Category Archives: Philosophy

How to resist the unpleasant culture of Neo-Liberalism

September 9, 2014Economics, Philosophy, Politics#BritishSociety, #fracking, #liberty, J.S.Mill, Keynesianism, Neo-Liberalismangrytunbridgewells

This essay is my answer a question posed to me by my 22 year old daughter. She asked me what can I do to help change this cruel Neo-Liberal society in which we live. I suggested that she get involved with a extra parliamentary campaigning group, extra parliamentary because the parliamentary parties are too compromised in their politics. All in the UK are practitioners of Neo-Liberal politics, none could consider any alternative. However a short conversation between my daughter and myself is not an adequate answer to the question she posed; this is my considered response.

Neo-Liberalism appears impregnable it has captured the commanding heights in British society. All three main parliamentary parties are adherents of this hateful ideology. The example of the private rental housing market demonstrates this; private tenants especially in London endure squalid housing conditions, have little security of tenure and pay exorbitant rents, but all parties do not see this this as a problem requiring urgent remedial action, instead see it as one for inaction, leaving it to the free market to solve the problem. There is not one major politician who is not a free market proselytiser. Changes imposed by various governments have removed from the political scene any organised extra parliamentary opposition. First of all the trade union movement was emasculated and now even the rights of charitable organisations to campaign are being severely limited through government censorship. Gradually Westminster is slowly suppressing any dissenting voices. Governments are reverting back to the bad old practice of inserting police spies into dissenting groups, who then often act as agent provocateurs to goad them into actions that bring discredit on to these groups. However this seemingly impregnable Neo-Liberal edifice of the combination state and big business still remains vulnerable to ideas of an alternative world from the society below.

What I am trying to suggest is that the very limitations of the cultural values of Neo-Liberalism will be its undoing. There cannot be an immediate overthrow of this culture of the elite, a culture that excludes most human values, but its incompatibility with civilised life will lead to its constant clash with other cultures which will undermine it and inevitably lead to its demise. Today’s papers illustrate this point, communities in constituencies held by loyal Neo-Liberal MP’s are in revolt against the cracking which will be undertaken by the oil industry in their area. Residents of England’s green and pleasant land are horrified by the environmental damage that cracking will cause in their area. Yet the Neo-Liberals in government have given the oil exploration industry carte blanche to do whatever they please in these areas, believing what is good for business is good for society.

Stifling, dull and oppressive are the words I associate with Neo-Liberalism and as such it cannot contain within its boundaries the vitality that is human life. This stultifying dullness is demonstrated in the new university curriculum. Vocationalism, relevance to industry and commerce are the buzz words that are used to describe the new curriculum. But what they hide is a dullness, the emphasis on the non thinking curriculum, a curriculum from which ideas that challenge the orthodoxy are banned. Economists that challenge the orthodoxy are either forced out of the faculty or forced to find work in departments such as geography. One Keynesian economist told me how he had been silenced; he could only get published in economic journals if articles expressed Neo-Liberal ideas any hint of Keynesianism meant it would not get published. As an academic it was essential he got work published, as his continued employment depended on his getting work published. Academics that don’t get published lose out on preferment and are liable to dismissal. This dullness in the academy has begun to produce the stirrings of a student revolt. Students at Manchester University have begun the revolt by demanding the economics curriculum be changed to accommodate alternative economic doctrines. While the complacency of entrenched of the academic economists will enable them to initially resist change, they will have to change if they they not wish to lose the brightest and best of their students to the other social sciences. Once economics becomes seen as the cultural backwater, economists will lose influence and prestige in society.

Theology in the medieval university was the Queen of subjects, but due to the refusal of theologians to do other than cling to the orthodoxy, it got left behind and by the 19th century was an intellectual backwater. All the arrogance of today’s professional economists cannot prevent a similar fate befalling economics.

The only value recognised by Neo-Liberalism is cost benefit, it’s an updating of Oscar Wilde’s line about the cynic who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. A culture that only values arts according to its market price is an incredibly shallow culture. This shallowness is being demonstrated by the culture of the super rich, which is one of excess. What achieves admiration is the conspicuous consumption, what gains the most respect is not the best but the most expensive. To rephrase a biblical expression man cannot live by cash alone, as the example of the Jazz Age shows. In the 1920’s the super rich needed to inject some excitement into their lives, there was only so much over priced champagne that they could buy. It was the music of these poor black musicians that gave them the excitement they craved.

A culture such as Neo-Liberalism lacks creativity it has to be parasitic on other cultures. The music and culture of the young rich is but imported from other more creative social groups. They can produce musicians but their music is derived from other lower income groups. These are Social groups who have to create their own entertainment as they can’t buy it from somebody else. Through importing the music and ideas from the non dominant cultures, Neo-Liberalism will fry at the edges. The edifice will start to crack as they import alien cultural values.

What I am trying to suggest is that the very limitations of the culture of Neo-Liberalism will be its undoing. There cannot be an immediate overthrow of this culture of the elite as it is too powerfully entrenched, but its incompatibility with civilised life will lead to its constant clash with the culture of alternative and humane values of other groups in society which will undermine it and inevitably lead to its demise. Today’s newspapers illustrate this point, communities in constituencies held by loyal Neo-Liberal MP’s are in revolt against the fracking which will be undertaken by the oil industry in their locality. Residents of England’s green and pleasant land are horrified by the environmental damage that fracking will cause. Yet the Neo-Liberals in government have given the oil exploration industry carte blanche to do whatever they please in these areas, believing what is good for business is good for society.

History also demonstrates that any culture that celebrates the greed of the super rich as its prime moral value ultimately fail. A society that impoverishes the majority and enriches the minority always be inherently unstable, being held together only by a repressive and authoritarian government. It is forgotten that many of the barbarians that sacked Rome were in fact its former disenfranchised citizens of whom many were former slaves. The empires that disappeared from Europe in the twentieth century such as that of Austro-Hungary and the Soviet Union, have not been made anew by their former subjects. Such change takes time but I would encourage all cultural wood worms to continue eating away at the fabric of this rotten society, so it collapses of its own volition.

Possibly this is not the answer my daughter wanted, but my reply in essence is retain an independence of mind and not to be fooled by the propaganda of the Neo-Liberal state. J.S.Mill the great liberal philosophy, defined liberty as being the liberty of thought. His critics dismissed this as a small minded liberty, want they wanted was liberty of speech, freedom of assembly etc. What they failed to realise is that all these follow on from the independence of mind. Why else have autocratic regimes such as the North Korea of Kim Jong-un and the China of Mao Tse-Tung taken such great efforts to control the minds of their subjects.

Neo-Liberalism the latest of a long line of pseudo philosophies that plague mankind

September 2, 2014Economics, Philosophy, Politics, religion#AynRand, #Paganism, #pseudophilosphy, #rightwingphilosohies, Friedman, Hayek, masculinity, Neo-Liberalism, pseudo philosophy, right wing philosophiesangrytunbridgewells

Isaiah Berlin once remarked that there could be no such thing as a right wing philosophy. This at first puzzled me as the philosophers I studied were generally to the politically right of centre. What I then realised was that although these philosophers were of the political right their philosophies were not. Their philosophies were too enlightened to be confined within the bounds of conventional right wing thinking. A truly right wing philosophy would be founded on the principles of personal aggrandisement, the abuse and exploitation of fellow men (a contempt for the majority of mankind), the extolling of social inequality and social privilege. To express it more simply there cannot be a philosophy of nastiness; it is contrary to the understanding of the that the Greeks gave to this word, which that it is the love of wisdom. Praising greed or inequality cannot be the basis of any philosophy as it is a paean to unpleasant form of self interest.

Having introduced the term pseudo philosophy I need to explain what I mean by the term. A pseudo philosophy is a one that serves to justify the self interest of a particular group. This self interest is always described in terms of a higher idealism, always a theft of universally admired ideals, but ideals that were redrafted to serve a particular narrow self interest. The medieval knight was at his worst was a killer, a rapacious looter and rapist yet this brutality could be justified by chivalry. This knight was a Christian knight, who spent the night before knighthood in prayer at a chapel. A knight who promised to use his strength to protect the poor and weak, treat women with courtesy etc. Somehow those killed by the knights did not fit into any of the protected categories, they were non people excluded by the code for a variety of reasons, for example when the Christian knights stormed Constantinople, the killing of Christian priests and monks was justified as they were heretics.

Pseudo philosophies unlike philosophy have the intention of stopping the advance of human knowledge, they want to stop the clock on change. They want to preserve the contemporary society in aspic or in the most extreme cases regress to a less enlightened age. The militants of Isis in Iraq practise the pseudo philosophy of violence, their rise to power is justified by the need to purge society of non Islamic elements. The barbarity of their regime can only be justified if they remove and destroy the enlightened elements of modern Islam society, as their existence is a constant and compelling criticism of their regime and a reminder that there is an alternative. Barbarity and the lust for power cannot tolerate learning whether it be culture or education as it is in opposition to their barbaric ethos. An ethos best expressed in the words mistakenly attributed to Goebbels, ‘when I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver’.

What these pseudo philosophies have in common is a disregard for majority of humanity, who they class as inferior beings, full membership of humanity is limited to elite groups, the medieval knight or the contemporary billionaire. Possibly the cruelest of pseudo philosophies is National Socialism which classified whole groups of people as sub human, such as the Jews, the Roma, homosexuals, the disabled and proceeded to exterminate them. Contemporary pseudo philosophies such as Neo-Liberalism embody this same inhumanity. Ayn Rand a leading prophet of this philosophy also demonstrates a contempt for the masses of humanity. In her novels mankind is divided into two groups the ‘producers’ and ‘looters’, with corresponding physical characteristics. Her producers are square jawed of an angular physique, her looters are weak chinned and have flabby physiques. A caricature of humankind that could almost have been borrowed from the Nazis, with their comparisons of the magnificent physique of the Aryans with the grotesque bodies of the Jews. One critic said that there was the whiff of the gas chambers in her novels

Rand as with all pseudo philosophers is able to dress up her ideas with a moral grandeur suggestive of utilitarian philosophers Jeremy Bentham and J.S.Mill.

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

—Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged[11]

Unfortunately such grandeur can be deconstructed into the belief that greed is the motor that drives the world. Evil gets redefined as the attempt by the ‘looters’ to deny the ‘producers’ through legislation and its evil begetter over mighty government to rein in and control the wealth producers and creators. Billionaires are her heroes the poor are ‘lice’ and ‘maggots’. Unsurprisingly Ayn Rand is popular with the right, particularly the Republican Right in America. She seems to have been almost as influential as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman in recasting the USA and the UK in the Neo-Liberal mould.

Since the philosophy of Rand, the economics of Hayek and Friedman gives a moral camouflage to the activities of the predatory financier class, it is not surprising that Neo-Liberalism has become the moral philosophy of this class. They by using their financial clout have manipulated the political classes into accepting Neo-Liberalism as the philosophy of the political class. In the UK politicians as in the USA have become totally subservient to the ‘producers’, government now is principally run to facilitate the interests of the producers. Public service (big government) has been diminished through the wholesale privatisation of public services. In their latest act of obeisance they are about the agree the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Programme (TTIP) which will enshrine in legislation the dominance of producers over the political class. If in the future any government has the temerity to force the big corporations to adopt environmental or labour protection policies which they claim could reduce their profitability, they can reclaim those lost profits from the government. Usually when a political class legislates itself into irrelevance it is under the threat of violence as in Nazi Germany, the signing of the TTIP treaty is unusual in that our legislators are wiling signing themselves into irrelevance.

Practitioners of pseudo philosophies such as National Socialism and Neo-Liberals in their anxiety to give their philosophy a more secure cultural underpinning, drift into turning their philosophy into a religion. Towards the end of the Nazi regime the SS tried to reintroduce the old pagan Gods as a cultural reinforcement of Nazism. Neo-Liberals have already made that change. There is for them a superhuman entity that creates, controls and remakes life and that is the free market. All human societies should be modelled on the free market and Neo-Liberals believe that their role is to remake society into the perfect free market, a behaviour that can be compared to those followers of millennial religions. They thanks to Ayn Rand have a belief in a non-rational world view that is not subject to critical analysis, it is just true.

The purpose of my essay is to explain the nature of the enemy, that people such as myself oppose. If you understand your enemy you are better able to fight it. The philosophy that guides the Rand’s producers is a kind of disturbed masculinity and is a threat to the good society. All the sex in Rand’s novels display this disturbed masculinity, it always violent, suggestive of rape. Not a bad metaphor for the financiers who have raped society through their greed, living a damaged broken social world in their wake.

When being wrong is being right, the majority perspective on economics

August 24, 2014Economics, Philosophy, Politics, religion#bankofengland, #economics, #wrongisright, bank rate, mumified economy, Olympian Gods, wrong is rightangrytunbridgewells

One of the greatest of follies is the excitement that is generated over the Bank of England’s announcement of interest rates. Once a month the monetary policy committee meets to decide the bank rate, that is the rate of interest the bank will charge on loans it might make. This committee of the great and good holds the nations future in their hands, holding rates steady as they have done yet again, brings great relief to the nation’s borrowers. In a nation that is as over indebted as the UK even small changes in the interest rate can be of great significance to borrowers, particularly those with large outstanding mortgages. Yet this is an illusion as so much economic policy making is a matter of smoke and mirrors. What matters is what people believe, if they think, as do the nation’s politicians and financiers, that such rate changes are of great importance, they are of great importance. However in moments of great crisis when events spiral out of control, they are almost useless. On Black Wednesday bank rate went up to 15%, 30 times today’s rate of 0.5%, yet it did little to halt speculation against the pound in the financial markets. The speculation was only ended when the pound was effectively devalued by Britain leaving the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and accepting a low market valuation for the pound. Raising interest rates did not stop financial speculators bringing the Bank of England to its knees.

While focusing on bank rate politicians and central bankers can pretend that they are in control of events. Stagnant incomes, over indebted banks (whose debts in 2013 were approximately 500% of GDP or £6.7 trillion), low productivity and spiralling trade deficit (now the highest in the developed world at 5% of GDP) are problems that can be ignored. At least until some future crisis reveals the fault lines in the UK economy. Incompetence in managing the economy despite popular misconceptions to the contrary never results in a lost election, unless it impinges on the popular imagination as in the form falling house prices.

There is another misconception that a dysfunctional economy such as that of the UK is self correcting or pressures from within society will lead to a correction of the failures within the economic system. Nothing of the kind is true,dysfunctional economies such as the UK’s can function as they are for many years unless some internal or external shock forces traumatic change in society. If the political classes can somehow convey the impression that they are in control of the economy nothing will change. Nonsense if dressed up as sound economic policy will be accepted by the people as a whole in an economically illiterate society. Strangely enough for a subject whose practitioners claim to subject the economic to forensic analysis, artifice and appearance are often what matters.

I am not alone in my analysis as today one economics commentator described the policy of the central banks as applying cosmetics to the mummified economy.

Spoken or written truths are not welcome in such situations as this when the political,class and the supporting cast of economists are all desperately reassuring us that everything is well. The shrillness of the abuse with which they shout down proponents of alternative strategies is an indication of weakness of their grasp of the truth. They are aided in the suppression of the truth by their media allies who through controlling print and media outlets can prevent any alternative strategies being published or becoming known. What matters is that only the same story is told by politicians, economists, industrialists, the media etc.

What should not be underestimated is the staying power of the fictional story that by manipulating the bank rate the government is in control of the economy. Fortunately for all in the governing classes economics is going through the ‘dog days’, when all pretence of critical objective analysis of economic affairs has been abandoned, in favour of just telling the one story. If it is possible to describe one of the social sciences as a dead science, that description is true of economics. There will never be a university economist who will state that the emperor has no clothes.

Given my interest in theology, I can cite a similar example. Belief in the Gods of Olympus persisted for hundreds of years, even through the late days of the Roman Empire, when the educated classes had long since abandoned such a belief. Conservatism and the usefulness of such beliefs to the government, who could manipulate the fears of the population through supernatural portents gave belief in Jupiter and the other Olympian Gods an exceptionally long life. Belier in the efficacy of manipulating bank rate to control the economy started in the 19th century and despite a few short periods of disrepute it continuing to be the main measure of government economic policy.

There will be another financial crisis possibly worse than that of 2008/9 and again economists despite all the evidence too the contrary will again say that it was an event that nobody could have predicted. Policies that were adopted in 2008/9 despite their evident failure will be used again, as to do otherwise would be an admission of fallibility among the ruling class of politicians, bankers, industrialists, economists etc. What is needed is a new governing class with a new set of stories about the economy, hopefully stories that are grounded in reality. That will only result from a major trauma within society that destroys the myth of infallibility that cloaks the governing classes. The last time this happened was after World War 11 when a series of military disasters destroyed the credibility of the governing classes, when they were replaced with a middle class imbued with the ideals of social democracy.

Why you can never understand what economists are saying

August 3, 2014Economics, Philosophy, Politics, religion#cultofeconomics, #impoverishingtgeyoung, #mysterycults, cult of economics, i#austerity, impoverishing the young, Jehovahs Witnesses, mystery religions and cultsangrytunbridgewells

Being a theologian as well as an economist gives me an insight into the subject of economics that is denied to my non theological colleagues. When puzzling over the the current mundane level of thinking that passes for economic analysis, I came to the realisation that economics is not one of the analytical human sciences so much as a new mystery religion. A cult of economics that can be compared with the cult of Mithras in classical Rome or the Eleusinian Mysteries of dark ages Greece. Initiates in the latter achieved enlightenment by using psychedelic drugs, economists through years of confinement in economics departments. By a mystery religion I mean that religion whose truths are only known to its initiates, its truths are concealed from outsiders. While economists practise their craft in the full view of society their arcane truths are known to them alone. The language in which they conduct their dialogues and debates is incomprehensible to the uninitiated, that is non economists. Rather than it being a language of clarity that informs it is that of the obscurantist, a language that hides and conceals and deceives, a language almost totally devoid of common sense meanings. Gordon Brown was mocked for using the phrase ‘endogenous growth’ in one of his speeches, when what he meant was he wanted an economy that was characterised by self generated growth without the need of any external intervention. Economists never, but never speak in a language that people understand for that would take away from the mystique that attaches to the profession. It would also reveal the insignificance of much of their thinking and threaten their high status as experts.

There is a better example of this from British economic history. All economists would agree that the free market economy of today is superior to the state managed economy of the 1960’s. Yet in the 1960’s unemployment averaged about 2% of the workforce, while today it is 7% of the workforce. Today the deficit on foreign trade is nearing 5% of GDP, it is the highest deficit of any developed country. In fact a trade deficit of these proportions more nearly resembles that of a developing country,that is that of a country insufficiently productive to pay for it’s much needed imports. Economic growth for the past five years has been below the trend rate of 2% per annum, whereas in the 1960’s it for many years it was over 4%. Only naive economists such as myself can fail to recognise the superiority of the dynamic free market economy of today, compared to the sluggish corporate economy of the 1960’s, we let statistics blind us to the truth. Economists judge the performance by other standards, standards which non economists are ignorant. Any apparent failures are but the consequence of the slowness of transforming the economy, unemployment is but a function of the existing remnants of the old dysfunctional economy persisting in their dysfunctional manner in the new age. Economists don’t need statistics they ‘know’ that their reforms will initiate a new golden age for the British economy.

Economists who practice the cult of economics have created a new God, that in many ways is as barbaric as the Gods of classical Greece and Rome, a God that is the economy. This new God demands the sacrifice of the hopes and aspirations of youth to satisfy its demands. Youth unemployment averages over 20% in much of mainland Europe. Unemployment caused by the implementation of one of history’s most savage programmes of austerity. Economists believe Europe suffered a catastrophic financial crisis in 2008/9 caused by overspending, a problem that can only be put right by a savage programme of cuts to ‘balance the books’. A programme of savage cuts made mainly by denying employment to the young. The young ‘indignacios’ of Spain who rage against the austerity programme lack the understanding of economists who know that there suffering is necessary for the well being of the economy and that this is but the first stage in creating a better world for them. Is it unfair to compare the cult of economics to that of some primitive religion, whose practitioners believe it is necessary to sacrifice their young to appease their savage God?

What economists see is not the world as others see it, but one constructed according to their imaginings. They see in every society that the free market God is frustrated in its desire to create the good society. Frustrated by such as the devils of state intervention, trade unions and all the other enemies of free enterprise. Their beliefs blind them to reality, they don’t see a world in which young workers who lack employment rights are exploited by greedy and cruel employers. Instead they see a Britain in which labour is infinitely flexible, an economy whose labour force can adapt rapidly to change demanded of them. One of the boasts of coalition politicians is that Britain’s flexible labour force (easy to dismiss and paid near third world level wages) attracts foreign firms to invest in Britain.

How in a democracy have economists been able to persuade politicians to accept and implement the most inhuman of economic strategies? It is in a large part because economics is in a large part similar to the old mystery religions. Outsiders fail to understand the truths of the economists because the difficult language in which they are phrased makes understanding only possible to insiders, that is other economists. Politicians have long been persuaded of the desirability of supply side economics, without understanding what it really means. They believe it means increasing the productivity by policies such as improving schools and universities to give the young the skills to make them more productive. This is the nice but incorrect understanding of supply side economics. Below the surface of this public debate on supply side economics, lurks the very different understanding of what supply side economics means. It means changing the character and nature of the labour force to make it more suitable for employment in a contemporary society. Those ‘realist’ supply side economists lurk beneath the surface in institutions such as the UK Treasury and political consultancies and who seek to make politicians to adopt whatever inhuman policy is necessary to make labour fit for work in a people unfriendly economy.

One of the great concerns of the UK Treasury was the immobility of labour. Workers were not willing to move to find work. They saw labour shortages caused by labour’s unwillingness to move, as causing production bottle necks as firms lacked the workers to needed if they were to operate at full capacity. What they as saw causing this immobility was security of tenure, tenants in secure social housing or in owner occupied homes, were unwilling to give up their homes to move to find work elsewhere. Treasury officials saw the ending of security of tenure as the means to achieve this end.

They (the experts) could always sell this policy to the politicians who never really understood what the Treasury officials were saying as the technical language employed by these these economists hid its inhumane policy implications. One such technical term was the inefficient use of housing stock, what they by which they meant too many houses were under or unoccupied or under occupied for long periods of time. If tenancy agreements were changed to favour the landlord, more landlords would come forward to offer accommodation in areas of greatest need, such as London. This was made possible with the assured short term rental system. More important was the destruction of the system of social housing (council housing) which these officials believed discouraged tenants from moving from areas of high unemployment to those of low unemployment. Rather than go into the details of the policy changes, it is sufficient to say that the majority of social housing has been transferred from state to private ownership. What economists knew was that by changing the nature of the housing stock they would replace security of tenure with insecurity of tenure, with all its unpleasant consequences such as market abuse by unscrupulous landlords. What economists had persuaded the political classes was that PEOPLE HAD TO BE MADE TO WORK THE BENEFIT ECONOMY, NOT THAT THE ECONOMY SHOULD BE MADE TO WORK FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PEOPLE. They could sell the new economics to politicians as making the economy more productive which inevitably would benefit all. However they knew that their actions would do the reverse as to benefit the economy one group in society would be impoverished, that those dependent on social housing. The reforms would create a new group in society the house and home poor.

The new economics can only be understood by using concepts borrowed from the study of religion. Those who had undergone a rigorous schooling in economics would have revealed to them the truths known only to economists, as in many cultist religions. It is this learned language that prevents the layman from participating in the cult of economics. Their only role is that of bemused bystander.

A similar criticism could be made of the study of physics or cosmology, but the difference is that these subjects seek to understand the world, not remake it according to the revealed truths of their subject. There is a religious like fervour to the study of economics; economists like the religious missionaries of the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Church of the Latter Day Saints wish to remake the world according to the revealed truths of their belief system. Just because the revealed truths of economics come from a profane rather than a scared source does not exclude the cult of economics from being a contemporary religious belief system.

One final remark, the free market economy that economists believe in is as unreal as the God Mithras worshipped by Roman soldiers. The other night on the television I saw one cultist who stated that our current high level of standing was due to a combination of technological advance and the market economy. Only when such beliefs are recognised as just another cult belief on a par with that of Jehovah’s Witnesses will society be able to look to real solutions to its problems. Cultists are the only people that believe society is perfectible and that is why their beliefs are so unreal. Society is an organised mess and muddle, which can be improved but never perfected. Economics can help find the answers to problems as it does contain some very real insights into the nature of society, but not while it remains a cult belief system.

Why are we are where we are today. Some answers from Alfred Marshall, David Ricardo and Charles Dickens

July 21, 2014Economics, Philosophy, society#CharlesDickens, #DavidRicardo, #Freemarketeconomics, #naturalpriceoflabour, Charles Dickens, David Ricardo, free market economics, living wage, natural price of labourangrytunbridgewells

Philosophers define our contemporary society as post modern, but economics remains apart as it belongs to what those philosophers disparaging call the modernist tradition. A science of humanity that believes its analysis and truths are true for all societies and their economies, whereas post modernists believe the truths of economics are only relative, rooted in a particular society at a particular time. Philosophy and other post modern sciences seem to have passed economics by, left it in some historical lay-by. Unlike other human sciences the truths enunciated by Alfred Marshall are held to be valid today as when he first enunciated them in the 19th century. Teachers of economics such as myself taught generations of students Marshall’s theory of the market. They copied us in replicating Marshall scissors diagram of demand and supply not realising that they were doing the same as their 19th century peers. Today after many minor modifications Alfred Marshall’s theory of the market forms the central core of contemporary economics. It is this theory that I shall take as my starting point for my new perspective on economics.

Economists believe that in the free market they have discovered the fairest way of allocating resources, one that can be rivalled nowhere in the efficiency of its distribution mechanism. According to economists this how the market works. All goods and services are sold by price and if consumers want them they are free to buy them. There are no restrictions to the freedom to buy and sell, it’s the key economic freedom. This is the only economic system that maximises consumer satisfaction and gives sovereignty to the consumer. Price is the key factor that enables consumers and suppliers to get the best deal in the market. The market is incredibly flexible as both consumers and suppliers constantly responding and responding again and again to the signals given off by changing prices in the market. The market for smart phones illustrates how the free market works.

Initially all mobile (or cell phones) were relatively simple devices that allowed users to make phone calls, store a list of contacts and enable the user to send text messages. Further improvements were made to the phones and a revolution occurred in the phone market when Blackberry and Apple introduced their smart phones. Now people wanted smart phones because of all the extra facilities they offered, emailing services, instant messaging (BBM), cameras and the millions of apps on Apple’s and Samsung’s phones. Consumers saw these phones as being so desirable that they were willing to pay up to £400 for them, whereas the best of the old models Blackberry phones had sold for les than £200. The bottom dropped out of the market and simple mobile phones can now be bought for less than £20. Producers reacted by cutting down on their manufacture of these simple phones as there was little profit in making them and increasing their manufacture of up market phones as they were so profitable. Firms such as Apple and Samsung are constantly innovating and improving their phones so they retain their position of market leaders and earn a premium price for their products. This strategy has been so successful that Apple has an income greater than that of many countries. Those companies that can read the market correctly and anticipate consumer demand can make fortune. This is a win win situation as these profitable companies are those companies making what people want.

Nokia the firm that originally dominated the mobile phone market saw sales plummet as consumers did not want its old fashioned phones. It had to cut back on phone set production to match its shrinking share of the market. Declining sales and loss of income would probably forced it to close, if it had not been purchased by Microsoft. The market is a harsh master towards those companies that don’t read the signals correctly. Those signals are simple to read if Nokia was having to cut the prices of its phones it failed to understand the message which was nobody wanted their phones now. Another term for this is consumer sovereignty, the market is the only mechanism which enables manufactures are other producers to keep up with the ever changing needs of the consumer. There are in history many examples of economies that are not run on the free market model collapsing because of the discontent of their people. East Germans living in a communist society were discontented with the limited variety of goods available in their country and once they had the chance they opted to join free market economy of West Germany.

Having demonstrated the superiority of the free market I must now point out the flaws in what seems to be the perfect economy. In fact economists frequently refer to perfect competition, which demonstrates all the perfections of a competitive market, an ideal to which all economies should strive. Unfortunately in real economies there are imperfections in the market which can result in the minimising of consumer satisfaction and sovereignty.

One of the best ways of explaining the fault line that runs through the market is to look back at the work of another nineteenth century economist, David Ricardo, on the price of labour. He distinguishes between two prices paid for labour, the first is the natural price and the second is the exchange or market price. Natural price is that price which is sufficient to cover all the necessities of life, while the exchange price is that paid for labour in the market. Throughout most of the latter part of the twentieth century the exchange price of labour was higher than its natural price. This was an era associated with rising living standards. However increasingly since the early 21st century for many people the exchange price of labour has fallen below its natural price. Increasing numbers of people are classified as the working poor, relying on food banks and social security payments to feed, clothe and house their families. The current debate about the living wage is about the failure of the market to pay increasing numbers of people an income that is equal to their natural wage. Britain as with many other developed European countries is reverting to an older historical pattern in which increasing numbers of people experience poverty and want.

This can be clearly demonstrated by one example. When I was teaching in London in the 1970’s the exchange price paid for my labour exceeded my natural price; I could if I had wished bought a house as did many of my colleagues. Today the exchange price of a teachers salary is so far below its natural price, that it only yields enough income to pay for one room in a shared house.

There is another fault line running through the market and that is that for many the much valued economic freedom does not exist. Free market economists when they use the term effective demand acknowledge this. We may all want to live in an idyllic country cottage in rural Berkshire but only those who have sufficiently large income may do so. However it is not just about pointing out the impossibility of achieving our dreams. There are obstacles in the market that prevent many even making the most minimal of choices. Dominant market players such as landlords abuse their market power. They charge such exorbitant rents that many are only able to afford the poorest of accommodation and the cost of that accommodation may be so high that other choices are denied to the individual. Stories frequently appear in the media about tenants having to choose between a whole variety of necessaries, paying rent, buying food or clothes or paying heating bills. Economists will never admit it but for many the so called freedoms of the market are illusory, in reality the necessity of survival means they have no choice.

What economists and our political leaders educated in the Neo-Liberal tradition need to recognise is that the free market that they worship does not work. What is needed instead is a MODIFIED MARKET a market that delivers all the benefits of the free market but one from which intervention by the state has removed the most pernicious of abuses associated with the free market. If only everybody who participated in the market could earn the natural price for their labour those abuses would disappear. There is no reason why a country as rich as Britain could not achieve this end. After the much poorer Britain of the 1950’s achieved that end.

Readers such as myself of 19th century novelists will realise that destitution was an ever present fear. Charles Dickens due to his father’s mismanagement of the families finances ended up working in a shoe blacking factory, while his father sent to debtors prison. The memory of which haunted the adult Dickens. Unfortunately the circle of history is turning and a run of bad luck could result in many a contemporary Dickens suffering a similar fate.

Why politicians would benefit from reading fairy tales

June 25, 2014Economics, Philosophy, Politics, religion#bad landlords, #christianity, #economics, #Erasmus, #fairytales, #George Bush, #good, #justwar, #LloydGeorge, #Plato, #TonyBlair, fairy tales, just war, Tony Blairangrytunbridgewells

Folk tales and fairy stories with their black and white characterisation for example the evil step mother and the virtuous, noble and abused step daughter are characterised as stories only for children. Their tales of good and evil are seen as being far too simplistic for adult reading. This is a misreading as the fairy tales we tell our children are but sanitised versions of the original folk tales. In the original story the step sisters cut off parts of their feet so as to fit their feet into the glass slipper. What is not understood is that folk tales are but attempts to explain the malevolent world in which our peasant ancestors lived. Fairies were not seen as good but as spirits that had to appeased as angering them could result in misadventure. When the Church insisted this was a good world created by God, how could the misfortune that people suffered be understood except by understanding there must be a lower level of supernatural beings who were responsible for the evil men suffered. What our peasant ancestors saw was that they lived in a world in which good and evil co-existed, not so simple but realistic.

This simple world view is in contrast to the sophisticated society of today. Rather than the simple black and white world view, it a world view of greys, varying from the darkest of greys (bad) to the palest of greys (good) and between these two there are a whole series of different shades of grey. However bad is not totally excluded, but bad only applies to those people, the psychopaths who operate outside the normal range of behaviours. When morality is seen from the perspective of the political and dominant social classes there is an incredible fluidity to moral concepts, particularly when the politeriat who govern Britain is considered. This merging of good and bad can be seen in the concept of the just war. Killing is bad except when its undertaken as part of a just war. St. Augustine defined the concept when he cited the conditions under which a soldier could kill to defend his country. Others such as Thomas Aquinas further refined this concept. While there was justice in fighting the Second World War to remove Hitler the concept becomes stretched to breaking point with the Iraq war. Our leaders invented the threat of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and the threat they posed to the West to make the war just. One bad example does not made a moral principle bad, however the concept is open to misinterpretation or abuse, as political leaders are always tempted to give it a meaning that suits them. Government’s never fight bad wars only just wars.

Goodness takes on an incredible diversity of meanings when used by politicians. Good for them is the greater good, a good which only they understand. Only they can make the greater good a reality. The austerity programme the UK government imposed on society is for the good of all. It will like the medieval practice of bleeding purge society of ills. All very reminiscent of Stalin, who regularly sent thousands to the death camps, for the good of Russian society. Killing thousands of Ukrainian farmers led to starvation and the death of millions. Britain’s austerity programme has impoverished millions and the spread of poverty level wages has reduced demand and slowed the recovery from recession. When political leaders define good or the greater good it rapidly loses any moral content and all kind of evils can result from this. The Iraq war was intended to achieve two goods, the removal of weapons of mass destruction that threatened the West and the freeing of the Iraqi people from a cruel dictator. Instead of it being a being it good action the reverse happened. Thousands were killed in a bloody civil war consequent on the invasion and now the country is threatened with a new civil war, one against an extremist Sunni militia.

Perhaps if George Bush and Tony Blair had a sounder understanding of morality than they displayed at the time, they would not have committed themselves to the folly of the Iraq war. Politicians have long given up reading Christian moralists such as Erasmus, but if they had not, they might have come across his article entitled ‘War is sweet to those who have never tried it’. Nothing is new, ambitious princes have always through the folly of war damaged the health and welfare of their peoples.

There is a danger in our contemporary society of having leaders lacking any fixed moral reference points. If good is a flexible thing only given the meaning that the leaders and political class give it, there is nothing to stop them committing inhumane experiments of their people. Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot murdered millions in the name of their self proclaimed goods. On the same spectrum but at the other end our politician practice inhumane experiments on us. Austerity is perhaps the worse, although there are plenty of other examples. Children in Britain have had to endure endless experiments with their schooling experiments of varying degrees of cruelty. Education ministers impose diktat after diktat on our schools which seem destined to introduce the spirit of Gradgrind into our schools. Schools are becoming akin to Victorian factories with child labourers repeating a series of unending mundane tasks. Experimentation is not limited only to our children but also to the sick, the disabled and the young unemployed, all the major political parties seem to be engaged in a competition to produce the most inhumane policies towards these groups. When any real understanding of the good is lacking, cruel and inhumane policies will result not so much from a sense of cruelty but an inability to see people as other than things, just another resource. Possibly the bear pit that is Prime Minister’s Question Time is the best representation of the callous unfeeling nature of our politicians.

Not recognising or understanding good is only one part of the problem, the other is the failure to acknowledge the bad. Children understand that out there are bad people, be they evil fairies, step mothers, dwarves or trolls. Politicians having no conception of bad fail to recognise bad people. The evil financial wizards who managed to make billions disappear were never recognised for what they were, in fact many of them were rewarded with titles from the government. Similarly politicians never recognise the evil trolls, dwarves and queens that populate the market. There are many bad landlords who charge exorbitant rents for unfit housing, yet politicians don’t recognise that there can be bad landlords and that only government regulation can resolve this problem. When reforms of the private rental market are suggested, a chorus of ministers, politicians and journalist cry it is impossible. They claim that any regulation would make the market worse, claiming that regulation would force landlords to withdraw from the market. Conveniently ignoring that those self same landlords have borrowed vast sums to buy their rental properties and it would be suicidal not to let them. The free market for them is an unalloyed good in which their can be no bad or evil. Bad landlords are not a problem that the market can’t resolve.A child from their knowledge of fairy tales would recognise really do exist, while politicians with a moral free sensibility cannot.

There has always been a clash between doing what is expedient in politics and what is principled. However what is unique in the present parliament is the lack of great principled individual politicians, our current parliament is a moral free zone. All the great reforms of the past have been driven by outstanding principled leaders. Lord Shaftesbury a Christian politician was the driving force behind the ending of child labour in the factories and Non-conformist Christian politicians such as Keir Hardie, Lloyd George and Aneurian Bevan were largely responsible for the creation of the welfare system, which their moral free successors are in the process of hastily dismantling.

It would be naive to claim that the politics practised in the past was much superior to today, but then unlike today there were moral giants who could drive through measures of social reform. One has to ask why is our parliament populated by a generation of moral pygmies? Perhaps an answer can be seen in the education of our predecessors. Not so much academic education as their education in values in the wider community. Wilberforce and Shaftesbury were evangelical Christians, Lloyd George and Aneurian Bevan were Non-Conformists and it was their Christian education that gave them a fierce attachment to a compassionate value system. Interestingly Lloyd George was as venal in many respects as our contemporary politicians, a womanising politician who willing sold political office; yet he was redeemed by a greater moral vision. What is lacking in contemporary society is the moral counterweight that the churches in the past provided to unbridled self interest. The great universities educate politicians in the practicalities of government, usually in PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics). Contemporary philosophy courses teach scepticism, politics courses the art of vote winning and economics the management of society, skills needed for the second rate political Machiavelli’s. As an economist I tend to single out economics for the greatest part of the blame, it is the great leveller, a subject in which everything is reduced to a material benefit or cost, much like Oscar Wilde’s cynic who knows the price of everything but is ignorant of the value of anything. Economics I believe has a tendency to shrink people’s moral vision. Particularly as current Neo-Liberal economics teaches that the economy is best left untouched by government intervention and that it is the unregulated free market that will deliver the goodies that people want, be it a home or high quality medical care.

What is moral in a government that values the interests of the drinks industry above that of the health of the community. Successive governments be they Labour or Conservative have facilitated the expansion of the drinks industry by easing the licensing laws. Our more principled ancestors (Non-Conformist politicians) recognised the evils of too free a consumption of alcohol and introduced licensing laws. Neo-Liberal economics teaches that the greatest freedom is the freedom of the individual to consume what they please. The costs to the health service of alcohol abuse, the increase of the number of babies damaged through alcohol fetal syndrome and alcohol induced violence count as nought against the individuals right to self abuse.

The present cannot be remodelled according to the ground rules of the past societies. It is not possible to reinstate the church as a powerful institution in society and it is probably not desirable. There are too many examples from the past of the church abusing its powerful position, not least with the burning of heretics. One answer is to demote the inhuman human sciences from their dominant position in the political and public dialogue. Plato does for me provide a way forward, he said that whoever knows good desires nothing else. What he meant by this was that the study of the nature of good has the potential transforms the human personality. (Such a brief statement does not do justice to the complexity of Plato’s thought, to do it justice would require a lengthy exposition.) Only Christians take the study of good seriously, university ethics courses teach students that good is an unknowable concept and at worst an emotion. I guess contemporary philosophers would be unsuitable to the teaching of good and probably only theologians could teach it without self mockery. What I desire is a reordering of the university syllabus particularly for the great and good in the elite universities. Obviously I am not naive enough to think this teaching would modify the behaviour of the great and the good that enjoy the ‘frat boy’ life style at university, but it might produce a new Lord Shaftesbury to be a moral counter weight to the moral free sheep that populate our politics.

Why economists should be banned from public life; it’s for the good of us all

June 13, 2014economic history, Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Uncategorized#austerity, #economics, #Greece, #MarkAnthony, #PontifexMaximus, #RomanSenate, #TonyBlairangrytunbridgewells

Can economists ever do good for human kind? If its contemporary economists that the question is asked of, the answer must be no. There are a few exceptions but generally speaking economists support the most inhumane of political experiments on mankind. With very few exceptions they have been the cheer leaders for the programme of austerity that has been inflicted on societies in Western Europe and the USA. Possibly there is some poetic justice in this turn of events. The leader of the IMF is always a European and the IMF has wreaked havoc on the economies of the developing world over the past decades. Whenever a developing country has turned to the IMF to finance its debts, the money has only been given on the condition that the country adopts the harshest of austerity policies. Health and education services are always the first the IMF insists on cutting, its a kind of perverse morality that believes the inhabitants of poor countries are deserving of poor health and education. Now the EU has adopted the same austerity policies to protect the debt holders (in this case German banks) who over invested in the Greek economy. The loans that saved the Greek banks from bankruptcy was only given on condition that Greece adopted the policies that turned the country into a basket case.

What I would like to suggest that governments adopt a ten year moratorium disbarring them from employing economists for that period. Society would be far better governed if politicians took responsibility for their actions instead of outsourcing the decision taking and blame to others. Perhaps if Tony Blair instead of sending his shadow cabinet on a business consultancy course but one on moral philosophy the horrors of the Iraq war may have been avoided. Infra structure products are hopelessly delayed as government invariably outsources decision making to think tanks, such as ‘The Adam Smith Institute’ or in the case the Third Heathrow Airport to an economist called Howard Davies. Stanley Baldwin when under pressure from the press barons to reverse his policy giving self governance to part of the British Empire spoke of them wanting the prerogative of power without responsibility, this is the prerogative of the harlot. The current generation of politicians want neither the power or the responsibility, just the opportunity to enjoy the trappings of power. The British government will not make the final decision on the High Speed 2 railway, that will be left to others.

There is a striking counter example which both throws light on the poor political governance of the UK and that is the Senate of Republican Rome. The Senate before it authorised any major action by the Roman State, asked the Pontifex Maximus (High Priest) to read the auspices to assess the prospects for success. This involved divining the attitude of the Gods to the enterprise by examining the entrails of a sacrificed animal. If the enterprise failed it was because the priest reading the entrails had made an error and had failed to recognise the hostility of the Gods to this enterprise. Today economists are asked to perform the a similar ritual, it is the economic report into the viability of the project. They read the auspices by examining the entrails (statistics) of the economy. While it is not hard for a minister to find a tame economist who will divine the government’s intention and predict the success of the enterprise, our system has one major flaw and that is the divining the auspices rarely delivers a single definitive reading. There are several economists who claim to perform the economic ritual better than the chosen government economist. They will deny that the government economist gave the correct reading of the economic auspices which generates confusion as to what is the correct reading and hesitancy in decision making. Their are too many high economic priests.

George Osborne the Chancellor of the Exchequer is the driving force behind proposal to build a new town at Ebbsfleet in Kent. What I can predict is that is that there will be numerous other economists claiming that the entrails were read incorrectly by the Treasury and that a new town is not needed or that Ebbsfleet is the wrong location etc. Putting a measure in the Queen’s speech does not guarantee that the town will ever built, as it depends on the agreement of that quarrelsome collective the economists to sanction it. With the government having outsourced decision making to the economists, I cannot see the new town of Ebbsfleet being built. Rather it will be a project whose merits will be debated into the indefinite future.

Despite the Roman system of decision taking appearing to depend on the whim of a supernatural deity, it was far more effective than ours. Firstly the Roman Pontifex Maximus (High Priest) was a senator and was always a powerful figure , unlike in Britain where the equivalent of the Pontifex Maximus is an outsider and is not regarded as an authoritative figure by other priests (economists). In Rome the reading of the auspices was merely confirming what the most powerful group in the Senate had decided. Murder was not an uncommon way of eliminating one’s opponents, as eliminating one’s opponents either ensured that only your supporters remained in the a Senate or it cowed the opposition into acquiescence. Mark Anthony was initially a gangster used by Caesar to intimidate his opponents in Rome. Our political leaders have rarely decided in advance what the policy will be, even if they favour one decision over another, they still outsource the decision to others. Economists the chosen group of outsiders lack the authority of the Pontifex Maximus, they all claim to be the Pontifex so there is no authoritative policy statement. What makes the Roman Senate a superior policy making body to the British Parliament was that the ritual was subordinate to art of decision making, whereas it is the reverse in the UK. The Senate unlike the British Parliament could make decisions even if they were bad ones. A similar phenomenon can be observed in the US congress which also appears incapable of decision making. One of the few policies Congress agreed on was designating the tomato sauce on pizzas as being one of an individuals five a day portions of fruit and vegetables. Congress can agree on meaningless acts but avoids difficult decisions.

Another advantage of the Roman reliance on the Gods providing supernatural policy sanctions is that such authority is far more persuasive than that conferred by economists on government policy. If the Senate wanted to oppose a particular policy, usually one that favoured the lower order the plebeians, they could claim the opposition of the Gods. Threatening natural omens would be reported such as cows with two heads all suggesting that the Gods were angry. Claiming a policy that you don’t favour will make people worse off, does not carry the same threat as a policy that angers the Gods.

It may seem strange to state that the decision making process of the Roman Senate is superior to that of the UK government, when it has access to a wealth of economic statistics and computers to aid decision taking. I argue that the Roman system was superior because the Senate’s decisions were made on qualitative grounds not quantitative. A boldness of vision comes naturally to individuals who celebrated virtue. Their moral exemplars were men such as Lars Porsena who burnt off his right hand to demonstrate Roman courage and steadfastness to the enemies of Rome, who held him captive. British politicians schooled in the world of cost and benefits are incapable of any grand vision. It breeds a kind of modesty in decision making and with it a desire to avoid big difficult decisions. There was a heroic generation of British politicians it was those who had guided us through a Great War. It was that generation that gave us a National Health system, free legal aid so the poor would be on an equal footing with the rich in court. Both of which our modest generation of pseudo economists want to end because of their supposed ‘unaffordability’ . The grandest vision any contemporary politician could envisage, is cutting the cost of a public service. In these modest time the hero is the cost cutting politician. Certainly there is not one contemporary politician who venture any project as grand as a national health service.

This is why this particular economist wants all economists banished from government and all forms of public service. I want to take away that prop politicians use to avoid making decisions, that is the economy, when everything is deferred due to economic considerations. University education is too expensive so the pseudo economists increase university fees to £9000 pa. The consequence is that a black hole develops in university funding into which the government is having to pour more and more money. Stupidity rules in Westminster/Whitehall masquerading as economic good sense, if higher education is really that unaffordable why not just cut the number of university places, instead of using the economic fudge of pretending it will be solved by increasing fees.

One further observation the contemporary Lars Porsena would not be the one who resisted the over mighty enemy, but the one who capitulated to the enemy and who facilitated their aims. Successive British governments when faced with the problem of tax evasion and avoidance by the rich and powerful, rather than taking action to end this abuse of power and offend these powerful men instead took action to make tax avoidance easier.

Demonic or Nietzschian Economics

June 4, 2014christianity, Economics, Philosophy, religion#demoniceconomics, #economics, #JamesHogg, #Nazi Germany, Bauman, fair wages, justified sinner, Nietzsche, social housingangrytunbridgewells

Nietzsche is perhaps the most misunderstood of philosophers, he is remembered for the praise of the ‘blood beast’ of his declining years, not the insights of his philosophy in his early years. As a skeptic philosopher he criticised his fellow philosophers for failing to understand the subject the nature of the subject they studied, man. His most potent criticism that all grand philosophies were fallible as they went contrary to the nature of man. One of his most trenchant attacks was on the notion of free will, he demonstrated that so many acts of criminals were predetermined so to punish them as if they had freely committed a criminal act was wrong. Similarly I want to conduct a skeptical or Nietzschian analysis of economics

What I want to contribute to the study is ‘satanic or demonic economics’, a new reading or interpretation of economics. The devil or Satan offers a wonderful tool for explaining the true nature of economic analysis. While I prefer to believe that we as individuals have sufficient potential for evil within ourselves; I cannot deny the value of having a demonic figure to explain the evils committed by men. Previously I have written of economists adopting a devil substitute to explain the failure of the perfect economic system, the free market. What I have realised since then is that it is the economist’s failure to recognise the existence of evil that has lead them to blunder into creating the most inhumane of human sciences.

There is a novel which demonstrates all too clearly the problem with contemporary economics. That novel is James Hogg’s ‘The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner’. Robert Colwan the anti hero of the novel fails to see that his companion and friend Gil-Martin is the devil. He is so blinded by his sense of self righteousness, that is his own sense of goodness, that he fails to see that Gil-Martin is leading him into committing acts that become progressively more and more evil, culminating in the murder of his brother. While James Hogg is poking fun at the intolerant lowland Scot’s Calvinists who would abolish fun if they had the power, his book contains a fundamental truth. Those who don’t acknowledge the existence of evil usually go on to commit evil, because they are blind to the existence of evil. The German bureaucrats who sent millions to the gas chambers could do so because their only concern was to make the German railway system run efficiently. The fate that awaited millions of Jews was irrelevant. What Bauman discovered about the behaviour of German railway officials could not unfairly be applied to the current generation of economists. They as with the German bureaucrats only want to make the system run efficiently, they have no concern about the consequences of their actions for their fellow men.

Economists have always argued that their subject is a social science not a moral science. They claim that by excluding value judgements from their analysis they can offer the objective analysis which delivers the answers to the problems that bedevil mankind. What they fail to recognise by committing themselves to a self declared moral blindness they cannot recognise the inhumanity and evil of their language and practice. The only fair comparison I can make is the psychopath who is unable to develop human empathy because they have been damaged so severely by their dysfunctional upbringing that they are incapable of moral empathy. Economists similarly have so damaged by their study and practice of economics that they are also incapable of moral empathy.

The model that economists wished to emulate was that of the natural sciences. Its success had been due to the adoption of the scientific method and the exclusion of any value judgements that predetermined the answer. Scientific study had progressed little until religion stopped determining the answers to any scientific investigation. Bishop Usher had calculated that the earth was created in 4004 BC from his study of chronology of events listed in the bible. This effectively prevented the development of earth sciences until non-Christian scientists such as Darwin and Huxley demonstrated this was untrue as the earth evolved over millions of years. Economists wished to achieve the same standard of impartial enquiry that prevailed in the natural sciences. What they ignored was that economics is a human science and that if considerations humanity are removed from the study all that is left is a science of inhumanity. The consequences of which can be appalling.

One subject that has been a constant topic for study by British economists has been the low productivity of the British economy. By excluding any considerations of human welfare, they were able to come up with a number of ‘objective’ solutions. They identified the cause of low productivity as an under performing and dysfunctional labour market. There were too many restrictions on the use of labour which limited its efficiency. Employment protection legislation, health and safety legislation together with over powerful trade unions prevented its efficient use. What they saw was not a people who had legitimate rights as regards fair wages and a safe working environment, but a multitude of dysfunctional workers who needed to be subject to the harsh realities of the market to turn them into productive human resources. People are not people, they are the labour and they only right they should have is to be used productively. Fortunately for economists all governments since 1979 have seen the benefit of a utilitarian approach to labour. Employment protection and health and safety legislation have been so effectively emasculated that employers need have little concern about them impeding their exploitation of their workers. Trade unions have been so weakened that with a few exceptions they are of no concern to employers.

What has been created in Britain since 1979 is a low cost flexible labour force that is attractive to business. Consequently Britain has recorded one of the sharpest rises in employment in Europe during the economic recovery that has occurred since the crash of 2009. Labour is cheap to hire and easy to dispose of, so employers are willing to take on staff, knowing that they cost little and can be disposed of easily if the market takes a downturn. All this increase in employment has been at the expensive of productivity as its has lead to the growth of low cost industries, warehousing, call centres that require little investment as plentiful cheap labour is available. Cheap people rather than expensive investment. The misery of zero hours contracts, split shifts or low wages is of no consequence to the economist, as they are merely signs that the market is working efficiently in making good use of unemployed labour. What is most matters for them is that the employer able to use labour as cheaply or efficiently as possible.

Economists never speak of the need for fair wages, security of employment, good housing or free health care. As the value of the sense of well being from a fair income etc. cannot be priced so the
Its ignored. The economic calculus that is calculating the benefit derived from human activity can only calculate benefit in quantitive not qualitative terms. The economist has an opt out from moral judgements, it the market can make decisions about what people want and need, so such decisions about health care provision should be left to the market. However this ignores the dysfunctional nature of the market, as billionaires can pay more for their health care than can the poor, the market will provide excellent health care for the rich and minimal health care for the poor as the latter will make little money. Yet as economics is a subject devoid of morality economists would never be concerned with the poor being deprived of health care, as with the German railway officials human misery caused by their actions are not their concern.

Lacking any understanding of morality economists are prey to a diverse number of Gil-Martins. that economists have no conception of morality, I mean public morality, they lack any conception of the common good. They are not lacking any conception of private morality,I’m sure many economists are good fathers and mothers.) These Gil-Martins are the wealthy businessmen and large corporations that endow university professorships or fund think tanks. As economists lack any moral sensibility they are easy to corrupt, promoting schemes that will benefit their benefactors. While there are numerous economists advocating the benefits of free enterprise, that is a lack of regulation which benefits the large corporations, as treating people well costs money, there are few that argue the benefits of a strong regulatory state.

Perhaps it would be wrong to call economists the ‘devil’s spawn’, such harsh language is not suitable for these civilised times. Yet economics is the ‘demonic science’ as the policy recommendations of its practitioners always increase human misery. Can anybody recall any economist ever speaking out for fair wages or security of tenure for private rental tenants. In fact the latter is anathema to economists as they believe that security of tenure impedes the mobility of labour as people are reluctant to give up the security of their existing tenancy for uncertain accommodation prospects in an area were there is work. If secure social housing tenancies are destroyed in Newcastle, there will be nothing to prevent the unemployed in Newcastle moving to jobs in the prosperous Thames valley, as they will be swapping one insecure tenancy for another. Ever since its inception economists have been campaigning against the National Health Service (NHS) as its providing of free care care at the point of use, which is contrary to the fundamentals of good economics. Free service encourages over use they claim,* if a service is priced people will only use it if they really want it, that way the correct distribution of resources is achieved as only those willing to pay for a service will use it. Services free of price are used wastefully, therefore the NHS must go. Economists are like so many Robert Colwans plotting the demise of a much loved health service, rather than a much loved brother. From the point of view of this theologian any human science that lacks any conception of the good can only practice evil. This is why using the concept of the devil as an explanatory tool is so useful in understanding contemporary economics, as evil infects all its economic analysis, medieval Christians were wiser than use in seeing the devil constantly at work in society.

*It is intriguing that economists tend to view ill health as a product of free service revision at not a risk that occurs naturally to human beings.
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I am a person not a shopper

May 26, 2014Economics, Philosophy, Politics, society#babyboomers, #economics, #UKIP, culture, elites, non thinking, Tea Party, winter of discontentangrytunbridgewells

Shopping is unfortunately the prism through which the government now views the people. People have one fundamental right and that is to be consumers. What matters is not that the government should provide high quality public services, but to provide a choice of service providers. Changes in education and health are intended to present the consumer with an array of services from different providers so they can choose the service that most meets their needs. Economists are responsible for this nonsense. Having advised governments that choice and competition are the mechanisms best fitted to provide good public service, they forgot to mention that economy theory states that this market mechanism only works if consumers have perfect knowledge. When buying vegetables it is possible to judge what is the best potato but the same cannot apply purchasing medical services. How can I know what is the best possible medical care for what may be life threatening illnesses or even know what illness effects me? When given the choice of five medical providers for my eye surgery, I had no idea which to choose. I lacked the knowledge to be able to choose the best provider. What I did was ask the optician which were the best. All she could say was that a previous patient had been a doctor and he choose this one, and in my ignorance I copied the example of the doctor.

How did this become the accepted public policy? Baby boomers are blamed for many things unfairly, but the economists and politicians of this generation are to blame for this policy nonsense. As a member of this generation I can give an insight into this malaise. The sixties generation are often described incorrectly as the generation of ‘free love’, sexual and social liberation. What is less often acknowledged is that this is the generation that gave up on serious thought. It was not so much that this generation became obsessed with the new sensual delights of drugs and rock and roll, but their dropping of old difficult belief systems in favour of a new simpler techo-scientific belief system. A system that would deliver ‘real’ solutions to the problems facing the world. Unrealistic and unworldly ideologies such as socialism which never delivered on their impossible promises were replaced by a belief in a hard edged social realism. A dogmatic belief system called Neo-Liberalism, as one politician said it is the only game in town.

This hard edged belief system was one disseminated downwards from the social and intellectual elite. The intellectual elite schooled the new and up and coming political elite and the mass media disseminated it into wider society. Usually by highlighting the horrors of the old ways, ‘the winter of discontent’ and by simultaneously giving over column inches to the gurus and prophets of the new politics.

I as a student in London University witnessed the early stages of this new inhumane ideology. The economics professors were teaching that the dominant humane system of social democracy was wrong it gave people an unrealistic expectation of what the state could do. Two of our professors expounded the then shocking view that unemployment was too low and must increase if the economy was to grow. Yet they were part of the generation that lived through the Great Depression.

Unknown to us at the time was that the new theory of cost benefit analysis as taught then would prove a useful tool for destroying social democracy. It would replace the more subtle and complex ethical thinking of the past with the crude simplicities of technical analysis. All the benefits of living in a civilised society are difficult to price, because they are all too often the intangible benefits of the mind. Yet just as real as the material benefits. How can the deleterious effects of the noise nuisance caused by a third runway at Heathrow airport be priced? Only by indulging in a series of thought experiments can such harmful experiences be priced and by any reckoning such reasoning lacks any really sound underpinning in the reality of people’s lives. It is much easier to calculate the benefits in terms of increased passenger flights and cargo deliveries. They can easily be priced and the value of increased air traffic is calculated on a much sounder basis than the cash cost of noise pollution, so it is hardly a surprise that cost benefit analysis usually turns out to favour the proposed development. The benefits of a good life cannot be priced, they can only be part of a moral calculus. Fortunately for the developer cost benefit analysis avoids any such difficult problems.

What was disseminated outwards from the universities was the new culture of ‘not thinking’. Calculation would replace open debate, values were dismissed as distractions that prevented a realistic assessment of the issues. Ostrogorki would shudder to think to his study how the Conservative party of the 19th century used various tricks to manipulate the popular prejudice to win elections would lead change they nature of politics teaching. Political philosophy would be replaced by the study of the means of manipulating the popular vote. The science of calculation would replace the discussion of values. Values other than those as an embodied in an ideology to get out the vote were to be regarded as an irrelevance. Politics became nothing more than the study of the mechanics of politics. As a significant number of the dominant politicians studied PPE at an elite university, it left them ill prepared for the great debates than dominate contemporary politics.

There is a danger of over stating the influence of the ‘new intellectuals’ in shaping the nations thought. Higher education has to a large extent in the UK been part of the interlocking system of social elites that govern this country, educating the members of the new political elites. The new science of ‘realism’ suited the needs of the social elite who felt their interests had been ignored and disregarded by the social democratic settlement of the post war period. A teaching of humanities that regarded calculation as the supreme virtue suited their interests as any course such as philosophy that embodied a teaching of values would expose them as a privileged elite whose position lacked any moral justification. Isaiah Berlin the great political philosopher once wrote that there could be no such thing as a right wing philosophy. No moral virtue attaches to the abuse of power and privilege.

It was no coincidence that when this group achieved overwhelming political power with the conservative governments of the 1980’s they ordered a purge of the universities, the thinking departments were to be closed. Philosophy departments shut in many universities and the liberal arts were starved of resources so as to reinforce their new second class status. Instead the humanities were to be replaced with the new ‘non thinking’ subject, business studies. A subject in which students are to be taught to do business, not to think. It is no surprise that students are beginning to rebel against the dullness and enforcement conformity of thinking that characterises British universities.

North Korea is mocked for the peculiarities of the most authoritarian of systems that cannot tolerate even the most innocuous of dissent. Even to the extent of limiting its barbers to a few approved types of hair styles. What its leaders should instead do is copy the example of the UK, the country of ‘not thinking’. People are not forced to become model citizens of the people’s republic, but have been taught to express themselves as shoppers. A much more complex interplay of forces have made the non critical culture the popular culture. Great cultural events have now become little more than festivals of shopping.

This is demonstrated by the two so called insurgent parties in the USA and the UK, where the dissent or insurgency is more confected than real. UKIP the insurgency party is funded by a millionaire, its leader is a former investment banker, one of the new privileged elite. Its policies are those intended to protect the interests of the privileged elite. The withdrawal from Europe is really a wish to withdraw from the EU regulations that control business, such as the working hours directive. Limiting immigration is a popular policy but immigration has become less necessary for business as the organised labour has been effectively destroyed and employers can now treat the indigenous population as badly as it likes so there is less need for cheap easily exploited foreign labour. Other policy measures such as the introduction of a 10% flat rate of income tax and the privatisation of the NHS are contrary to public interest. What can demonstrate more clearly a ‘non thinking’ culture than one in which the popular party is the one that has absolutely no interest in the welfare of the people, who it claims to represent.

An Unusual Economist

After the crash of financial 2008/9, it was obvious that the current model of economic analysis was broken. I want to develop a new approach to economic analysis.