live on stream, the point still stands that music is an expensive endeavor, and so it justifies additional forms of monetisation that I would otherwise be opposed to. For example, they have channel memberships on YouTube, and some of the tiers are relatively pricey compared to some others I’ve seen. It also places previous livestreams and some other exclusive videos behind a paywall. Normally, I would always want to avoid paywalling anything, and balk at the idea of relying on wealthier people. But at least the funding is coming from individuals directly supporting the streamer(s). And it also means you don’t have to go down the corporate sponsorship route, which is far worse. And for a band that aren’t recording and releasing their own music in the traditional way – at least not yet, it makes the most sense. Especially because ad revenue seems to be poor these days on neoliberal platforms. It’s not nearly enough to support smaller channels. This is why we’ve seen the rise of Patreon, and later YouTube Memberships in response, as a away of fixing their own platform, and make it viable for smaller creators.
To provide a more idealistic model that I myself might consider if I ever got into political streaming; I think the first thing I’d do would be to eliminate or discourage methods of donation which promote inequality as being a good thing. I would want all of my donors to be paying the same amount, or nothing at all. Most streamers I’ve seen use external services connected to their Twitch accounts, such as Streamlabs, Stream Elements (which I’ll get back to later), Prism or Toonation. Sometimes 2 or 3 of these at once. These allow you to bypass Twitch’s virtual currency, Bits, and donate directly with actual money. These offer significantly lower fees as well for the streamer.
I would ideally prefer to avoid using these external platforms, just for the sake of simplicity, and to make it harder for people to donate larger amounts. But realistically, I’d have to choose one to use in addition to Twitch Subs and Bits. At the same time being clear that I want to discourage donations larger than $5-10 or so. You have to take into account the much larger cut Twitch takes – 30% for Bits and 50% for Subs! – except for big streamers who get a 70 / 30 split. This should be reversed. Small streamers should get a bigger share because they actually need it. This is compared to other donation options (whose cut is around 3%!). It is also the case that Twitch have to pay for the actual running of the streams, whereas the others don’t have anything like those costs of operation. Taking that into consideration, I kind of feel a bit bad for Twitch, since there’s not much they can do about it. If they were to ban external payment integrations and alerts, people would probably just use those external services anyway, but without alerts. I don’t think they could push streamers into using their internal system, unless they provide perks that are fair for everyone, not just large streamers. I’m not usually one to defend corporations. Especially those owned by Amazon. But in this case, it definitely isn’t a fair playing field.
Obviously, if we ever get a socialist / communist system and you could nationalise Twitch, all of these problems would go away. But for now, they have an in-built disadvantage, and it’d take significant smart design to mitigate this. They’ve made a small attempt at this with the Hype Train mechanic, which incentivises the chat to raise the level by donating more subs and Bits. When combined with other external layers, such as this interactive AI music generator I’ve seen being used by HAchubby in particular; it can be extremely effective in giving the chat an incentive to keep donating Twitch currency to reach higher levels and unlock new songs (the lyrics of which are based on AI learning from what streamers say, and from the chat’s topic and genre suggestions; and therefore can be very entertaining). The problem is that Twitch don’t offer streamers any bonuses for reaching higher levels, other than the value of the subs and Bits themselves. They need to go much further and make it so higher levels of Hype Trains at least reward streamers with a bigger cut of the donations and subs. And again, make it a bigger effect for smaller streamers. This would help to offset the fact that Hype Trains inherently disadvantage smaller streamers who don’t tend to receive flurries of subs and Bits like larger streamers do.
It’s another instance in which as a socialist, ethically minded streamer, you just have to make the best of the imperfect situation we currently have.
TTS (text-to-speech) is a very commonly used function for Twitch monetisation, which incorporates the donation system via Bits, or the external payment services, to allow people to pay usually $2-3 and have their message read out by a very strange British male computer voice, from the era before modern AI voices. Toonation (Korean service) and some others also give you many different AI voices to choose from, rather than the default. TTS can be fun and adds something unique to Twitch and similar streaming services, that set them apart from other types of live streaming. Namely the vertical video apps, like TikTok and Bigo Live. In my research for this piece, I connected my Twitch account to Stream Elements. I found that not only can you restrict the maximum donation amount via their tipping interface; but you can also set up a custom TTS using channel points, via their “Stream shop” menu. This was much easier and more comprehensive than I was expecting, and I would definitely use it myself if I was going to actually stream. I’m tempted to try out these tools and their overlay designer. Maybe one day I’ll get around to it. I was surprised how intuitive it was compared to even Stream Labs and other tools I’ve previously played around with. Based on everything I’ve seen of the other external payment and platform services, Stream Elements seems to be the most convenient and beginner friendly. I really appreciate the ability to set a maximum donation amount in particular.
As far as so called “Mission Roulette” and other similar games, in which viewers donate usually larger amounts of money, in order to have a random roulette style draw of forfeits for the streamer; it’s unfortunately not so easy. The idea of it is to do give the streamer an embarrassing forfeit they have to do either on the spot, such as exercise, sing, dance etc – or bigger challenges, like 24 hour streams or subathons; albeit with a low chance of them being selected. This can be entertaining, but I also don’t know how you would implement it for a low cost without it going off constantly. There are things you can do with channel points, but it’s definitely not as straightforward as it was with Stream Elements to set up small dollar tipping and channel point TTS. Streamer Bot seems to be the best option from my research, but it does take a lot of technical knowledge to set up. I wouldn’t try it myself after reading through their website for a while. But at least it’s an option if you really think your stream would benefit from this type of interactive functionality; and you don’t want to wait for someone else to make it user friendly. There’s no likelihood that Twitch will directly implement it under capitalism when there’s no financial incentive. But it’s good that you can make it work if you have the patience and skill.
Community / Culture
From my perspective, this is the easiest part. If you’re a clearly principled, socialist streamer, you’re naturally going to attract viewers with similar values. You see this across the board if you watch enough different streamers. The chat always ends up reflecting the personality of the streamer. Though this can also create problematic echo chambers.
You’ll probably also attract a lot of curious people (who could potentially learn socialist values) and hate-watchers too (if you’re doing politics specifically). But the haters will either get bored, or you and your moderators can take action against them. There are chat options such as follower only mode, or even subscriber only mode to experiment with, or implement temporarily. But failing that, you can mute or ban individuals if all else fails. I would rather not have to resort to bans. I’d prefer to engage with them, as long as they’re not being disingenuous. I’ve wasted a lot of time in my life arguing with, or trying to persuade disingenuous people. It’s a total waste of time. They twist everything you say into their preconceived world view. So definitely spend a bit of time figuring out if someone is genuinely open minded before wasting any further time on them. When you do come across someone who is willing to have their mind changed, it can be a really enjoyable experience. But it’s rare in 2026.
The other important thing to remember; going back to echo chambers; is to always refer to the facts, and not just take your chat’s word for something. Always critique yourself and have open conversations with your viewers. That way you can avoid the sort of toxic groupthink you see all over Twitch, on the right generally, and especially on platforms like Kick.
Conclusion
I don’t think the status quo has much longer to run. Viewers are tired of streamers pressuring them to give more in this reverse busking situation. I think viewers are also yearning for simplicity rather than grand productions, always chasing the biggest possible spectacle. That’s part of the reason Twitch surged in popularity during the pandemic lockdown years. People just wanted to feel a connection to someone to make them feel less lonely. A lot of the streams were just other people at home too, and they had record viewership.
The continued dependence on rich donors is also not tenable for much longer. Especially when a lot of streamers put VODs behind a subscriber paywall. Regular viewers won’t be able to afford to subscribe to more than a couple of channels. This means that if there’s a streamer you like to watch in a different time zone, and they go live when you’re asleep; you have to pay to catch up with the VOD. But you can’t (and shouldn’t have to) do that for every streamer you like. I’ve also seen streamers who have most of their viewers on the other side of the world, and yet they don’t make VODs available at all, which makes no sense to me. A large part of being a streamer to me is making yourself available to your viewers / community, rather than closed off from them. If you’re not comfortable sharing your past streams with the world, then streaming probably isn’t for you to begin with.
Streamers overwhelmingly focusing on their rich donors, who make it hard or impossible for the rest of their fans to access them, will almost certainly lose followers and relevancy. And there are too many people currently at risk of that scenario.
I really hope we see a new generation of streamers going about it in a similar way to what I’ve laid out in this article. I certainly don’t expect it to happen because of what I’ve written. But I definitely think we are going to see it – because frankly we’re pretty close to rock bottom now in terms of streamer ethics. Change to a more ethical and wholesome streaming experience is inevitable at this point. It won’t happen overnight, but it is coming sooner or later.
More and better public transport is key. Photo by Rodolfo Gaion on Pexels.com
I wrote four years ago about why we need to ban private cars. I thought at the time that the climate situation was so severe that we had to take drastic sounding, emergency measures in order to protect our future. In the four years since, I think it’s fair to say that humanity has done next to nothing about the climate crisis (relatively speaking). The climate itself has been speeding ahead, getting hotter and hotter, moving further out of our control, and with extreme weather events continuing to ramp up in frequency and severity. Drastic times call for drastic measures.
It’s hard to overstate the bleakness and absolute urgency of our current predicament. But with that said, we can’t just throw in the towel and give up. We have to never stop working to make the future better. We know it’s going to be pretty awful in future decades; but we can do everything in our power to make it as tolerable and liveable as possible. All of the methods and tools we have available to us for addressing the climate crisis also make our quality of life better too, so we might as well use them no matter what else happens. It’s just simple logic – something that’s been in short supply around the world in recent years, as what feels like the entire Earth has taken a fascist turn.
Of all the topics I’m discussing in this series, I’ve definitely spent the most time talking about transport in the past. It’s a topic I have a lot of experience with and I feel most qualified to offer my opinions about. I’m a cyclist, transport user, and former motorcyclist and EV owner. I’m confident that I have some useful observations to share. And I think this is important; because you still, even today, see a reluctance of climate scientists and communicators to mention specific policies – the types of policies that are required if we’re to act as humanity in-line with the latest science. They still don’t want to upset people or cause controversy. Not that it should be controversial to offer policy ideas, but these people tend to be cowardly liberals. Some people need to step up and offer bold solutions that you’re not always going to hear, even from good politicians like Zack Polanski. I’d like to think I’m one of those, but we need many more otherwise we’re just going to be screaming into the void as humanity’s living conditions continue to deteriorate.
Car ownership and EVs
As I’ve previously stated quite a long time ago now, when I naively thought the world was as bad as it could get politically and environmentally; we must end car ownership. Or to be specific, in areas where people don’t live in the middle of nowhere. Especially in urban centres. At the very least, severely reducing the number of private cars in use should be common sense among our media and political class. Unfortunately, we’re a very long way from that being the case in the UK, (along with much of the western world). It may never happen with these people in charge, or anyone like them. It often feels like they’re deliberately trying to make the country and the world worse places to live. They seem to be ideologically committed to doing things people hate, and then they get mad when voters opt for someone authentic who pledges to actually serve the public. They call people who want to help “the extremists on the left”. The fact remains that car ownership is not compatible with a sustainable planet, despite the fact that EVs are much less bad than their fossil powered equivalents.
There are many ways to go about this necessary transition away from car ownership, so I won’t redo this whole thing to death. The main points are that we need to provide people alternatives that are clearly better, and therefore attract ridership. I would rather avoid measures which inflame tensions in the population, such as increasing costs via taxes, or making driving more of a chore in terms of making drivers go the long way round. I’m not saying no to low traffic neighbourhoods or other modal filters. I just think we need to be smart about what we do and where. We can focus on implementing those in specific places where we know they’re likely to be well received; and then use those as examples for other places to follow. There are already good examples near where I live of bollards being put in place to block off rat-running. No one thinks of those as LTNs, but they’ve worked extremely well for at least 20 years already. There are also likely be places where you have parallel roads running for significant distances. In which case, you could look at banning cars from one of them and turning them into bike lanes. these are things that we can do quickly and affordably. They’re no-brainer policies.
There will be a time limit for this type of non-confrontational strategy though as climate action gets more and more urgent in the public’s consciousness. We don’t know how long we have until that point. We just need to play it by ear until then. Being flexible in our approach will enable us to pivot to stronger measures quickly when necessary. These can include bans from city or town centres, more complex LTN systems, tax rises, and restrictions on EV sales in future years. Perhaps banning SUV models would be a good place to start if we want to stop our roads being turned back into gravel tracks due to the damage from heavy vehicles that councils don’t have the budget to fix. This would really hamper cycling for transport in rural areas. Of course, this is only a problem within our current neoliberal paradigm. We can easily fund councils properly in the 6th richest economy in the world. They just don’t want to. And that’s of course not to say we should fund councils in order to keep allowing people to drive SUVs and create more potholes. Rather to invest in things like social housing, cycling infrastructure, buses etc. I’ll get to those soon.
Taxis
Clearly, we will still need taxis in future. There are too many scenarios in which they are essential. It would be completely unreasonable to call for their withdrawal from service. But I do think there are plenty of common sense reforms we can look at. Firstly, I’d like to get rid of the private, big tech ride-hailing apps (Uber, Lyft and so on). All taxis will need to be regulated and licensed by the local authority. We could also look eventually at nationalising the taxi companies and integrating them all into one combined, affordable service that riders can trust with no worries. One optional app for all taxis, and easy contactless payments. Cash payments would continue to be offered as long as there remains demand for it. And I think only under a communist system would demand for cash ever really go away.
Obviously if taxi companies are nationalised and merged, it would be easier to transition to EVs. But the reality is that it’s already happening, and the transition will be completed very soon. EVs are cheaper to run than fossil cars; and that’s especially the case when you drive a lot. Taxis drive more than anyone else except perhaps long-haul truck drivers, so they’re extremely aware of the savings that can be made on fuel and maintenance. And because these cars drive around all day long, all of them becoming EVs represents a significant reduction in pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
Self-driving
As far as self-driving, it’s harder to comment since we simply don’t know what’s going to happen even in the next year or so, let alone beyond that. What I can say is that whatever the timeline for self-driving taxis; we must ensure that they’re nationalised, and the worst people in society aren’t profiting from their use as they threaten to now (Musk, Bezos etc). We need to make sure people aren’t surveilled unnecessarily when booking or riding. Most importantly, we need to make sure robotaxis are affordable and safe. At least as safe as the best human drivers. We have to be extremely thorough in how we allow them to be programmed to deal with crash situations. To ensure the cars take practical decisions that are purely in the interest of reducing injury. Not taking into account things like age, gender or race for example. This is a complicated problem that will require nuanced debate to come to a decision society can be content with. This type of nuanced, detail oriented debate is practically impossible in our current reactionary society. Our mainstream media would constantly break the disingenuity meter, if such a thing existed. With any luck, this won’t always remain the case and we will be able to have serious debates in this country and elsewhere.
There’s also a conversation to be had around their use beyond the types of scenarios where taxis are used now – eg: for drunk people to get home, hospital trips, for people with certain disabilities, people carrying heavy or bulky items etc. There would surely be a temptation; especially if self-driving taxis continue to be owned and operated by billionaires and their corporations, for self-driving cars to replace buses, trains, trams, and even walking and cycling. We have to strongly resist that temptation as a society. It won’t end well if we allow them to take us down that route.
Buses
We clearly need to nationalise all of the bus companies in order to make up for lost time and investment over the last decade or so we could and should have been acting. Our situation is actually now so bad that we’re being overtaken by countries that the vast majority of people in this country wouldn’t expect. In this particular scheme in Dakar, the Senegalese government controls 30% of the project. They’re not even fully nationalising the buses. They’re doing public / private partnerships. I may not like PPPs; but at least these politicians aren’t just saying they’ll do it in future to score political points now. They’re doing it now. Because they actually want to reduce pollution and car ownership. They seem to care about the material conditions of their constituents, which is a foreign concept in this country. Only Jeremy Corbyn and Zack Polanski in recent times have been able to break through and made people believe that they care about them and their lives. And even then, there’s a long way to go in that regard. A lot of British voters or non-voters tar all politicians with the same broad brush. Part of that is laziness, but a lot of it is genuine hurt at being let down so many times in the past.
Unlike the traditional establishment Labour and Tories in this country; who have forgotten who they’re supposed to be serving; these Senegalese politicians understand that it helps to do things people like if you want to get re-elected. That way, you don’t have to resort to lies and dirty tricks on the campaign trail.
It goes without saying that I’d rather avoid any private involvement in our essential public services. But this shows that even under that sub-optimal situation, you can still improve things massively for people. And it really shows how fucked up Britain is. Public / private partnerships (PPPs) are as far as I’m aware, universally associated in this country with profiteering and falling standards within public services. Higher prices, less frequent services, older, more polluting, less efficient vehicles. Perhaps most notoriously, worse healthcare in the NHS; to briefly broaden out beyond the scope of this article.
Private involvement always makes things inherently worse. But especially in the UK where there’s so much corruption. The Japanese railways are privatised, and they work well. That says a lot about how well Japanese society functions compared to ours.
Trains
Railway “nationalisation” has been gradually ongoing for years now, since the Tories were forced to bring franchises including LNER (formerly Virgin Trains East Coast) and Northern into public ownership. Labour pledged to go further and nationalise all of the train operating companies as their contracts with the government run out over the coming years. This doesn’t seem like a bad policy on the surface. But as usual under neoliberal governments, it doesn’t go remotely far enough. It doesn’t include the rolling stock leasing companies; which charge the TOCs for the use and maintenance of the trains they operate on the network. This is a ridiculous middle-man situation and these parasites should be immediately kicked out of the system. British Rail used to do it all in-house, and we can again. Speaking of British Rail, that brings me to the name and livery. I know these seem like trivial things, but I think it does matter. You want people to feel pride in their transport system and the vehicles that run on it. You want them to think it’s a desirable way for them to get around so they ditch their cars.
With that said, we have to talk about Great British Railways – which to me comes across as a Trumpist, flag-shagging name for authoritarians. Hence why the Tories came up with it, and why Keir Starmer is happy to keep it. Have you seen that extremely tacky livery that they’re bringing in across the network? One of my favourite video games, Train Sim World, helped out with the announcement; using the in-game livery editor to bring the god awful concept to life. There was nothing wrong with British Rail. It was simple, classy and understated. It didn’t give off nationalistic overtones. It was comfortable with what it was. Just like the British people historically. That’s what’s supposed to make us special. We don’t feel the need to express a level of national pride that makes other countries around the world hate us; as has always been the case with the United States; and especially now. (I wrote that sentence before the illegal and disastrous Iran war by the way).
I would return it to being called British Rail, and I’d reinstate all the same regional names and liveries as they were before the Tories ruined the system by underfunding and then privatising it. BR Blue, Network SouthEast, Intercity, Regional Railways etc. Not exclusively to piss of the right wing. I do really like those liveries. But it would be a nice added bonus. I’m not averse to a bit of childish pettiness if it annoys all the right people. Especially after the endless policy misery and societal decline we’ve had to endure since before I was born at their hands. And the fact that right wingers seem to think of politics as purely a game. While we suffer emotionally (from listening to their bullshit endlessly) and physically from the damage they inflict on all of us, and vulnerable communities especially; they don’t care at all. It’s all just a strategic game and nothing more as far as they’re concerned.
As far as other substantive changes I’d make – I would obviously increase investment in the rail service as much as possible to bring it up to the standard it should be. It’s hard to put a figure on this. But given how much money has been wasted through privatisation, it wouldn’t be difficult to fund it how it always should have been and make up for lost time. I’d roll out battery trains on all branch lines in the country. The newly refurbished Class 230 former D-Stock Underground trains recently came into service, so it’s certainly doable. Whether via these types of refurbs, or with brand new, purpose built battery EV trains, I don’t really mind. Probably a mixture of both.
I’d finally place OHLE (overhead line equipment for you non-train nerds) over the full length of the Midland Main Line and the Great Western Main Line; as well as any other mainlines which aren’t suitable for battery trains. I generally prefer battery trains where at all possible because I feel as if OHLE is inherently vulnerable to worsening extreme weather. It just doesn’t make sense to build infrastructure in 2026 that’s going to be vulnerable to heatwaves and storms if we can avoid it. But I think battery trains aren’t ready for the mainline yet. I suppose it might be possible to rapid charge at stations, and avoid building the overhead lines everywhere along the route. That would be something to look into if I had my way right now. I suppose the truth is that what I want isn’t going to happen any time soon. And therefore, by the time we actually get around to electrifying these mainlines, battery and charging tech for fast trains will likely be ready for that application. Until then though, we should increase our deployment rate for battery trains on branch lines. That’s definitely something that even the current do-nothing Labour government could easily make happen.
As far as other parts of the network; I wouldn’t scrap HS2, because I think it’s come too far to go back on, but I would try and make changes to how it operates. I’d seek to change the design of the trains if at all possible to make them cheaper, slower (which has become topical since I initially wrote this); and less vulnerable from slight damage to the track. The higher the speed, the more danger there is from tiny track warps or other damage that could be exacerbated by higher forces being put through the rails. I would also seek to run more sleeper trains. Especially to Europe. We gave up on the idea of the Night Star sleeper through the Channel Tunnel before it was able to come into existence. That was a great idea and shouldn’t have been given up on so easily. They should have persevered.
Cycling and Walking
Just 2% of the UK transport budget goes on cycling and walking infrastructure improvement as of 2024; which was the most recent stat I was able to find. This is a truly pathetic amount given how much we’re lagging behind European countries. Here, 1 in 5 people cycle, wheel (use a kick scooter, or maybe wheelchair), or walk daily. Whereas in Europe it’s 1 in 4 on average. And presumably that means that some countries are seriously outperforming us by a much bigger margin. But the report linked to above by the IPPR charity doesn’t break it down by country. I also find it quite scary how they lump walking and wheeling in as well with those stats. That really paints a miserable picture of an inactive continent.
The report also breaks down the spending per head for cycling and walking in the country. It equates to about £24 per head in London, and £10 per head across the rest of the country. It also states that £35 per head would be enough over the next decade to build a decent amount of infrastructure. I would frankly double it to at least £75 per head if we’re really going to be serious about this. I think talking about specific amounts at this point is almost pointless honestly. Cycling has been so underfunded and so deprioritised for so long, that all we need is a shit-ton of cash, and the desire for change. Neither of which we have right now.
That report from 2024 sums everything up so well, that I don’t think I have much to add. I especially liked this one powerful quote from Maya Singer Hobbs, senior research fellow at IPPR:
Cycling in the UK peaked 75 years ago. Since then, UK government policy has locked in car dependency, making people walk wary and cycle cautious, at the expense of our health, our environment and our economy.
What more do you really need to say? I do see people cycling. Even outside the house, next to the speeding cars, forced onto the uneven and slow pavement, defiantly riding bikes in a country that actively hates people doing it. Speeding, distracted, drunk, or raging drivers; or any combination thereof will undoubtedly find you wherever you are, if you happen to be cycling in the UK in 2026. I honestly don’t think any of that is an exaggeration.
I mentioned earlier a few simple things we can do. Turn parallel side roads into bike lanes, create more LTNs in carefully chosen locations, and talked about the potential for local car restrictions or bans. Things we can do with very little funding. Improving public transport is probably the biggest opportunity that could revive cycling for transport; because I don’t think the public in such a fascist country with such awful media would support cycling infrastructure first.
Even in my ideal world, I don’t think you would be able to invest in cycling significantly until you encourage people out of their cars through other means first. Perhaps once trains and buses are nationalised and become legitimately affordable and desirable for people to use; they’ll become open to getting rid of their cars and be more willing to cycle on the quieter roads that come as a result. And if you combine that with the more simplistic cycling infrastructure I mentioned above, I think you could make big changes within a few years. But you definitely couldn’t go straight in with huge cycling infrastructure investment, and tear up roads to put in Dutch level infrastructure. That would cause riots in the country.
At the end of the day, it comes down to a societal culture change. The number of new cyclists right now is so low. It’s been that way for decades, and it won’t fundamentally change until the cars aren’t there. Or at the very least they’re slower, smaller, less frequent, and driven by people not in fits of rage thanks to our broken neoliberal economic system.
To be frank, it’s pretty shocking that we’re able to get around at all in this country, given the myriad of disastrous decisions that have been made over decades. That kind of gives me hope. The fact that even in this utter shit-show of a country, you can technically still get around, shows how much better it could be if we actually did something right. I was going to say at least it can’t get any worse. But now I’m starting to think about all the ways it could under a fascist Reform UK government. That can never be allowed to happen. or we’ll end up like the United States. I wouldn’t wish that fate on my worst enemy (who doesn’t already live in the United States).
Gaming has more than its fair share of problems right now. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to find new games I really want to play. Practically nothing fits my actual values. And even games which fit enough for me to just about tolerate are becoming somewhat rare. And that’s before you get to the cost of everything. Hardware, software and services. At least in the 90s and 2000s, I would describe gaming as having been pretty centrist or even centre-left in some cases. Now it almost universally comes across as right wing or even fascist. And that’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. Jeffrey Epstein himself played a key role in fostering the free-to-play, microtransaction centric, greed dominated corporate hellscape gaming has become in the 2020s.
It is true that bargains in gaming do still exist, although only really in software, and only really because of the sale culture that Steam has cultivated over decades, which has forced Playstation, Xbox and Nintendo to compete (if you can say Nintendo competes on price, which is debatable). I wasn’t kidding when I talked about how Steam is responsible for almost everything good that’s happened in gaming in recent times. But outside of that, you very rarely feel these days like you got a good deal. You generally feel as if you have to fight against the rip-off system. If you buy everything on launch day, and get the deluxe edition because you know you love this particular series; and you can save a little bit by paying up front for the DLC season pass; you still feel like you’ve paid too much. I almost never feel like I get value from a full price game. Pokemon Legends Z-A a recent example of one where I did feel like I got my money’s worth on the base game. But even then, the price of the DLC left a sour taste in the mouth.
The thing is, it may not even be the case that all of those publishers are charging extortionately for the work that goes in to these titles. But that should then lead you to ask questions about the industry as a whole. Do games need to be this grand in scale? Do we need this many developers per game? Wouldn’t it make more sense to spread those developers out among more games? Clearly, something; or more likely many things, have gone very wrong to end up in this state. While neoliberalism is definitely to blame in large part, I think there’s definitely a lot more going on besides.
In this article, I’m going to briefly outline my solutions to the issues I see as holding gaming back from its full potential; and even the reasonably gamer-friendly position it used to occupy during my childhood. I’m going to categorise them as either instant fixes, more mid-term challenging problems to solve; or dream scenarios that we’ll most likely need a form of revolution in order to make reality. In the vast majority of cases, it’s pretty self-explanatory as to what the problems are; and I’ve also touched on several of these points before. Therefore, I’m only going to get into the specifics where I feel I need to offer more context.
Instant Fixes
More affordable games.
Phase out most free-to-play games (unless only cosmetics are paid for) – No paid unlockable characters, modes or areas. Certainly no micropayments to skip artificial waiting times.
No paid battle passes – Paying to be locked into playing the same game for many hours to unlock what you’ve already paid for makes no sense to me. Free battle passes are ok though. They’re more akin to traditional gaming progression or seasonal challenges.
Fairly priced DLC / season passes – I’m a casual Tekken fan. I’ve been waiting 2 years for the latest release to come down in price to a sufficient level for someone who will only play it very occasionally. At this rate, I’ll be waiting another year or two to get a fair price on the game with all the extra characters. Many of the DLC characters are core Tekken series returnees, and you can bet that’s not an accident.
Free online play and cloud saves – Steam offer these essential tools for free. Playstation, Xbox and Nintendo can and should do the same. PlayStation and Nintendo have in the past.
No “Pro” edition mid-generation console releases – They’re deeply unsustainable, add complication to game libraries and make the jump to the next full generation less of an exciting event.
Longer console generations (a full decade).
Less remakes and remasters – Let games become retro, and enjoy them as they were originally intended to be. Limit the practice to exceptional circumstances when dedicated long-time fans specifically ask for a remake for an older game. That’s how it used to be before we started seeing a deluge of remasters (because it’s relatively easy money and a sure thing for extremely risk-averse publishers)
Fewer sequels – unless they’re genuinely necessary rather than a “cash grab”.
More new IPs – more creativity in general.
Challenging Problems – will take time even with widespread desire for change
A more affordable and more comprehensive cloud gaming service for PC games (I’m thinking of GeForce Now). Nvidia’s service has a lot of things going for it. Primarily how you own your games via Steam or other stores, so you can play them on future hardware you may end up owning. However, the game selection is far from comprehensive; which it needs to be for it to be any serious gamer’s primary platform. I also think going down the “install to play” route is a mistake. Cloud gaming needs to always be easy, and it needs to be significantly cheaper than buying the hardware yourself. “Install to play” compromises the core selling point. My main hope with regard to cloud gaming now is that Valve themselves come out with their own competitor directly built into Steam. That would be a hugely significant development and would be great for gamers.
Controllers, mice, keyboards, headsets and other peripherals must be compatible across all hardware and operating systems, and be built to last too.
Gaming peripherals must no longer require proprietary software like Razer Synapse or Logitech G-Hub in order to function fully. We should be able to fully customise them via a web-browser on any operating system. There are benefits to downloaded software, such as being able to automatically change DPI or polling rate settings when specific games are launched. But it shouldn’t be mandatory. And the software should also be available on Linux (especially Steam OS).
We need to have the option to choose between handheld and static “GameCube style” versions of systems like Nintendo Switch 2. The opposite of the Switch Lite concept. Why should you have to pay for a battery, screen and other hardware necessary for a handheld device, if you’re like me and always prefer to play on the TV. I wouldn’t exactly say Valve are doing this with Steam Deck and Steam Machine, since the hardware is different on both. But they are offering people the choice of a handheld or a static experience. They’re even offering in the Steam Machine a choice between living room and desktop use. They are undoubtedly catering to gamers like me more than the others. And I wouldn’t include the ROG Xbox Ally or Playstation Portal in this, because neither of them are truly doing what the Steam Deck is. The Portal is a cloud gaming and remote play device that requires ownership of a PS5. And the Xbox Ally is a Windows handheld from a 3rd party with Xbox modifications. It’s not a ground up Xbox handheld.
Games need to stop progressing graphically for a while, in order to allow storage and other hardware components to catch up, become cheaper and store more games again. People are never going to need 8K TVs; but I imagine that is going to be a big focus of Sony and Microsoft in the next generation. Games look good enough now. PS6 needs to reset the ratio of game size to default storage space to around the era of PS4, when managing storage internally and externally wasn’t the frustrating experience it became with PS5 and Sony’s move to NVMe SSDs. And actually this gets more important over time, as we all accumilate more generations of downloaded games that we have to fit on the new systems. All of which will undoubtedly be backwards compatible, as is now the industry standard. PS4 games are no trouble because they can be stored on a standard external hard drive. I still use the same one I used with PS4 and PS4 Pro (before I realised how bad of an idea mid-generation consoles are). But PS5 games will almost certainly need to be stored on the PS6’s SSD when you want to play them. If so, that’s going to cause yet more storage related headaches for Playstation gamers in future. If it turns out that they will be playable from an external SSD, then that doesn’t really alleviate the problem, since NVMe SSDs are still very expensive if you want a useful amount of storage (aka over 2TB).
A far better and industry collaborative method for preserving games for future generations.
DRM-free games (all games).
Dream Scenarios – maybe in a degrowth communist world
A unified software store for every publisher – Yes, even Nintendo. (ideally a nationalised Steam). You’d buy a game once, and own it everywhere. And you’d be automatically entitled to any future remakes or remasters of that game. And we’d eliminate the problem that often occurs now where your DLC is stuck on one platform, so you can’t move to a different platform, unless you buy the same content again.
All consoles of the same generation would be built to equivalent specs; so as to make it seamless to release games everywhere.
A unified cloud gaming system available on any device, and with all games from all publishers available. That is unless there’s a good reason why they can’t be. For example a niche peripheral that’s no longer available or compatible with current devices; like a dance mat or lightgun.
All games preserved for future generations except possibly certain online only games. But even in that case, we should endeavor to preserve them, even if only for educational demonstrations rather than actual gameplay.
If we were to see even half of the things I listed in the first category implemented, gaming would be in a far more tolerable situation. Clearly at this point we can’t just sit around and hope for the best. We need to push for these simple reforms by voting with our wallets and being vocal; while also keeping a socialist gaming future in mind. We’ve become far too used to the need to own specific, expensive machines to play specific, expensive games. And we barely bring up the fact that we have to pay subscription fees for each console’s online functions. Services that not only don’t need to be paid for, but that attempt to lock us in to playing primarily on that system. They essentially bully you into picking one platform to play all your 3rd party games on.
It’s not a status quo that can continue that much longer. It’s going to get to the point where people will either get fed up of the toxic gaming trends, and stop playing. Or they’re going to be totally priced out of their hobby. Perhaps that could lead to a huge resurgeance of retro gaming, which could end up being very positive. As long as you already own the hardware that is. Otherwise cost is going to chase you down the retro rabbit hole too.
There are definitely issues in other media. DRM in e-books, music subscriptions (not all of them, but certainly Spotify is problematic); cable and satellite TV being replaced by 10 different apps with subscriptions that add up to more than you were paying before. But no other group of media consumers get shafted more than gamers. This is another reason why we need to fight back. Otherwise we’ll end up with physical music from some labels you can only listen to if you buy a specific machine, or yet another separate subscription. You’ll need two different boxes to play your movies on. It’ll be like Blu-Ray and HD-DVD all over again. Except this time, there won’t be a definitive winner. There may even be three formats. If you want to watch those exclusive films, you’ll need another box. And if you’re thinking: yeah, these corporate goons are bad; but they wouldn’t stoop as low as reinventing CDs or vinyl records in order to capitalise on nostalgia and the physical media resurgeance; think again. Nothing is off the table when it comes to squeezing every penny out of us. Sony tried to stop you ripping CDs in the early 2000s, which didn’t go well for them thankfully. But now we live in a much more brainwashed world where the majority place far too much trust in these multinational conglomerates.
Because gamers are so used to being treated with contempt by companies, we’re the guinea pigs. If we sit there and take it, the corporations will gain in confidence that they can do the same to everyone else. It’ll make the present day mess of endless streaming apps seem like nothing if they’re left unchecked and emboldened to do their worst.
