Tag Archives: #TonyBlair

Why politicians would benefit from reading fairy tales

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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