Category Archives: Uncategorized

In Memoriam – a tribute to a feminist sister

Feminism, Philosophy, Politics, religion, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , ,

Awesome-Yellow-Rose
The Yellow Rose a symbol of joy and gladness
A recent personal tragedy made aware that philosophies of kindness are regarded more highly than is widely assumed, many remain impervious to the worse excesses of our materialistic culture. The values associated with a more traditional culture still exist within contemporary culture, values such as friendship, compassion and caring. The respect shown towards my sister by her many friends demonstrated how these highly these values are still regarded. The turnout at her funeral and the grief expressed showed how much people value this individuals whose life demonstrated these principles in practice. She was a woman who worked in the caring services, most recently teaching children that had been excluded from school because of behavioural problems. Even accepting back into her class a violent teenager who had made an attack on her. She was a central figure in many friendship groups and social activities such as the book club. These friends all supported each other through the problems that life throws up, illness and death for example. Men seem to lack these support groups as we seem much more one dimensional in our relationships.When I started my last job I made friends with Keith, yet it was a number of years before I knew he had two children in their teens. We just talked about work, philosophy and politics, never our families. One sociologist made a study of language use and she came to the conclusion that women make much more use of relational language. Going back to my example if we had been women, we would asked each other about family and known almost immediately how many children each had. I think one writer wrote that it is woman kind that civilises mankind. Perhaps illustrated by a remark made by my wife. When hearing that the British army was to allow women to engage in combat on the frontline, who said that, ‘I thought we were capable of better than that’. What the life of my sister reminded was that there is a different culture within our society of which I as man was unfamiliar.

Feminist philosophers and theologians believe that their gender gives them a very distinct life, which makes the dominant male oriented philosophies and theologies of our society irrelevant to those who don’t have the male experience of life. Grace Jantzen is one of these writers. She in her book ‘Becoming Divine”,redrafts Hannah Arendt’s philosophy of natality to give it a distinctly feminist context. For Arendt natality is a philosophy of rebirth, a philosophy of revolution and change. There are times when the power exercised by the dominant group in society weakens and falters.This is becomes a time of opportunity, a time when a public space opens up which allows all those feelings and ideas that had been repressed to be expressed. It is a brief moment of time in which change in the social order can occur as new ideas are given the time and space to take root. The Arab spring briefly appeared to be one such moment of natality, it seemed as if Arab societies could be reborn on more egalitarian lines, when fairness established as one of the founding principles of a new society. Unfortunately, in all but Tunisia the old repressive forces reasserted themselves with renewed vigour.

People of mine and my sister’s generation thought the 1960s was such a time of rebirth and the remaking of society. A time of the ‘the Age of Aquarius’, certainly it was for many individuals, who in response to the times entered into the caring professions or adopted an alternative lifestyle. Unfortunately this brief spring time of liberation was crushed by the forces of reaction. Not the cruel reaction of a repressive police state, but the overwhelmingly seductive power of the consumer society. Potential revolutionaries were bought off by the promise of wealth. I can remember conversations between avowed Marxists in which the main topic of conversation was house prices and how they would benefit from the rise in these prices. The wealth on offer was so much greater than any of our parents knew so young people it easily seduced into becoming willing participant in the consumer society. What remained of the revolution of ideas and behaviours, quickly metamorphosed into a revolution of style and appearance. Revolution was to be expressed in liking a particular type of music or through dress, revolution segued into glam rock, it was a revolution of style. This revolution left intact the very fundamentals of the old unequal society, the power of the old order was never really challenged. When the opportunity came in the mid 1970s this group savagely reasserted its claim to wealth and privilege. The welfare state was slowly dismantled, poverty appeared again on our streets in the person of the beggar.
One interview I saw on television encapsulated this change. A representative of a country landowners association said how the fashion for large country houses had changed. In the 1960s these great houses were being knocked down, whereas in the ‘noughties’ there was a renewed interest in building great country houses. He failed to mention that this was a consequence of increasing inequality of wealth and income in the country.

Grace Janzten was part of new rising group of feminist thinkers who reacted against the philosophy of the times, that of Neo-Liberalism in its many forms. These new patriarchal philosophies were as the old male religions the philosophies of anti-life given new guises. These old new philosophies for her sprung from the inability of men to directly experience the act of creation, that is giving birth. It was the experience of or the potential experience of this that gave women a different understanding of life. Central to women’s lives are the acts of creation and nurture, as without nurturing that created thing, life would not thrive. Masculinist philosophies such as Neo-Liberalism make the nurturing society impossible. Its very Darwinism emphasis on winners and losers is anti-nurture, as in such a society only the winners thrive. Rather than thrive the great majority of society, that is the losers languish and flounder. The number of children in poverty is rising and those malnourished children lose out in the academic race that is now schooling. They cannot compete with their better fed and resourced rivals. Neo-Liberal Britain is the society of the precariat and the underclass, where only the possession of wealth is celebrated. A Jantzenist society would be very different, in that all its children would be nurtured and all have an opportunity to succeed. This would mean the removing of those barriers to aspiration, that is the many barriers placed in the way of the children of the poor by low income and poverty. Motherhood would be the basic principle around which society would be structured, rather than the very masculinist one of power.

Jantzen never really develops how her philosophy/theology in the context of remaking society, her interest is in power. How to grab back power from the patriarchy. Her solution is the development of a feminist philosophy of natality and life as a counterweight to dominant masculinist philosophies of power and violence. She wants equal recognition in society for the very different life experience of women. This in turn brings me back to my sister and I, as our childhood experiences demonstrate the two very distinct philosophies of life. She would work as a volunteer for the St.Johns Ambulance Brigade, which meant giving up her spare time to work in the wards of the local hospital. While I went out with my friends fishing or shooting, more usually the former, inflicting pain and suffering on the local wildlife. Although Grace Jantzen can justifiably be accused of presenting a very idealised view of women’s life experience, it does not diminish her claim for the need for a powerful feminist philosophy of natality to oppose and limit the predatory masculinist Social Darwinist philosophies of today. It is the latter that have wreaked havoc on society reintroducing to it, poverty, insecurity and ill health all the evils of the societies of the past.

Is Apple responsible for its own woes – a sceptical economist’s observation on falling IPhone sales

Economics, politics, society, Uncategorized, United Kingdom, , , , , , ,

As an enthusiastic purchaser of all Apple products, my attention was caught by an article in my paper, in which it was stated that Apple was having problems selling it latest Iphone. It’s stores are apparently stockpiling unsold IPhones. Today as if in confirmation of this I received an email from Apple offering me generous terms for upgrading my IPhone 5s to the latest model. What I am going to suggest is that Apple itself is in part responsible for its own woes.
Reading this article reminded me of a story about Henry Ford. It might be apocryphal but Henry Ford was considering automating the production line at his Detroit car assembly plant. He spoke to one of his most trusted advisers, who said it is claimed, ‘that if you lay all these men off, who will buy your cars’. Henry Ford considered his friends advice and continued with his labour intensive methods of production and so the story goes sales of his cars remained high. 
Apple and all the major manufacturing companies in the US and Western Europe have done the opposite of Henry Ford. They have by outsourcing production to foreign countries where labour is cheap, impoverished many of their potential customers. When the Rover car plant was being closed in Oxford, a study was produced that showed the replacement jobs for those car workers would be in the service sector, where wages were 30% lower than in manufacturing. Similarly in those former mining areas in England, high income mining jobs have been replaced by low income jobs in call centres or warehouses. The same trend is evident in the USA where increasingly the new jobs that there are created are relatively low income jobs in the service sector. If they are in manufacturing they are again likely to be relatively low income low skill jobs. A recent study showed that incomes for men in the USA with no more than a high school diploma showed a decline in incomes since 2007. 
Checking with Amazon I note that the price of the most basic IPhone 6s is £524 in UK and the similar model in the US is over $800. In the new age of capitalism when increasing numbers of workers are in low wage economy, they are effectively priced out of the market for expensive smart phones. The wisdom of Henry Ford seemed to have been forgotten by the current generation of business leaders.
What is common to all large corporations is the tax strike, as these businesses use a variety of tax avoidance schemes to avoid to paying their taxes. Usually this involves locating the head office in a low tax location, so corporation tax due on profits on the profits earned from sales in high countries . Ireland is the low tax headquarters for Apple in Europe and Luxembourg is that for Amazon. The scale of corporate tax avoidance is subject to varying calculations, in Britain even the conservative tax authorities estimate the scale of tax avoidance at being a sum in excess of £30 billion, other sources such the sum is much higher. The consequence is that the government’s of Western Europe and have less cash than is normal for the government of a developed country. The consequence is that government’s lack tax revenues to fund those activities undertaken by government and are over dependent on borrowing to finance their activities. This has had a knock effect in that in times of financial stress governments are forced to cut their borrowings and spending, resulting in an age of austerity. This austerity further reduces the incomes of the low paid through benefit cuts and job losses. These newly poor Europeans are unlikely to be customers for new expensive IPhones. 
I believe businesses such as Apple face a problem in that by minimising their costs of production in by outsourcing production and by minimising their tax payments they maximise short term profits, at the expense of long term sales revenue. It is the latter which generates real profits for the company and actions which damage revenue streams threaten the long term viability of the business. Car manufacturers have long faced this problem and have overcome that by boosting the income of potential buyers by offering low cost loans for car purchase. Perhaps Apple to maintain sales will have to look to alternate ways of boosting their potential customers income. 
This particular economist doubts the wisdom of replacing earned income with cheap loans as an the main means of increasing household incomes. Already consumer debt in the UK is reaching 180% of GDP, a sum which becomes unviable if there is a collapse of the banks, as happened in 2008/9. Borrowed income is more volatile and less reliable than earned income and is a source of financial instability and economic meltdown.

The Philosopher and the Economist

economic history, Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , ,

Over the last twenty plus years their have been a series of financial crisis each inflicting damage worse than the previous on the world economy. Yet economists see no need to change there understanding of economics as they believe that in the years before 2008/9 they had discovered the ‘holy grail’ of economics, that is the free market economy. The two schools of British economics Neo-Liberalism and its free market cousin, New Keynesian have an enthusiasm for the largely unregulated market system, seeing it as the best possible of all possible economic models. Yet evidence suggests otherwise and as an avid student of philosophy I would say that all understandings of human behaviour and society are imperfect and that no one understanding of the nature of the economy is without significant flaws. 

 
Image taken from drury.edu

John Locke in his discussion of the nature of philosophy (Essay on Human Understanding) makes what I believe the most compelling case for the inclusion of philosophy in the economists tool box. He compares the role of the philosopher to that of the under labourer. The under labourer on the 17th century building site cleared the ground in preparation for the building work to come. Similarly the philosopher clears and tidies up the area of study for others, they clear the intellectual clutter from the site making clear to other, making clear the areas of study and highlighting the key questions to be answered. Their role is to dismiss all those questions that prompt research that hinders or obstructs the progress of research. In the science of the 17th century this would mean excluding astrology from the in study of astronomy, as the study of this distracted from the real science of the universe. While it might be argued by economists there is no equivalence of astrology studies in economics today, their still practise their subject in a way that prevents real solutions being found to the current economic malaise.

As a Lockean philosopher I would ask why do economists not recognise that the economy is an integral part of the wider social organisation that is society. What they should be asking is how does the wider society impact on the economy? What are the consequences for the economy in changes of human behaviours and attitudes, do these changes contribute to the current economic malaise? Why leave the builders out of the study, after all the economy is but a human construct?
Just as with the fashion in clothes it is at affected by changes in people’s tastes and attitudes.

Perhaps the most significant change in people’s attitudes and behaviour is the shared undertandin of the purpose of the legal system. Initially lawsand the legal system were seen as indispensable to the working of society, as they prevented those disruptive behaviours that would prevent a settled society from existing. These crimes when committed could attract severe sanctions, in the most extreme cases a life sentence. However there has developed in recent years a new understanding of the role of law. Law is now seen as a means of facilitating certain approved behaviours which are known by the generic term entrepreneurship. Laws aimed at eliminating bad behaviours by this group have been removed or emasculated, as it is believed that the free market is the best means of regulating such behaviours. The assumption is that competition in the market will drive out bad entrepreneurs and the law that by intervening in this Darwinian market will result in interventions that damage the economy. Consequently laws on employment protection and the governance of companies are either abolished or have their impact minimised. Now the legal profession is tending towards the belief that the free market and not law is the best guarantor of good behaviour in business and that their role is to stop groups such as environmental activists interfering in the market. In Britain there any many legal restrictions that can be imposed on such awkward groups.

One such consequence is that company law has been rendered largely ineffective. Originally the public company was developed as a means of enabling businesses to raise large sums of money from the public to finance large scale business investment. This organisation has now evolved primarily into a means of tax avoidance or for the owners a means of avoiding legal responsibilities and liabilities. When companies go bankrupt through mismanagement ,the directors are free to walk away from the company free from any legal sanction. No blame attaches to them. It is the legal entity the public company that has gone bankrupt, not the directors. The structure of the public company encourages irresponsible and reckless behaviour by company directors, as was demonstrated during the crash of 2008/9 when no senior banker was held to accountable for reckless or irresponsible behaviour.

This widespread practice of wrong doing throughout the corporate sector has had very negative consequences for the economy. Increasingly people come to distrust the large business corporations all they see is a group of greedy individuals exploiting their customers for their own benefit. Such people have achieved the impossible in making people yearn for a return of the once much derided nationalised industries. The directors of the privatised rail industry have been responsible for massive increases in rail fares making British railways the most expensive in Europe. Fares on British trains can be six times the price of their equivalent in Italy. This behaviour is producing a reaction in the community at large, in Western Europe groups such as Momentum in Britain or Podemos in Spain are campaigning to end this abuse of the system.

However my intention is to demonstrate how the tolerance of widespread mismanagement, corporate greed and wrong doing impacts on the economy as a whole.This is most clearly demonstrated in the finance industries. In the days of my childhood one of the most trusted figures was the ‘man from the Pru’. He called every month to collect a small payment from my parents for life insurance, savings and house insurance. My parents knew that a reputable firm such as the Prudential would always pay out whatever the circumstance, they had faith in the company. The first sign that all was not well in the finance industry was when England’s oldest insurance company ‘The Equitable Life’ went effectively bankrupt, as it lacked the funds to pay the pensions it had promised. There then followed a long series of scandals in this industry due largely to a combination of mismanagement, individual greed and irresponsible behaviour. The consequence was the development of a widespread distrust of the financial services industry.

This justified widespread distrust of the financial services sector has led to some unfortunate consequences. People began to look for alternatives to saving their money with these institutions; they looked for investments that would offer far better and safer returns than those promised by the financial institutions. The one alternative for most people was property, asset prices rose more rapidly in the housing market than in any other alternative market, so any investment in property appeared to be a win, win situation. There is no other market in which the value of the initial investment would increase so quickly. Many entered the rental market as the returns on rental properties were astronomic, it was a market in which it seemed nobody could lose, except they did. There is the now forgotten property crash of 1990 and the more recent one of 2008/9. The problem was that the increase in house prices was due to a speculative boom, caused by more and more money chasing an ever more slowly increasing supply of homes for sale. A market based on speculation will always be subject to booms and busts. The supply of money for this speculative investment will always slow at some stage, usually due to some downturn in the economy or the realisation that much of the property in which the money is invested is not worth the money paid for it, as in the sub prime market in the USA. Such as downturn is occurring now and there will be a crash in the property markets in either 2016 or 2017. What cannot be predicted is the scale of the crash.

Unfortunately this rise of the property market has coincided with the decline of the manufacturing sector. Manufacturing now only generates 10% of UK’s national income. In the housing market much of the investment is recycled money as the same properties are sold over and over again at ever increasing prices; whereas the manufacturing industry creates new products for sale, which generates ‘real’ extra’ income. With the decline of manufacturing people could look less and less to an increase in income, as most new jobs created were in the less productive service sector. As people could no longer rely on ever increasing incomes that looked to speculative returns to boost there spending. The market that offered huge speculative returns was the housing market.

There are two negative impacts on the economy from the growth of the housing market. Funds are attracted to the higher speculative returns in that market, rather than the lower returns from investment in manufacturing industry. At the time of the crash in 2008 over 80% of bank loans where made to the property market. A manufacturing industry starved of investment funding can only decline. The consequence is that Britain has become increasingly dependent on foreign manufacturers to supply the goods it needs. Britain now has the largest trade deficit as a percentage of national income for any developed industrial country.

This has resulted in a disastrous change in government economic policy. Now as so many people are dependent on speculative booms in the housing market for extra income (loans secured against the increase in property values), the main role of government economic policy is to support the speculative boom by adopting a series of policies that constantly increase house prices. What never occurs to the government is that this is a foolish policy that can only end in tears,as happens when the market crashes. No government minister or Treasury official seems to have noticed that each successive crash requires greater and greater sums of government money to bail out the losers in the crash. Figures for the money used to bail out the bank’s etc in 2009 are notoriously opaque. One figure I came across was that in 2009 the government pledged £1.2 billion to support the bank. This figure was about a 100% of national income, fortunately it was no called on, it remained just a pledge. If the bank creditors had demanded that the money be paid into the banks coffers, Britain would be in a far worst situation than is Greece.

What I am trying to say is that as a philosopher I look beyond the current economic toolkit to try to understand the nature of our current economic malaise. It is by asking different questions that I arrive at different conclusions to those proffered by orthodox economists. The main solution to our problem is to stop the speculative frenzy that is the property or more accurately the housing market. If the banks and other lends could not increase by astronomic sums the amount they lend to the property market, there would be no money to fuel this frenzy. This could be done quite simply by increasing the reserves the banks hold, one economist has suggested that the bank’s reserves should be increased to 10% of total assets (or loans). If this happened banks would have to go to the market to raise huge sums of money to increase their share capital. It would not happen and banks would be forced to withdraw funds from the housing market. There would be a painful crash in that market, but once that the effects of that crash had receded the economy could be rebalanced towards manufacturing. An increase in manufacturing activity would have many beneficial effects, one of which would be the reduction of our horrendous trade deficit, as people rather than buying imported goods bought domestically produced ones.

There would be a price for making this change, there would be a fall in the incomes of many people, as they could no longer rely on loans to boost they’re spending. It is quite likely that there are a number of senior politicians that are aware of this and for that reason they are afraid to end the speculative housing boom. Conventional knowledge states that any government that presides over falling house prices is committing electoral suicide. Instead they hope the great crash will happen on somebody else’s watch. To put it another way fear of electoral suicide makes cowards of all politicians.

What I am saying is that while economists fail to consider factors such as a change in the attitudes and behaviours in the population at large and in particular that of the political and cultural elites, they will never come up with solutions to the current economic malaise. This type of thinking that does take into account these cultural changes was known as political economy, yet this school of economics has long been abandoned by practising economists.

Returning to my initial thoughts on Locke and the under labourer, perhaps what really needs to be cleared away is the current economic orthodoxy, which acts as an intellectual road block to prevent the development of any new approaches to solving the current economic malaise.

A God for an Economist

christianity, Economics, Philosophy, religion, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , ,

Whenever I confess my belief in a God my friends are incredulous. They cannot understand how a person who they consider an intelligent rational thinker can believe in such a superstition. What makes my position seem even more ludicrous is that I am a negative theologian, that is I believe that God in his essence is unknowable. Bertrand Russell pointed out that is illogical to believe in something or someone that is unknowable as a knowledge of such a being is impossible, it’s a logical contradiction. How could you know if you did not know? However I want to turn these arguments on their head. As an economist I talk about the economy but I as with my thousands of fellow economists don’t really know what the economy is in its essence. I can talk about markets, the balance of payments but they are only certain highly visible parts of the economy. Classical economists and those of a Neo-Liberal persuasion will claim that the economy consists of a number of inter related markets. The falsity of this claim is demonstrated by this simple truth, if economists understood the true nature of the economy they would have at their disposal all the tools necessary to manage and control the economy. Economic crises would disappear instead of occurring at regular intervals and the economy would be on continuous trajectory of growth. The welfare of all would be maximised. History demonstrates the fallibility of economists, all to often they get it wrong. It should not be forgotten that when the financial crisis struck in 2008, the majority of economists were caught by surprise. Only a small minority expected a crisis, but they were a small disregarded and isolated minority.

I do then believe in the existence of two entities neither of which I can really know in essence. It can be argued that while I may not understand the real nature of the economy, I am every day affected by the reality of it, it is not something that I cannot ignore, it is just there. The economy generates the tax revenues from which my pension is funded, everyday I participate in this self same economy that has the shops and chains of distribution from which I buy the essentials and good things that make my life bearable. One such good thing is the cappuccino that I buy daily at my local Salumeria. Similarly nobody would deny that they are affected by the good and bad actions of others. What hurts most, being betrayed by a friend or being unable to buy the latest IPhone through lack of funds? We all participate daily in a network of relationships whose nature determines our sense of well being. However whether they are defined as spiteful, hurtful, mean, bad or evil actions, the consequences of such actions can be devastating for the victim, more so than any economic loss. Similarly friendly, helpful, kind or good actions can transform the life of the beneficiary of such actions.

Fiction provides the classic example of a life transforming good action. The Priest in ‘Les Miserables’ who forgives Jean Valjean for his theft of the church’s candle sticks. If he had not forgiven him, Jean Valjean would have been sent back to the prison galleys where he would have lived out a short and wretched life. Human relationships can be explained or described in many terms, but all too often they are permeated with a sense of good and bad. Theologians such as myself identify that sense of good with God.

There is a tradition of Christian Neo-Platonism that goes back to St.Augustine, a tradition to which I belong that identifies God with the Good. Identifying God with the good, transforms God into a solely moral entity, an identification which I find sufficient. God as the Good, that is the source of that sense of goodness that informs all moral actions. Constantly we speak of good actions that is actions which have in common that thing which we call good. Yet this good is indefinable except through descriptions of good actions. It is this indefinable essence that theologians such as myself call God.

Describing good as a moral sense derived from God is a pre modern concept, but one that is given a contemporary guise by the theologian Caputo. God he sees as a weak God in the sense that his is a God of moral sensibilities not power. This weak God exists outside human society but is constantly pushing in and that pushing in takes the form of a pushing in of moral sensibilities. Sensibilities which mankind is free to accept or reject. Given that all accept that good in its essence is indefinable I see this explanation of the origin of good as the most acceptable. Neither Caputo or I know God but we both know God as this moral sense or good itself. This to me is the most acceptable explanation of the existence of that moral sense known as the good. This understanding of good and the nature of God is a myth in the Platonic sense. It is a truth than can only be spoken of in terms of a myth, the myth of a weak but moral God, exist beyond but in constant contact with human society. Framing truths in mythological terms does not make them less true. Some truths because of their nature cannot be explained in other than the language of religious mythology.

There is a simple story that explains my reasoning. Heidegger was one the greatest 20th century German philosophers, the one who subjected the nature of being (humanity) to forensic scrutiny, yet he almost completely lacked any moral sense. When Hitler came to power he became an enthusiast for the Nazis. He refused to help his Jewish lover Hannah Arendt, he in fact abandoned her to her fate. Fortunately she was able to escape to the USA, but with no help from Heidegger. This supreme rationalist thinker eagerly participated in all the intellectual nonsense propagated by the Nazi regime. He believed that the of the philosophy of ‘sturm und drang’ captured the essence of the Germanic nation. A man who never understood why after the Second World War that is was right that he should be excluded from teaching in German universities. In contrast to him there was the lesser philosopher the catholic Jaspers, who opposed the Nazis and had to flee to Switzerland. What cannot be denied is that Jaspers moral sense was greater than Heidegger’s, although he was the inferior thinker. Jaspers had far more of the nature of goodness about him than did Heidegger. Hannah Arendt later described Heidegger as a man devoid of any moral sense. Perhaps because Jaspers knew that myth was a valid means of demonstrating truth, that he was able to comprehend the true meaning of the Christian myths and resist the evil of Nazism. An understanding denied to a purely rational thinker such as Heidegger.

At the end of his life Heidegger began to turn away from rationalism and began to look for truth as expressed in poetry. He found truth in the poetry of Rilke and Holderlin that was absent from his great work of philosophy ‘Being and Time’. This new searching for truth found him attending Sunday Mass at his local Catholic Church.

If I give an identity to good surely it is necessary to give an identity to evil, a theology such as mine requires a devil as the personification of evil. Admitting the existence of the devil would take my theology back to the Middle Ages. Fortunately Augustine provides an answer as to why there is evil in the world without needing to reference a devil. Evil acts according to Augustine are undertaken by those who do not know good or God. Rather than evil being a thing it is a not knowing, a not knowing God. Men with no moral reference points commit bad acts, because they have no knowledge of good. Knowing good means more than just knowing the word, it a knowing that penetrates the very fibre of existence. It’s a knowing that involves changing one’s persona according to the strictures of good or God. As Plato said once you know good you will not wish to do evil. The most extreme practice for the knowing of good was that undertaken by the hermits such as St. Anthony who spent a lifetime as a hermit living in exile in the desert struggling to know God or good. However Kierkegaard provides a more achievable alternative, he recognises the frailty of human nature. A Christian life for Kierkegaard is one of slipping in and out of that ecstatic knowing if God (good), it is impossible he says to constantly be know good, as we are all moral backsliders. In Augustine’s word we are the ‘not so good, saints but our actions are influenced by our understanding of the good.

The problem with theology as with philosophy is that once one starts to unpick the ideas that make up the content of the subject, the investigation into their significance and meaning can be endless. Rather than undertake such an investigation I prefer to state that this theologian and economist finds it sufficient to identify God with that moral sense we know as good. Other understandings of God are unnecessary, God might be a creator God, the Triune God (the one in three God) or the God that brings the world to an end at the end of days, but they are all irrelevant to how I act. They are questions that I don’t need answering. To put it in the language of the past I am an adept in two separate spheres of knowledge the non rational knowing of God and the rational understanding of economy. As with Jaspers I subordinate the knowledge of the second to the first, as moral sensibility must always take precedence over and inform my rational thinking. Never unlike many current economists and politicians could I subscribe to Says Law which states that in any recession unemployment and falling wages must be allowed to continue until the wages of the unemployed as so low that they price themselves back into employment. The misery that is consequent on adopting this policy disqualifies it as a viable policy option. How can it be right in a rich country such as Britain to have children going hungry and living in squalor? Yet our political class practises a more sophisticated version of Says law under the cover of globalisation, which states that to keep people in work in face of competition abroad it is necessary to reduce incomes to the lowest level to retain employment in this country. There are many alternative policies which could be adopted with better outcomes for all but which are never considered.

Can a sense of collective depression account for the decline of Britain and the West

Economics, Greek Drama, Philosophy, Politics, Uncategorized, United Kingdom, , , , , , , , , , , ,

depression_by_ajgiel-d7l4ewu

Image taken from socialworktutor.com

Periodically I suffer from depression and with depression comes a self loathing. The depressed individual sees themselves only in terms of their failings, it is a worse picture scenario. When going through a bad patch I would compare myself unfavourably with others, in my mind I over exaggerated their strengths and virtues and under estimated my own. Something similar has happened to Western democracies, they seem to be under going a collective depression. This collective lack of self confidence negatively impinges on our choice of leaders. We just them by their failings not their strengths, we have lost the ability to pick leaders on the basis of their strengths.

Womanising politicians such as John Kennedy, Franklin Roosevelt, Lloyd George would have never made it near the top in our contemporary world. A rival would have revealed their many liaisons to the press so as to destroy their career. Yet these three men were visionaries who could envisage a better world and could motivate others to share their visions. David Lloyd George had a vision of a society in which the ills of the industrial revolution were ameliorated through the provision of unemployment benefit. Franklin Roosevelt bought into effect the New Deal which ended the mass unemployment and poverty of the Great Depression. John F. Kennedy initiated the Great Society and under the aegis of this umbrella term many reforms such as Medicare where introduced to improve the lot of the less well off in American society and he started the process that ended worst forms of racial discrimination in the USA. Black Americans now had the protection of the law and killing of ‘uppity Negroes’ had became a crime. This is not to deny that politicians with exemplary family lives don’t make great leaders, but as leaders are chosen on the basis of whether or not they behave well towards family, excludes the great leaders who have had a less than moral personal life.

Britain in particular cannot conceive of leaders except in terms of their vices or relative lack of vices. Not being a self confident society, it like the depressive only sees the world around them in the worst possible terms. Great ideas and the associated visionary politics have disappeared from British society. Now great ideas are seen to be a propaganda cover for a particular interest. Words are bandied about by politicians but those words have no real meaning. Rather than explain a policy vision a politician’s speeches contain a number of key phrases designed to evoke the right feeling and response from voters. In the words of a former Prime Minister, that ‘vision thing’ is lacking from politics. Our depressive society cannot believe that there can be any great ideas or leaders.

There is one example that I can call to mind, which illustrates perfectly the current low level of personality based politics. During a wartime debate in Parliament Winston Churchill was accused by an opposition MP Bessie Braddock of being drunk. He replied that ‘I may be drunk now, but I shall be sober in the morning, you are ugly now and shall still be ugly in the morning’. The sexist language is no longer acceptable but the important fact is many people in Westminster and the press where aware that he had a serious drink habit, yet it was considered of no significance. What mattered were the outstanding qualities he embodied as national leader. Churchill was also subject to intense periods of depression, periods he referred to as the black dog’. Today a rival would have leaked stories to the press about his drinking and depression ensuring that he would never get anywhere near the leadership of the country.

A more current example illustrates how a political career can be destroyed through gossip. Charles Kennedy as leader of the Liberal Democrats took the party from being an insignificant fringe party to the centre of British politics. He increased the number of the parties MPs from less than twenty to over sixty. Unfortunately he as with Winston Churchill had a serious drink problem. A problem which destroyed his career in these timid times. His rivals leaked stories about his drink related problems and he was forced to resign the leadership. After rejecting the next leader for being old, they selected a leader fit for the times. He was a very presentable young man who was a devoted father and good husband. This leader displayed such a lack of political acumen that he led the party to disaster at the polls. Now the total number of Liberal MPs could be comfortably be seated in a small family car. The party rivals by focusing on Charles Kennedy’s weakness, were able to obscure the fact that he was an inspiring and effective leader, who in spite of his drinking towered above his rivals. Charles Kennedy’s rivals were able to leak stories about his drinking problems to a press that saw an MPs vices as the story, not his politics. It is true as had been said that the British press rarely ventures out of the gutter in which it habitually wallows. Only a society with no confidence in itself would think that politicians foibles rather than policies are the main story.

There is an interesting historical comparison. In the dog days of Athenian democracy, when it was in decline, politicians stopped attacking each other’s policies and instead attacked their rivals by claiming their bad behaviour in their personal life made them unfit for high office. These politicians planted informers within the entourage of their political rivals. These informers would report salacious stories about these men to their employers. Political careers were destroyed on the basis of what can only be called malicious gossip. A situation not unlike today’s Britain were the informers are political rivals in the same party ever eager to leak damaging stories to the press. These stories are then published in the news media and a run of bad stories can ruin a politicians career. Today’s politicians have delegated the role of destroying political rivals through the publishing of malicious stories to the press. It is the press not politicians than determine the success or otherwise of a politicians career. These stories can be quite trivial in nature but the cumulative effect is the destruction of a career. One such example this trivia is the leaking to press of stories that a particular senior politician had a quick temper and threw staplers at his staff. A story that was totally irrelevant to his leadership capabilities. Unfortunately in today’s Britain politicians prefer to destroy their rivals anonymously through the leaking of malicious stories than through open debate.

Suggesting British society is going through a period of collective depression is unusual, but I can think of no other equally valid metaphor that can be used to describe Britain today. Only a society in this strange mood which can see nothing good in their politicians, a country in which the least bad are chosen as our leaders. One characteristic of all our leading politicians is their emphasis on their normality. They never aspire to greatness, oratory has vanished from our politics speeches put the emphasis on their ordinariness they always agree with the generally accepted opinions. The leader of the opposition party is subject to vilification for not going along with the majority view in parliament. When one reads about the actions of the members of his parliamentary party one gets the impression that there is a desire to abandon these challenging policies and retreat the safety of the parliamentary consensus. These MPs have been baying for military intervention in Syria in unison with the members of the governing party, they are afraid of seeming to be different. This fearfulness and the seeking of a security blanket is also typical of depression. The depressed individual seeks to hide from the world, normal social intercourse becomes difficult. There is also a desire for the peace of anonymity, a desire not to stand out. All characteristics of the current political classes.

All to often commentators speak of the loss of hope among the young, as they face a world which is increasing hostile to their aspirations. Yet this loss of hope is common to all levels of society, but particularly among the political classes. They also lack in the future, they lack the confidence to introduce for example radical policies on climate change. A selection of policy proposals from the last election demonstrate this timidity, rather than offering private rental tenants security of tenure, they were to be given the right to ask for it from their landlord after a certain period of time. Rather than ban zero hour contracts the employer would be given the right after twelve weeks to ask to be given permanent contract. Taking the last one it is obvious that employers would dismiss staff after eleven weeks to avoid having to offer that a permanent position in the workforce. Probably the same employer would after having given an enforced break to their employees, would rehire them on a new eleven week contract. A good example of promising to alleviate a major social ill, while in fact doing nothing to change the situation. What could be a better example of the mood of hopelessness that infects the mood of politicians.

Often it is the young who are cited as having no hope, which may be true but its more true of our political classes. They as with the depressed individual have lost hope and believe it hopelessly misguided to think they can do anything to improve the situation. They as with the depressive see themselves as helpless pawns who are the playthings of greater forces, such leaders lack the self belief to implement changes necessary to arrest the slow decline of this country economy a decline that will see the living standards of the majority fall towards those prevalent in the less developed economies. Already this country’s fall from major power status is obvious, as it can only provide six ageing fighter bombers for the campaign against Isis.

The Corporate Superman Myth and the decline of British industry

Economics, Philosophy, Politics, , , , , , , ,

images

Image of Superman taken from bbs.sxrb.com

The of Theory of the business superman or why the British economy is constantly under performing

The readers of Marvel comics are not the only believers in superheroes and supermen, so are British politicians and other members of the various elite groups. Readers of ‘Superman’ realise that it is only a story but that is not true of the British political class, they do believe not only in one but several supermen. In the original ‘Superman’ can be rendered helpless and weak by kryptonite and the belief in British political and business circles that there is a kryptonite in the British society which turns business supermen into ordinary weak fallible human beings. It is this kryptonite which is responsible for the constant poor performance of British business.

What is this kryptonite that turns members of the business elite into mere ordinary mortals, that prevents these supermen from ever shedding their Clark Kent persona and revealing their true nature? This kryptonite is something known to us all, it is high taxes and over regulation, the familiar red tape. Governments have responded quickly to remove this poison from society. Taxes for the productive entrepreneur have been reduced by staggering amounts, from a marginal tax rate of 79% in the mid 1980s to 50% today. In fact few executives pay the 50% income tax, as a pro-business has made it possible to reduce that tax burden to 2%, through offshoring income to what in effect are shell companies. In fact the government through Her Majesties Revenue and Customs (HMRC) have collaborated with rich individuals and big corporations to help them reduce their tax burden.

The other poison which paralyses these supermen the government has reduced to such a minimum that its toxic effects are barely noticed. The government has reduced the cost of labour by removing all those employment protections that pushed up the cost of labour for the employer. Trade unions have been so emasculated by legislation that they can no longer effective bid up the price of labour or even resist the reduction in its price. The recent industrial problems at Grangemouth illustrated this when the government supported the employer Ineos in its planned programme of wage cuts for refinery employers. In the same vein the government has removed most of the employment protections that prevented employers using their workers as they please or how they believe they will be used most effectively. No longer does dismissing a worker involve expensive redundancy payments or trip to the industrial tribunal to defend against the claim of wrongful dismissal. (The government has reduced the possibility of employees taking their employer to an industrial tribunal by imposing a tribunal fee of £1200.)

If the stories of the business superman had any truth in them Britain would now be one of the most productive and prosperous countries in Europe, as it would be not only the fastest growing economy in Europe but also the world. However the reverse has happened economic growth has remained mediocre, increasing numbers of people have been falling into poverty and the productivity of the British worker has fallen. What political and business classes failed to realise was the main cause for failure lie not within a poisonous anti business society, but in the very ordinariness of the business class. Rather than being a superior group they are very like the other members of society, no better or worse. They don’t have any special talents. People such as Michael O’Leary the Chief Executive of Ryanair are unique, few business leaders have their acumen. Rather than liberating the inner superman the changes have liberated the inner Clark Kent. A series of mediocre managers claim the mantle of an O’Leary vastly overpaying themselves and underperforming.

At present I am reading Robert Burton’s ‘The Anatomy of Melancholy’ and the words that he quotes from an unidentified philosopher on leadership which ‘Of an infinite number, few alone are senators, and of those few, fewer good, and of that small number of honest, good, and noble men, few that are learned, wise, discreet and sufficient, able to discharge such places’ (p.82) these are words that our hero worshipping politicians should heed. What instead of there being a group of supermen running our business corporations, there are instead a group of Clark Kent’s who should never aspire to leadership positions.

What economists of a Neo-Liberal persuasion, politicians and business classes fail to realise is that high status and superior position does not confer greatness on an individual. Yet all too often these people assume the role of Demi Gods, regarding themselves as superior to the ordinary run of mankind. Again I rely on the words of Robert Burton to express the reality of this situation. He writes that where the wrong type of men are in power ‘all things are ugly to behold, incult, barbarous, uncivil,a paradise is turned to a wilderness” (p.86)

Given that men in power whether in business or politics are more often than not men of mundane abilities and wisdom, they are unfitted for roles of leadership. They will abuse the position which they are granted, often using it to extort from the company large sums in payment for their services. There are occasions when it is hard to believe that these people are working in the interests of the company rather than themselves. Given positions of responsibility for which they are unfitted, these men will either through their mediocre performance turn the business is into a underperforming one or through their recklessness bankrupt the business. Despite the claim that in a competitive market economy there is no reward for failure this is untrue for senior company executives. The failing director is dismissed with a generous severance package, so generous that they will never experience want. If the company fails through their incompetence they will have taken steps to ensure that their income and wealth is protected. Any observer of the Stock Exchange will be able to name companies that thorough the incompetence of their senior executives have ended up in the hands of the administrator.

It is not the interest of the common good that these mediocre individuals should be allowed to run large business enterprises as they please. There needs to be some legislative or regulatory framework that forces senior executives to improve their performance. What is notable is that there has been a collective dumbing down of business management since the bonfire of regulations that was the Neo-Liberal economic revolution, as these executives are accountable to non one. The one exercise in democracy the company Annual General Meeting is but a stage managed show in which the company directors talk about how well they have performed.
One change that would improve the performance of these under performing executives is a change in the law that made company directors and other senior executives accountable for the poor performance of the business under their stewardship. A financial charge on those directors incomes and wealth made in the event of the firms failure would see the end of much poor and irresponsible decision making. Bankruptcy law as it protects poor performing senior executives from any financial penalty as all debts to creditors are charged to the failed business, never to the executives who drove the business into bankruptcy.

The author believes that what is desperately needed is a new statutory regulatory framework to force senior executives to work to a higher levels of performance. A system that imposes no penalties for failure allows many corporate duds to thrive in the board rooms of British businesses. Neo-Liberalism goes against the grain of human nature as evidence demonstrates that the corporate geniuses are few and far between, and the so ordinary people that dominate businesses are incapable of performing well in a regulation free world. A much tougher regulatory regime would not prevent the few corporate geniuses such as Michael O’ Leary from thriving. What it would do is prevent British board rooms being dominated by the corporate duds, as is so often the case now.

Bad Economics and bad politicians, why the West is heading for yet another financial crisis

Economics, Greek Drama, Philosophy, Politics, , , , , , , , , ,

When I read any accounts of the debates conducted by the Republican candidates for the role of President, I am filled with despair. They all demonstrate astounding degrees of economic illiteracy, a tendency all too common demonstrated by politicians this side of the Atlantic ocean. The only economic topic deemed worthy of debate here is how to reduce the government debt. Economic illiteracy rules out the obvious solutions such as reversing the trend to reduce the tax take from the super rich and business corporations, as one conservative politician said increasing tax on the rich is immortal. Instead in one of the richest countries in the world there are constantly circulating in the media stories about how this poor country cannot afford to provide for the welfare of its citizens.

Economic illiteracy also prevents politicians in Britain discussing the more serious deficits that is those of the private sector and the banking sector, which are x2 and x5 greater than the government deficit. Only a self denying ordinance based on nonsensical theories about economics could possibly explain this strange politics.

20140321-181636.jpg

Ronald Regan image taken from the internet

America provides a good example of nonsense economics. Before George Bush Snr. was chosen as Vice President by Ronald Regan he described his economics as ‘voodoo economics’. What Ronald Regan was proposing was to cut federal taxes, spending on environmental and welfare programmes while increasing spending on defence and military aid to friendly states. Ronald Regan also said while doing these he would cut the government deficit. What his advisors had failed to understand was that defence spending was one of the great sources of ‘pork barrel’ politics. Many Congressmen and Senators had large defence industries in their states and what they wanted was massively increased spending on defence. The voodoo or nonsense was that while they paid lip service to cutting government spending, they constantly voted for the opposite. Under the presidency of Ronald Regan the government deficit spiralled upwards and none of the constant hand wringing over the problem did any good. It was not until the Presidency of Bill Clinton and the introduction of more economically literate policies that the budget deficit declined.

It is a truism but economic good sense is always rejected by politicians if it goes against their long held prejudices. Unfortunately British politics as with American politics is dominated by nonsense economics. One of the most common foolish prejudices is that if its not hurting its not working. This is a very selective hurting as the hurt about which British politicians enthuse is the hurt that they inflict on the poor and those on middle incomes. Great efforts are made to ensure the pain is not registered by the better off, who benefit from tax handouts or tax cuts to protect their income.

Hubris a neglected economic concept

While some economics is nonsense there are significant truths in the body of economics that politicians ignore at their peril. The temptation for any politician is to rewrite economics according to their own prejudices and personal beliefs. They can achieve this because the economy has constantly grown since the beginning of the century (apart from a few downs) and they can claim that this growth is a result of their policies. It is extremely hard to disprove such claims as the economy is such a vast complex mechanism and it is extremely difficult to distinguish cause and effect. Once in an economics seminar I and my fellow students argued for over an hour whether or not it was possible to identify the effects of a particular economic policy as by the time it began to take effect the economy had changed and it could not be known to what extent the improvement in the economy could be down to a particular policy measure or a change in the economy. The smartest of politicians took advantage of this uncertainty to rewrite economics according to their own personal preferences, as it was extremely hard to produce evidence to prove or disprove their theory. They were aided by a certain complacent belief amongst economists that the economy was self sustaining and that even the worst of economic policies would only have a small negative impact on the economy. In addition there is the Lysenko factor, that is many economists are only to willing to rewrite their economics in deference to the wishes of their employers, as that the way to preferment and prestigious academic positions.

Once politicians realised economics could be bent and reshaped according to their own personal whim, they began to treat economists as propagandists and not advisors. Economists became a servant of their political masters to be used and abused as they pleased. Whatever the failings of particular economists they are nothing as compared to that of the politicians. The arrogance of politicians is such that they are unaware of the dangers of the policies they practise. The classical Greeks had a word for this hubris, that is when ambition led men to overreach themselves. Greek tragedies featured a hero in conflict with his fate and often the Gods. In tragedy of Orestes it is foretold that Orestes will kill his father and marry his mother, yet in spite of this he continues on his path to his tragic fate, when after realising that he has killed his father and married his mother he is despair puts out his eyes. In the UK we have a number of Orestes that manage our public affairs, who as with him are blind to their fate, despite the warnings of economic soothsayers blindly commit themselves to a policy that will lead their nation into disaster. If they cared to look beyond the hermetically sealed world of Westminster they might realise that there are dangers out there of which they are ignorant.

Oresteia -Chorus

The chorus from Orestia

Recently I read that the British government pledged £1.2 trillion of monies to support the banks in the crisis of 2008/9. The significance of that figure is that it was almost the same in total as the country’s national income. In other words the government was willing to pledge the whole of the nation’s income to bail out its banks. Fortunately the bank creditors were sufficiently satisfied with this pledge not to demand it be honoured, it is very unlikely this pledge won’t be cashed in during the next crisis. Our politicians being supremely self confident don’t realise that they have put in place a process that will lead to the destitution of the UK.

The cause of the next disaster will be the over extended British and Western European banks. At the root of this crisis is what is termed Fiat money, money that is no more than a promise to pay. Our banks can create money by making an entry in their computer records and the only limit to their powers of credit creation or money making is what they think is reasonable. What the banks believe is reasonable is what others may term unreasonable. In 2008 the banks backed their loans or bank money with cash reserves of 2% so for every £100 of bank money they created they only had £2. In the event of a crisis the banks quickly ran out of money to pay their customers who wanted their money back and a run on the banks and a collapse of the world financial system was only avoided by the prompt intervention of governments.

Our arrogant political class has learnt nothing from the crisis of 2008/9 and foolishly believe that by manipulating the money supply and interest rates they have beaten one crisis and have the tools to beat the next. Only the foolishly arrogant could believe this as all indicators show the economies of the West are desperately weak. Interest rates (that charged by the Bank of England on loans to banks) for example cannot be increased from there historically low levels of 0.5%, without fear of that increase sparking a major recession. The complacent politicians have even encouraged the governor of the Bank of England to announce that they see no reason why our ‘financially sound’ banks should not be allowed to increase their assets to total x9 our national income (GDP). Those assets will largely be loans or bank money, which has no value other than that given to it by the banks. Already with the slow down in China there is evidence that the new recession is starting, given the arrogant blindness of our political leaders they will be helpless to prevent a rapid spiralling downwards of economic activity as they have not the policy tools at hand to prevent it.

Can I finish this essay with another metaphor, that of the ship of fools. This was a popular subject for art in the medieval world and these pictures showed a boat crewed by all the political leaders of the time, kings, great lords and Popes, often this ship was shown heading to disaster on the rocks pictured in the background of the painting. The current ship of fools is driving Western society on to the rocks of yet another economic disaster and it is their arrogance that prevents them from seeing that their world is being put in peril from there foolish misdirections.

In Praise of Being and Black Metal (and other counter cultures)

Economics, irony, Philosophy, Politics, , , , , , , , , , ,

When I was a student in the 1960s a popular subject of study was futurology, that is a study of how society would change in the future. It’s a subject that seems not to have lost its popularity, there was not so long ago the seminal text by Francis Fukuyama “The End of History” and more recently there is the book I have just finished reading Paul Mason’s “Post Capitalism – A Guide To Our Future”. However while enjoying reading such books I as a sceptic look for different answers, answers that will satisfy my scepticism. Such answers I find in classical Greek philosophy as I am one of those who believes that old answers are the best.

Amazing-Facebook-Statuses-12534-statusmind.com

One such author who shared my views was Jonathan Swift. In one of his short stories he imagines “A Battle of the Books’. A battle in which the books in the library shelves fly off the shelves and form up into two rival armies. In one army there are the books written by the classical Greek and Roman writers and in the other the books written by Swift’s contemporaries. In a short but vicious battle the books of the classical Greek and Roman authors prove their superiority by triumphing in battle.

Aristotle provides my inspiration for this short essay. What I what to appropriate is his concept of being and give it a more modern context. Not only was Aristotle a philosopher but he was also a biologist and as such was aware of the diversity of life between and within species. He wanted to solve a simple classification problem, that is what do we mean when we speak of man or any other creature. These creatures change with age so the young creature is different from the adult and they differ markedly within each species. He wanted to know what was the chief characteristic or essence that enable one to call a man a man. How was man to be identified, what was the characteristic that gave man his identity. His answer was being, that is what was it that each individual evolved into, what was the perfection or ideal for their species. There was he believed a template for perfection into which the best of the species would evolve.

What was the essence or being of man, it seems to Aristotle it is man as the philosopher. The ideal man was one who reached that stage of intellectual maturity which enabled him to think. At the end of ‘The Ethics’ Aristotle writes briefly that the best type of life is the one spent in contemplation. The essence of man is that of a rational thinking being who spends his time contemplating the nature of their own existence. Any other type of human existence does not participate fully in the being of human nature.

To give my musings some contemporaneity, I want to consider the trend towards the 24/7 society or as the writer Negri wrote the means by which ‘society has become the factory. What he was referring to is the networked society and the ubiquity of the smart phone, which means work is no longer tied to the workplace. Once a person is in possession of a smart phone they can take their work with them. A friend of mine explained to me how when on a beach on holiday in Southern Europe, he received calls from work and carried on his consultancy work from the beach. What I am more familiar with is the individual working from the coffee shop using their laptop, tablet or smartphone. In our networked society the home can as much be the workplace as the office.

The downside of this networked society is the lack of privacy. I am reminded of a study in the 1960s of politicians who had nervous breakdowns. One cause of these breakdowns was the merging of the private and public spaces of these politicians personalities, the had lost the sense of the private. They could no longer cope because they had lost their individuality all that was functioning was their public persona, they were an empty shell or husk having lost the kernel of human individuality. What on concerns me is the very intrusiveness of the networked society and the diminishing scope for privacy. Work becomes an increasingly controlling factor in people’s lives. They are becoming less themselves and more somebody else’s person. The space in their life for personal development is becoming increasingly restricted. Their scope for achieving their potential being is increasingly limited. People are becoming increasingly ‘outer directed’ and lacking inner direction or creativity.

One commonality of the recent popular protests is their resentment of the controlling ‘big brother’, the oppressive monitoring of work and social life. Interiority is discouraged as it might conceal subversive thinking. The fear of dissent is the greatest fear of the new manager, everybody must be on message. Rather than there being a collective societal breakdown there will be increasing resistance to big brother. People will become increasingly creative in creating personal private spaces for themselves. Already it’s happening on an interpersonal level with under the screen events, when raves and music events are organised through social media, pop up events which lack legal sanction. Increasingly non big brother events will be organised, events at which individuals are free just to be. The social network will be increasingly used to create under screen events. The fog of social media messages make the control so loved of big brother impossible. Already protests have been organised through peer to peer networks; whether it be protests in East London about gentrification and the lack of affordable housing or Chinese factory workers protesting about poor pay and working conditions.

bma3353037263_16

bringthenoise.oulfm.fr                                              whitbybayl.bandcamp.com

What I believe is that the organised network of ‘big brother’ is contrary to human nature. If I can modify Aristotle’s concept of being, human nature contains within it the urge to fulfil individual potential, that is to be a something. Whether it be Aristotle’s philosopher or something else this potential cannot be ‘other directed’. The monitoring of individual behaviour whether it be by the security services or employers can only provoke hostility and a counter reaction. In a relatively free society such as the UK individuals will come up with ways to subvert big brother and make their inner selves increasingly impenetrable to big brother. There is a thriving under the screen counter culture which appears to be about music and clothes, yet for anybody who is familiar with these cultures it is far more than that. Clothes and music are but the visible appearance of the new man or woman, one who has created a personality separate from that imposed by the societal big brother. When I read any literature given to me by my nephew who is a Black Metal enthusiast, I am made aware of this resistance amongst the young to an oppressive culture that wishes to deny them their individuality.

Reading this last paragraph I realise that I identify being or individuality with non-conformity. I am a serial non conformist a non joiner in, when teaching I was described by one colleague as being one of the three eccentrics, who taught in that school. My non conformity was sought in emphasising my individuality and I think my personal experience can be generalised, the good society is one that allows individuals to exercise their individuality, to develop their potential or being in ways free from the direction of society’s big brother. A society that calls itself free cannot impose big brother through the social media it will meet with resistance. Resistance to the brutalities of the industrial workplace in the early 19th century developed within small private rooms in public houses and resistance to the brutalities of the new social order, poverty pay, insecurity and poor housing will develop in those under the screen places made possible by the new social media.

Fear of the outsider. moral panics – why governments alway fail to respond to the impending crisis

economic history, Economics, Politics, , , , , , ,

Colin Wilson wrote a book in the 1950s which became a sensation, it was titled ‘The Outsider’ and it caught the mood of the time. This was the era of the beatnik and French existentialism and his account of how he became an outsider through dropping out of society and rejecting the culture mores of the time captured the sense of angst of the time. It was a book of its time and is no longer read. Although Colin Wilson claimed a uniqueness of view, viewing society critically from the imagined position of an outsider has a long tradition. The tradition is demonstrated most clearly in the Christian religion as human society is constantly judged as failing from God’s perspective. Jeremiah the Old Testament prophet gave his name to a pessimistic philosophy of human failing.

Society needs the outsider as the stranger to society is the best person to question its mores. Too often a complacency sets in amongst the classes that make up the leadership of a society. They develop a fixity of view and regard anything outside the consensus of agreed thinking as heretical. While it may be unfair to claim that they view society as the best possible of all societies, it is they believe the best that can be achieved given the limits of human nature. In Britain the growing impoverished underclass can be ignored, as they are the price that has to be paid for the attaining of the good society. If all the members of this elite group of leaders have a similar background, this consensus of views is unlikely to be challenged. Britain provides an exemplar of this closed group think, the majority of our political leaders, lawyers and journalists have been to one of the elite colleges all having studied for the same degrees, whether intended or not Oxbridge does impose a fixity of views on our elite. From within this elite there may be critics but their criticisms are very muted. Only the outsider or stranger can question the views of this elite group as they are not bound into the group think.

jeremy_corbyn_stwc_460

The outsider or stranger does not have to be a foreigner just somebody from outside the elite groups. In America this outsider status is so highly valued that even insiders such as the billionaire Donald Trump claim to be outsiders. However when this claim to outsider status is real, the political establishment can become upset over the perceived threat to their status. Jeremy Corbyn a serial outsider in British politics has become the leader of the Opposition Labour Party. The reaction from the political and media class has become hysterical, he is challenging their world view. No greater threat can be conceived than a non sharer of group values being leader. Horror best describes their reaction, last week a popular tabloid stated that he intended to abolish the army, then rumour had it that all the senior leaders in the armed services threatened to resign if he became Prime Minister, threatening mutiny in the armed services. All Jeremy Corbyn has done is to question the unfairness of the current social system and why the . He is not an armed terrorist yet the modest threat poses to the existing inequality, demands that he be treated as one.

A similar tendency is demonstrated in Europe where the elites have thought it necessary to demonise Tsiparas and Syriza the Greek outsider and his outsider party. They are criticised as being naive, unrealistic and even childish. The purpose of the negotiations over the Greek debt was to nullify the threat posed by the outsider. Tsiparas it goes without saying was not a member of the existing political class but an outsider and as an outsider he had to be marginalised.

Outsiders may not always be correct but in not subscribing to the group view of the majority they ask the questions that will force the “insiders“ to reconsider their policies. There is in British politics one question the outsider would ask would cause a significant shift in policy. At present all the main three parties are agreed on the need to reduce the government deficit. Yet there is a much larger deficit which is never mentioned, the banking sector deficit which is five times greater than the government deficit. An outsider would ask if debt reduction is so important while is all political debate and decision making focused on the one smaller debt. A debt is a debt, whether its run up by the government or the banks. Interestingly this is a question that never asked in other European countries. Germany for example has a banking deficit of 324% of GDP, yet German politicians never question whether this is sustainable.

Fear of the Outsider

However all too often the outsider is feared and disregarded by the governing classes and the much needed change in the policy direction does not happen. Maynard Keynes a respected academic but an outsider to the conventional economics of his time (1930s) was at first ignored and later accepted. His outsider views of how to manage the economy had become the views of the insider by the 1950s. More usually the governing classes react with horror and fear towards the outsider, ignoring the very valid claims they make for change.

mods-and-rockers

The fear of the rich and powerful insiders can be understood in the sense that outsider groups threaten their wealth and privileges. Naturally they would act against any such threat, however the reaction of the rich and powerful insider groups to the outsiders goes beyond this and borders on hysteria. One British army general was reported in the press as saying that there would be a mutiny in the army if Jeremy Corbyn the radical Labour leader became PM. Given that this nameless general was not exposed and dismissed, it seems likely that his views are shared by many senior officers. Yet this can only be seen as an over reaction, as the policy changes proposed by Jeremy Corbyn are quite modest, he is not advocating violent revolution.He is a Gandhi rather than an al Baghdadi (leader of Isis). A man who seeks to persuade, pacifists don’t tend to practice violent revolution. All abuse and fears expressed in the reaction of the insider groups seems out of all proportion, however there is an explanation for this behaviour.

One is that there is a moral panic developing amongst these powerful insider groups. The best example of a moral panic comes from the writings of Stanley Cohen (Folk Devils and Moral Panics). There were he said a small number of shuffles between two youth sub cultures on popular holiday beaches. The two groups where the mods and rockers, while there was plenty of noise there was little real violence. Yet the press wrote up the story, these young men were a feral group threatening the existing social order. What disturbances there were few and easily put down by the police. Similarly the press particularly the tabloid press have conjured up a folk devil in Jeremy Corbyn. He is seen as an agent of anarchy and disorder who threatens the very fabric of society. This fear justifies a variety of measures to disempower the social movement he represents. In this atmosphere the general who threatens an armed insurrection to prevent this radical coming to power is applauded. Other plots will develop to prevent this radical ever becoming Prime Minister, such as a parliamentary coup which removes his as leader. Just recently one senior party was reported as discussing when would be the best time to remove him through a parliamentary coup.

This over reaction by the political, financial and industrial elites will prevent them from acknowledging that his support comes from a mass movement that has a number of very justified discontents with the contemporary social order. A disproportionate number of his supporters are young and they are the group that has been dispossessed of the greatest wealth. The politicians have imposed high tuition fees on those going to university, so ensuring that they will be in debt for the rest of their lives. They have presided over a growing dysfunctional housing market in which it is increasingly impossible for the young to buy a home, leaving them at the mercy of rapacious private landlords. Just as the aristocratic elite were deaf to the cries of the impoverished poor in the 18th century, so the parliamentary class of today are deaf to the cries of the young. This deafness is not just simple callousness, but having created a folk devil out of Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters they are incapable of dealing rationally with them and their demands for change.

This moral panic is not just limited to the British elites and insider groups but this fear is widespread throughout the governing classes in the West. The horrified reaction of the European Union politicians to the leaders of Syriza attempts to ameliorate the harsh bail out terms imposed on Greece was typical of those in the grip of a moral panic. The politicians of Syriza were childish, naive, unrealistic dreamers. Once having demonised these politicians they did not need to treat them as equal negotiating partners. Instead they could abuse the power they had to compel the Greeks to accept the harsh austerity terms they wanted. This was done through the simple expedient of denying Euros to Greek banks forcing the country into near total collapse through the collapse of its banking system.

The leadership groups in society are often gripped by these moral panics, panics which blind them to the real nature of their opponents. Perhaps the McCarthyite panic that gripped the USA in the 1950s, when the country was gripped by the fear of a non existent communist conspiracy is the best example. What this fear does is to prevent the governing classes from coming to terms with the outsider groups and never dealing with the very real problems that have caused these movements to form. Whatever very real problems Britain faces the major problem is getting the governing classes to admit there is a problem, to accept that the outsider groups have a valid viewpoint and that they should listen and not suppress them. Our governing classes have seen the ‘canary in the mine die’ yet they ignore the warning signs of imminent danger.

Bad economics, bad politics – Britain’s policy towards Syrian refugees

economic history, Economics, Politics, , , , , , ,

There has been an ongoing public debate in Britain about what the country’s policy should be towards the refugees arriving in Europe from Syria and other war torn countries. The consensus is that our Prime Minister’s response has been determined by the hatred expressed for refugees in the popular media and fear of losing votes to the anti immigration party (UKIP). However there is another compelling reason as to why our Prime Minister is so opposed to Britain taking its fair share of the immigrant population now arriving in Europe and that is bad economics. This government has claimed the mantle of fiscal probity and as such is committed to keeping public spending to minimal levels. If the government admitted large numbers of refugees to the country it would be committed to increasing it’s spending. Much of that increase would go to local authorities (to house the refugees) just at a time when the government is committed to reducing their budgets. It is fear of breaking its fiscal rules that prevents it from admitting these refugees.

The government has as a consequence made a pig’s ear of its policy and produced a immigration policy that will please no one. It has made a commitment to admit 20,000 refugees over five years or 4000 a year on average. This will be financed from the foreign aid budget, money that would otherwise be spent in developing countries will instead be used to finance the accommodation needs a modest number of refugees for one year. After that the councils will have to fund from their much reduced budget all the extra services that these new arrivals will require.

What the government fails to understand is that economics is unsuited to providing policy goals at what can be called the ‘summum bonum’ policy level. Economics is a servant subject a subject that when used correctly determines the feasibility of government policy proposals, it cannot provide the grand objectives that determine all policy decisions. The object of economic policy making is to set intermediate goals whose attainment will make possible the attainment of the greater goals of universal policy making. This government has reversed this process, the grand overall objective is to attain a budget surplus, whereas good economics would demonstrate how to or whether an open door policy to refugees is economically feasible. If this government is trying to disguise its greater policy goal of keeping Britain a predominantly white non-muslim country through rejecting these immigrants, this would count as a greater policy goal.

What I am trying to state is that economics is a terrible subject for providing the greater goals that should be at the heart of any government policy making, that is the role of ethics or political philosophy and economics should not intrude areas into which it is unfitted. Formerly the conservative party was a practitioner of “One Nation Toryism”, a philosophy that stated while the aristocracy, financial and industrial elites were best fitted and entitled to rule, they owed an obligation of care to the lower orders of society. This is why the Conservative party of the 1950’s was able to embrace the National Heath Service and full employment. Now the vision of the Conservative party has shrunk to accommodate the goals and principals of Neo-Liberal economics, which can offer nothing more than series of lower order objectives. The philosophy of Ayn Rand dominates this government, a government that like her sees the lower orders of society as nothing more than a drain on the nation’s resources. While the only people it see’s as demanding of respect are the giants of business and finance. These people it rewards with generous tax allowances and government grants. Hume, Oakshott and all the great conservative philosophers of the past would despair of a government that only had good housekeeping as the only summum bonus of its policy making. Minimal government of the sort practised by this government makes for ineffective and bad government.

The folly of an economics first policy is demonstrated by the government’s policy towards Syria. It is now proposing armed intervention to end the current conflict so as to halt the flow of refugees from that country, yet its policy of budget cuts have denied it the means to make any effective intervention. The cuts have reduced the fighter bomb force to a total of six planes and its cuts to the army budget have made it impossible for the army to make any effective contribution to any overseas conflict through lack of resources. Realism demands that the policy becomes not one of intervention but one of appealing to other countries to fight the battle on Britain’s behalf, not the most effective of policies.