Tag Archives: Legal System

A suggestion from an economist as to how the free market could be made to work for the benefit of all

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All the evidence from the economy suggests that the free market system is failing. The list of markets that are failing seems almost endless. Perhaps the most obvious failing market is the housing market. In 1973 a minister (when the state directly provided social housing) could state with some justification that there were no homeless people, today the reverse is true. Yet despite the evidence of thousands either living in temporary local authority accommodation awaiting rehousing andthe  countless others living in unsatisfactory private rental property, politicians deny that the housing market is broken.

Why do politicians not recognise the failure of the free market system? One answer is political fashion, which to paraphrase George Orwell pigs ‘public sector bad, private sector good’. This belief in the supremacy of the market system for providing goods and services can be traced back to one influential thinker, Friedrich Hayek. In his book ‘The Road to Serfdom’  (1944) lauded the supremacy of the free market over any alternative economy model. In this very readable book he states that freedom is the free exchange of goods and services between individuals. When the state decides what people want it is tyranny, an economic tyranny comparable to the political tyranny exercised in the fascist and communist states of Europe. Although to this economist cannot see how the provision of state subsidised social housing is a deprivation of economic liberty.

Hayek was a voice speaking in the wilderness until the economic crisis of the 1970s happened. In Britain in 1976 inflation hit the unheard rate of 27%. Politicians desperately looked for a solution and found one in the writings of Hayek and his prophet Milton Friedman. The next twenty years saw a bonfire of regulations and a rush to transfer what public sector services and businesses to the private sector. What politicians hoped and believed was that the introduction of the free market economy was the once and for all solution to the economic ills of the this decade.

Hayek still grips the imagination of the political classes. The privatised railway system in Britain is one of the most expensive and inefficient in the developed world. Yet despite polling evidence suggesting that a majority of British voters would welcome the re-nationalisation of the railways, the majority of politicians regard this as beyond the pale. Only an outsider such as the current opposition leader would argue for this popular cause. There is one certain outcome from this election and that is even if the opposition won the election, the consensus view within parliament would effectively nullify any attempt to return to a nationalised rail service.

There is one failing in the free market philosophy of Hayek that is always ignored. He assumes that the exchange of goods and services takes place between individuals who are equals. The worker for him is free to bargain with the employers to obtain the best possible wage. In Hayek’s impossible scenario the worker and employer equally benefit from the exchange. What he does not recognise is that there is no equality of power in this exchange. While the employer is free to buy the workers labour at the lowest possible wage he can negotiate, the employee very rarely has the power to negotiate the highest possible wage. History demonstrates that in a market lacking employment protections and trade unions, the worker rather than being able to negotiate the best possible wage has to accept the going rate, no matter how poor. It is a market in which Says law applies. Rather than workers negotiating for the highest rate of pay possible, they have to accept the wage whatever rate of pay the employers are prepared to offer.

When the market works well it is unrivalled as a means of exchange of goods and services. The problem is that in Britain it rarely works well. It is the unequal distribution of bargaining power that prevents the market working to the benefit of all. When one person has significantly more bargaining power than the other, be that person an employer or landlord, the other person is at a significant disadvantage. They will inevitably lose out, whether it be having to accept a low wage or by paying a high rent for inferior accommodation. The only way to make the market work is to introduce some equality of power into the relationship. Only then will the more powerful not be able to exploit the less powerful.

One solution would be to introduce legislation to remedy the imperfections in the free market, as was the practice in the 1950s and 60s. However this is not possible when the majority of political classes are committed to Neo-Liberalism or the free market economy. A majority of the of the current generation of politicians would oppose any such policy. There is another solution that might appeal to the free market politician. Greater equality could be introduced into the market and through the legal system so making the exchange of goods and services a more equal relationship. At present civil law with its remedies for civil wrongs is unavailable to the majority of the population, because of the high costs of legal action. Not only is there the high  cost but the wealthy subject of a legal action can spin out a case almost indefinitely so discouraging all but the most determined and wealthy of plaintiffs. A reformed legal system that made justice available to all could make Hayek’s free market work in a manner which he intended. The free market politician would have no reason to object as such a change would only be to enforce the rights of the individual and not subject the business to the whims of the almighty state.

This might seem an incredible statement but the legal system of the Roman Empire particularly that of Justinian was in some ways superior to that of contemporary Britain. Under this system the aggrieved individual could bring their case before the local magistrate. These magistrates seem to have had more power than contemporary British magistrates. They could interrogate the plaintiff and witnesses before arriving at a verdict. From what I understand of the Roman system there was an approximate equality of position of the plaintiff and defendant, something lacking in British courts.

There already exist in Britain a network of small claims courts(1). The remit of these courts could be extended to include a new category of civil wrongs. These courts would retain the principle of not penalising the less well off plaintiff, by not privileging those defendants that have legal representation and through preventing the defendant claiming their legal fees from the plaintiff. What matters would be that the court proceeding do not privilege the wealthy, making these courts accessible to the poorest.

There is one example demonstrates the ugly nature of our current legal system. The British Human Right act gives every person the  ‘right to enjoy the privacy of your own property.’ In our unbalanced legal system a rich property developer was able to persuade the high court, that privacy meant the right to develop their property regardless of the noise nuisance it caused the neighbour’s. In a fairer legal system there would have been a counter claim by the less well off neighbour, which would have prevented this nonsense becoming law.

One further requirement would be an amendment to the Human Rights Act, an amendment that included new rights such as a fair recompense for work. These rights could be incorporated in a relatively short document as they are only statements of principle and it would be the role of the courts to define what these rights meant in practice.

What I am proposing is a remedy for market failure. A remedy that restores a measure of equality in  the bargaining process in the free market. Rather than looking to government to remedy market imperfections, individuals working through the court system will able remedy the failings of the free market. Employers and landlords will be less inclined to adopt exploitative or abusive practices, if they know doing so will involve them in having to defend such practices in open court. Instead of a race to the bottom in which employers vie to adopt most exploitative cost cutting practices to save, there would be a move upwards towards a fairer employment regime.

A salutary lesson for this left of centre economist is that the legislature cannot be relied upon to protect the rights of citizens. Individual legislators are too easily corrupted by powerful corporate interests. As the recent past demonstrates they are only too willing to legislate away the right of citizens to further the corporate interest. Not so long ago a senior member of the government (of a party claiming to represent the workers) saw his role as frustrate the EU commissions attempt to increase the rights of agency workers.There is an old adage that states that the person who can be best relied upon to defend your rights is yourself. The record of the Westminster parliament over the past forty years only too clearly demonstrates the truth of this adage.

This is only intended to a sketch of how the free market could be changed to the benefit of all. Today’s news has demonstrated the need to find an alternative to seeking remedies through parliament. The Prime Minister announced that she would be introducing a policy which entitled all workers to a 12 month period of absence to care for an ill relative. What she failed to make clear was that this would be unpaid leave. A meaningless reform on a par with all the rights of the Soviet citizen that were written into that country’s constitution. Rights that in a police state were meaningless.

(1) There are a number of tribunals that at present that consider these wrongs,but I have left out reference to them for ease of writing.

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The Philosopher and the Economist

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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.