Tag Archives: #Greece

Ugly economics an explanation of why we are in a mess

March 29, 2016economic history, Economics, Greek Drama, Philosophy, Uncategorized#classical greece, #Greece, #Plato, Alcibiades, Athenian Democracy, free market economics, George Osborne, Gordon Gecko, Neo-Liberalism, Neo-Platonism, poverty, Theory of the Forms, Ugly economicsangrytunbridgewells

Plato developed the theory of forms which stated that all the virtues such as good and beauty were but mere copies of their ideal forms that existed beyond the sphere of life inhabited by humanity. In Plato’s creation myth the demigod who creates mankind makes mankind from the only material available, clay. A being made up of inferior materials unlike the Gods could never see the virtues in their true forms and would never able to appreciate true Good or Beauty. These inferior beings could only apprehend what were in effect rough and ready copies of the true virtues. Men could only know an approximation of the virtues. Although Plato was writing two thousand years ago his theory of the forms describes accurately the state of current economic knowledge, it is but a very imperfect copy of what might constitute true economics.

When I read economics what is striking is the lack of beauty in the subject, unlike for example physics there is no beauty in its formulations. Physics reveals the beauty of the universe, whereas all economics does is to reveal the ugliness of human society. The words of Gordon Gecko that ‘greed is good’ can be taken as the principle from which all current economic analysis derives. Our current Chancellor of the Exchequer believes that rewarding greed through tax cuts for the wealthy is good, whereas helping the poor through welfare payments is bad, as it merely rewards a group of losers who are deprived of the incentive (compulsion) to work to provide for themselves and their families.

As a NeoPlatonist I recognise that although all the human sciences cannot be one or another form of moral philosophy; I do believe that a good social science should be informed by at least some of the virtues. Whenever I read an economic text it is very rare that I am grabbed by the beauty of the writing. All too often it is a struggle to get through some poorly written text. A text that is peppered with difficult to understand economic terms, words that disguise the emptiness of the written text. I believe that a text that is ugly in its construction can only create something that is ugly.

Good writing is that which contains understanding of beauty and as such moves the reader bad or ugly writing lacks any of the other virtues and as such has lost touch with humanity. The government by constantly referencing ugly economics to justify all forms of unpleasant policy measures. One of the hidden scandals is the number of disabled and ill people who have succumbed to sudden death, as a consequence of sudden and unexpected benefit cuts. There are those ill and disabled who have resorted to suicide in consequence of the sudden loss of the income on which they depend. Normally in such situations policy measures that have caused death would produce some contrition within political classes. The harsh welfare polices of the past few years have produced no such reaction. Instead ugly economics gives the justification to such measures, as what counts is the effectiveness of the whip that compels people to work. Government policy seems to a perverted inversion of Plato’s theory of forms. The supreme good is the balanced budget and subordinate policies such as welfare cuts are intended to make possible the attainment of this supreme goal. If this is the supreme good of human society it must be a very poor or mediocre society that sees this as its supreme good, a society which has rejected any sense of the grand vision that society’s of the past embodied. Athen’s with the construction of the Parthenon is one example of the grandeur of the human vision, contemporary Britain in which the only large constructions are shopping centres or malls sense to represent the very rejection of the grandeur that is humanity.

If Britain is to be judged by it’s leaders it is a nasty society bereft of any of the virtues that make a great society. A society which uses hunger as a scourge to make the poor work lacks any of the virtues that make a great society. All it’s leading politicians are like Socrate’s Alcibiades, a physically beautiful young man in appearance but in an inversion the Silenus dolls were ugly only on the inside he was ugly on the inside. Physical beauty concealed an ugly soul. It is not a true demonstration of the ugly society that politicians take great pains over their appearance, maintaining their youthful image through jogging or other forms of exercise and cosmetic surgery, What matters is their image, how they appear on the media. All our leaders tend to exhibit that fatal Alcibiades trait, beautiful on the outside ugly on the inside.

Perhaps it is being too unfair to blame the proponents of ugly economics for the mess that we are in. Could it not be equally possible that it is the ugly society which has created an ugly economics to match its essential ugliness. If economists are merely responding to the demand from the major power holders in society for a theory to justify their existence, they are culpable of devising a message that enables the ugly society to thrive. Their privileged role as the sanctioned intelligentsia serve to suppress any alternative voices. They are like the garden weed that denies those food plants we desire the space in which to grow and thrive.

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

September 25, 2015economic history, Economics, Politics#austerity, #Greece, Colin Wilson, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party, Moral Panics and Folk Devils, Mutiny in the army, The Outsiderangrytunbridgewells

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.

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.

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.

Scapegoating the dominant economic policy of our times

September 17, 2015economic history, Economics, religion#austerity, #Greece, Christine Lagarde, Financial Crisis of 2008, Golden Dawn, Professor Wren-Lewis, scapegoats, Sodom and Gomorrah, The God of the Market, The Old Testamentangrytunbridgewells

There is a difference between the economics practised by politicians and the economics taught in the universities. One commentator has called the former macromedia (Professor Wren-Lewis) meaning that politicians have developed their own unique understanding of economics. The politician’s economics is a mish mash of economics, common sense and prejudice. While the economy is doing well this misunderstanding of economics matters little, however the problems occur when this misguided economics is the basis of policy making in the time of crisis. This is seen in the various crisis that have afflicted Europe since the crash of 2008/9. Greece is perhaps the most notable policy failure, although even the one self proclaimed success story the UK, if far less successful than claimed by its leaders. The Central Bank interest rate remains at crisis level of 0.5% as even a modest increase will derail the recovery.

The consequence of this misguided economic practice is that all governments can now do is hope that the next crisis will not occur on their watch, as they have little clue as to how to tackle it. Political economics is informed by prejudice as with many a primitive religion and always looks for scape goats to blame for provoking the anger of the Gods. If they can identify those who have angered the Gods, they can deflect blame from themselves. This policy means the government won’t have to undertake of those difficult policy measures that would mean taking on those powerful interests that would oppose change. In Europe a convenient scape goat has been found in the people, much as in many a fundamentalist religion it is the misdeeds of the people that has brought suffering on them. God punished the people of Sodom and Gomorrah by turning their cities into salt, while the God of the market punishes the people by making them poor. In the case of Sodom and Gomorrah it was the sexual licence that brought down on them the punishment by God. In Europe it was the greed of the people. They were not content with the modest income the market allocated them, they wanted more. More generous wages, sick pay, benefits of all kinds, the greed of the people know no bounds and forced the governments into borrowing more and more and forcing the government into greater and greater debt. The God of the market punished the people with the great crash of 2008/9 and his angr could only be appeased through an act of penance. This penance was to intended to get the people to reject their greedy lifestyle by embracing austerity. Since the people would not willing do this themselves government would have to act to compel them to do penance. Penance was enforced through cutting people’s incomes, such as by welfare cuts, wage cuts or wage freezes Once people had learnt the error of their ways after a period of suffering, prosperity would return.

(Using ‘The Old Testament’ to explain the practices of contemporary politicians might seem strange. However once it is realised that the sophistication of policy making by the political leaders has advanced little since the time of ‘The Old Testament’; this use of ‘The Old Testament’ stories as a metaphor to explain contemporary political behaviour is valid.)
One consequence of this is that it is hard to make a reasoned defence what is an irrational policy so the opponents of the austerity programme must be labelled as deviants, to prevent their policies being given a hearing. Politics can be divided into the sensibles and the foolish. The upholders of the agreed of consensus of policies are the sensibles and their opponents are as but foolish children, who know no better. One notable sensible is Christine Lagarde of the IMF who described the Greek politicians who opposed austerity as children. In Britain since the Labour party members elected a leader opposed to austerity he has been subject to a constant stream of abuse by the media and the austerians of his own party. This last group have pledged that they will do all in their power to prevent a move away from the agreed policy consensus. In terms of ‘The Old Testament” metaphor the guilty people are asking to practice again those bad habits that got them into trouble in the first place. Only the superior people that is the austerians in parliament understand what is best for the people.

When the next crash occurs the austerians will tell the people it is because they did not willingly embrace poverty. They again are at fault and the only solution is to subject more of the people to increasing poverty so they learn the error of their ways. Only in that way can the God of the market be persuaded to relent and ease the suffering of the people. How long this policy approach will work is unknown. It will at some stage be challenged by an equally irrational ideology or belief system that cannot be discredited by upholders of the dominant austerian ideology. Perhaps the ideology of the Neo Fascist Golden Dawn in Greece will be that of the group that successfully challenges the dominant irrational belief system with that of a more compelling narrative, but one that is equally irrational.

The Flawed Belief in TINA (there is no alternative)

August 24, 2015economic history, Economics, Philosophy, Politics#Greece, aristocratic or elite politics, Britain, inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party, Neo-Liberalism, Podemos, Social Democrats, Spain, Syriza, TINA (There is no alternative), Tradition, Wage Differentialsangrytunbridgewells

Today there was yet another article in my daily newspaper by a prominent politicians disparaging those on the political left that fail to recognise the realities of life and want to make impossible changes in society. This disparaged group who are abused as fantasists, protest voters but never by terms that suggest that their choices are made on the basis of rational judgement. The only surprise is that he did not suggest taking the vote away from these ‘childish’ voters. Actually one former leading politician did suggest that by suggesting that the vote for the new leader of the Labour Party should be sabotaged by the other candidates withdrawing so making the contest invalid. If this had happened the same politician would have advised on how to rig the voting mechanism to ensure the right person was elected.

18th Century Aristocrats (counter-factual.net)
What is barely understood is that we are governed by an elite comparable to the landed aristocratic elite that dominated politics in the eighteenth century. This elite is composed of politicians, media persons, technocrats and financiers educated at the elite universities. (There are other groups that could be included but for brevity I have excluded them, what they all have in common is an education at one of the elite universities. It is this education that sets them apart from the rest of society.) What they practice is a policy of exclusion, only the dialogue between the members of this selected group is considered valid. They only listen to themselves, the rest of society is to be a childish rabble whose views and opinions are not worthy of consideration.

What I want to attack is the shared understanding of this group, an understanding which ‘things must be as they are’ or as it is more familiarly known TINA that is the society in which we live is the product of economic, social and technical forces that are beyond the control of individuals. What the politician must do is understand those forces making for change and work within the constraints imposed by them. Social democratic politicians recognise the pain of people working on zero hours contracts and that caused by job insecurity, but their role is not to change the cruel inequalities in society. Their task is to explain that low wages and job insecurity are a feature of modern society and must be accepted and that it is only through individual efforts at self improvement can circumstances change. The only amelioration they offer is the most modest of reforms, which will have little impact on there working lives. The social democratic party refuses to accept policies that would reduce or end job security by insisting that it is not the role of government to ensure that employers treat their employers well, what they instead offer is a way out of this appalling way of life through self improvement via education.

This new elite remains isolated by its adherence to things must be as there are ideology from the wider discontent in society. They believe that they are the ‘grown-ups’ in the words of Christine Lagarde (Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund). The new left in Greece (Syriza), Spain (Podemos) and Britain are childish fantasists trying to ignore the reality of the grown up world.

As a sceptical economist I must doubt such understanding of society I would ask why is it society is as it is? The reasons given are irreversible technological and social changes. Yet on examination they are only partial truths. Technological change has taken place but the distribution of incomes is determined by the social order. The company director in Britain earns a hundred times the salary of the average of the incomes of the employees in his business. In the 1960s the director’s salary was only 30 times greater than the average. Why the change, if the answer is that company directors have become more productive, that is open to objection. The profitability of companies as a return on capital invested in very similar to that of companies in the 1960s. The falsity of this view is demonstrated by the fact that in many failing businesses the directors are paid excessive salaries, how can huge salaries be justified for such corporate dimwits?

What as the sceptical economist I would say that there are different reasons for gross income inequality. While it cannot be doubted that some income differentials are due to technical change in that information technology has made many former skilled occupations redundant, the growing prevalence of the low wage culture has origins elsewhere. One is custom and tradition which decrees that unskilled occupations only deserving of low incomes.There is one interesting example which demonstrates this fact. When at university I read a book on applied economics by a Professor Brown and one example from that book sticks in my mind. He stated that the evidence suggested that wage differential between craftsmen and unskilled labourers had remained the same since Roman times. This suggests to me that much the justification of current income differentials comes from custom and tradition and does not reflect the real contribution each employee makes to the business. Why should the cleaner or the sales assistant be paid so little?

The other factor is power, the financial and industrial elites have cited custom and tradition as the reasons for low pay. Their mantra is unskilled staff make such a small individual contribution to the businesses profitability that they are only deserving of low pay. Yet I have never read of any study which has successfully identified the contribution to the firms productivity of say the cleaner and the financial director, yet the salary of the latter is more than that of the former. Businesses are a collaborative venture in which it is impossible to identify the contribution that each individual makes to the success of the business. Is the cleaner really that unproductive? It is the cleaner that maintains the workplace as a clean and healthy environment in which to work. Dirty toilets and uncleaned washrooms would lead to outbreaks of illnesses associated with unhygienic environments. How productive would the company director or IT specialist be if struck down by dysentery? There is good reason to suggest that cleaners are vastly underpaid, yet employers continue to pay the minimal wages.

Governments have enabled this power grab by the business elite by passing legislation to weaken or destroy those organisations that are the only means of equalising power in unequal labour market. Ever since the Neo-Liberal revolution politicians have constantly weakened the power of those groups that threaten the power of the over mighty employer. In Britain it has meant the emasculation of the one powerful trade union movement, changes in the law now make it very difficult for the unions to effectively organise industrial action. Therefore there is little restraint on the employer who wishes to pay as little as possible to his staff. It is no coincidence that some of the most profitable businesses with the highest paid directors in Britain have been the supermarkets an industry where low pay and job insecurity are endemic.

Scepticism as a philosophy is misunderstood, sceptics don’t believe are no truths, in that all philosophies or ideologies are fallacious. Instead it is the belief that in subjecting an ideology, philosophy or belief system to sceptical enquiry the truths it contains can be discovered it is the stripping away of error.

Being a sceptic is not contrary to a belief that society can be improved through reform, it is just a scepticism about the nature of such much contemporary reform, reforms whose fundamental truths are based on custom, tradition and exploitation of market power. I am a left of centre sceptic who believes in the superiority of left of centre ideology because it contains less wrongs than the alternatives and that with its emphasis on fairness those wrongs are likely to be less damaging to humanity than the wrongs of alternatives that exclude any notion of fairness. A sceptic also favours democracy as in a democracy there are always contending philosophies and ideologies as the proponents of each that will be subjecting each to scrutiny and through that many of the errors of policy associated with the mono-thought of the Neo Liberal world view can be avoided.

Unlike the interchangeable Neo-Liberals and New Keynesians who dominate the political process with their uniformity of view, I want a political culture that recognises many ideologies and philosophies as valid and that a recognition the aim of politics is not to destroy the opposition but to create a political culture in which many views can thrive. Contemporary politicians are so assured of the rightness of their beliefs that they cannot concede that they may wrong. They are as in Christine Lagarde’s word the grown ups who understand reality and who don’t indulge in childish fantasies. What a sceptic would say is that any believers in any ideology that denies it contains any errors or wrongs are the childish and naive ones.

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.

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.