Given the Governor of the Bank of England's assault on 'banking culture' can it really be changed ?
And if so how would you go about it ?
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18642732 (http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18642732)
Quote
Bank of England head says banks must change culture
29 June 2012 Last updated at 14:42
Bank of England governor Sir Mervyn King has called for a change in the banking culture, saying that customers have received "shoddy" treatment.
He added that bank leaders had "let down" the many honest and hard working people in the financial sector.
Sir Mervyn's comments come on the day banks were found to have mis-sold financial products to small businesses.
It is the third major scandal this year, following manipulation of lending rates and loan insurance mis-selling.
Speaking at the launch of the Bank's twice-yearly Financial Stability Report, Sir Mervyn demanded immediate and far-reaching action to reform the structure and culture of the UK banking industry.
He said: "That goes to both the culture in the banking industry and to the structure of the banking industry, from excessive levels of compensation, shoddy treatment of customers, to deceitful manipulation of one of the most important interest rates and now this morning to news of yet another mis-selling scandal.
....
Also today, Vince Cable, the UK business secretary, 29th June 2012 Channel 4 News interview. Talking about small businesses being
driven to the wall by unscrupulous banks.
http://www.channel4.com/news/catch-up/display/playlistref/290612/clipid/290612_4ON_vince_29 (http://www.channel4.com/news/catch-up/display/playlistref/290612/clipid/290612_4ON_vince_29)
Quote"It is gross behaviour and yet another illustration of the greed and corruption that pervades substantial parts of the banking system."
.........
"But there is a much deeper cultural issue in institutions like Barclays Capital, they are rotten to the core"
Quote from: mongers on June 29, 2012, 08:32:53 PM
And if so how would you go about it ?
I would invite everyone who thinks finance needs a new culture to pool their assets and create a bank that does it the right way.
And here I thought that banking was a business, not a culture.
Start prosecuting them for their crimes. That'll change the culture in a hurry.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 29, 2012, 08:42:12 PM
Quote from: mongers on June 29, 2012, 08:32:53 PM
And if so how would you go about it ?
I would invite everyone who thinks finance needs a new culture to pool their assets and create a bank that does it the right way.
That's sort of like inviting people who don't like the Mob to pool their assets to create legitimate businesses.
Quote from: Razgovory on June 29, 2012, 10:03:03 PM
That's sort of like inviting people who don't like the Mob to pool their assets to create legitimate businesses.
Then Monger's question is specious.
But actually I would like to withdraw my comment. The LIBOR rigging is fraud. People who commit fraud should be punished. Completely different situation than Seedy calling banks crooks for charging to print checks.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 29, 2012, 10:53:52 PM
But actually I would like to withdraw my comment. The LIBOR rigging is fraud. People who commit fraud should be punished.
No take backs, dammit. You are stuck with your DONT LIKE FRAUD START YOUR OWN BANK LULZ statement.
QuoteCompletely different situation than Seedy calling banks crooks for charging to print checks.
I don't do that; after all, I expect a premium for my custom checks with bunnies and duckies on them.
Now that overdraft nonsense, that's different.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 29, 2012, 08:42:12 PM
Quote from: mongers on June 29, 2012, 08:32:53 PM
And if so how would you go about it ?
I would invite everyone who thinks finance needs a new culture to pool their assets and create a bank that does it the right way.
We already pool our assets to pay for the law and regulators, why don't we use them?
Banking culture?
Hmm, I always thought bankers were more parasites than fungae.
Which sector does the governor think has a healthy culture?
Easy. Create a new culture but this time make sure the lab equipment is thoroughly cleaned.
If you don't like the culture then stay away from banks.
Give me ten thousand bombers, and I can change the banking culture in a single night.
The root problem is one of culture and character. Not just of bankers, but all of us.
Sure, we can blame and focus on "the system" via percentages here and regulations there, but people can get around or abuse a system no matter how 'perfect' you try to make it. We can look to history and human nature.
If we want bankers to be ethical, then not only does empathy have to be developed within them, but then it must be followed with the cultivation of compassion. Empathy allows us to understand others and accurately imagine their feelings. Compassion means using that knowledge to care for others.
Such personal skills need to be trained, but there are no mental classes offered in mainstream education today; character is certainly not listed on any resume. And behavior pretty much gets set by your late twenties.
Quote from: Phillip V on June 30, 2012, 11:51:49 AM
The root problem is one of culture and character. Not just of bankers, but all of us.
Sure, we can blame and focus on "the system" via percentages here and regulations there, but people can get around or abuse a system no matter how 'perfect' you try to make it. We can look to history and human nature.
If we want bankers to be ethical, then not only does empathy have to be developed within them, but then it must be followed with the cultivation of compassion. Empathy allows us to understand others and accurately imagine their feelings. Compassion means using that knowledge to care for others.
Such personal skills need to be trained, but there are no mental classes offered in mainstream education today; character is certainly not listed on any resume. And behavior pretty much gets set by your late twenties.
If for your system to work you need people to act selflessly, you have already failed.
Quote from: Ideologue on June 30, 2012, 06:19:49 AM
Give me ten thousand bombers, and I can change the banking culture in a single night.
Sounds like bombers aren't very efficient.
These are terrible times we live in, when rich financial types take advantage of their power and on occasion break the law when it is to their gain. Who could ever imagine there would be "greed and corruption" at Barclays?
Quote from: alfred russel on June 30, 2012, 12:13:42 PM
These are terrible times we live in, when rich financial types take advantage of their power and on occasion break the law when it is to their gain. Who could ever imagine there would be "greed and corruption" at Barclays?
:)
I actually like my bank. It's the 16th best bank in the country according to Forbes. Not bad for a local concern.
Quote from: Razgovory on June 30, 2012, 01:13:19 PM
I actually like my bank. It's the 16th best bank in the country according to Forbes. Not bad for a local concern.
County. :contract:
Quote... how would you go about it ?
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages3.wikia.nocookie.net%2F__cb20090721075840%2Finciclopedia%2Fimages%2F5%2F5e%2FGuillotine.gif&hash=f481e960d11afe9944b4cebe48319a9fb7c0e0ea)
The circumcision thread is that way.
Sometimes a cigar-cutter is just a cigar-cutter.
Quote from: Ideologue on June 30, 2012, 06:19:49 AM
Give me ten thousand bombers, and I can change the banking culture in a single night.
You have to do it during the day. While they're at work.
Quote from: Martinus on June 30, 2012, 11:57:58 AM
Quote from: Phillip V on June 30, 2012, 11:51:49 AM
The root problem is one of culture and character. Not just of bankers, but all of us.
Sure, we can blame and focus on "the system" via percentages here and regulations there, but people can get around or abuse a system no matter how 'perfect' you try to make it. We can look to history and human nature.
If we want bankers to be ethical, then not only does empathy have to be developed within them, but then it must be followed with the cultivation of compassion. Empathy allows us to understand others and accurately imagine their feelings. Compassion means using that knowledge to care for others.
Such personal skills need to be trained, but there are no mental classes offered in mainstream education today; character is certainly not listed on any resume. And behavior pretty much gets set by your late twenties.
If for your system to work you need people to act selflessly, you have already failed.
so you have finally come around accepting laisez-faire as the only viable economic theory?
Quote from: Tamas on June 30, 2012, 04:07:10 PM
Quote from: Martinus on June 30, 2012, 11:57:58 AM
If for your system to work you need people to act selflessly, you have already failed.
so you have finally come around accepting laisez-faire as the only viable economic theory?
Huh? How does no regulation stop things like interest rate manipulation or having banks sell risky products to illiterate clients?
Quote from: Tamas on June 30, 2012, 04:07:10 PM
Quote from: Martinus on June 30, 2012, 11:57:58 AM
If for your system to work you need people to act selflessly, you have already failed.
so you have finally come around accepting laisez-faire as the only viable economic theory?
Holy non sequitur, Batman!
Quote from: Tamas on June 30, 2012, 04:07:10 PM
Quote from: Martinus on June 30, 2012, 11:57:58 AM
Quote from: Phillip V on June 30, 2012, 11:51:49 AM
The root problem is one of culture and character. Not just of bankers, but all of us.
Sure, we can blame and focus on "the system" via percentages here and regulations there, but people can get around or abuse a system no matter how 'perfect' you try to make it. We can look to history and human nature.
If we want bankers to be ethical, then not only does empathy have to be developed within them, but then it must be followed with the cultivation of compassion. Empathy allows us to understand others and accurately imagine their feelings. Compassion means using that knowledge to care for others.
Such personal skills need to be trained, but there are no mental classes offered in mainstream education today; character is certainly not listed on any resume. And behavior pretty much gets set by your late twenties.
If for your system to work you need people to act selflessly, you have already failed.
so you have finally come around accepting laisez-faire as the only viable economic theory?
Lazy it is, fair it ain't.
I think the point Beetlejuice was trying to make is that economic systems like communism that rely on good will and solidarity fail, unlike ones that rely on greed.
But, being a gypsy, he did a very poor job of communicating his point.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on June 30, 2012, 12:08:04 PM
Quote from: Ideologue on June 30, 2012, 06:19:49 AM
Give me ten thousand bombers, and I can change the banking culture in a single night.
Sounds like bombers aren't very efficient.
You have to understand, it was a different time.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 30, 2012, 05:25:59 PM
I think the point Beetlejuice was trying to make is that economic systems like communism that rely on good will and solidarity fail, unlike ones that rely on greed.
But, being a gypsy, he did a very poor job of communicating his point.
The problem wasn't lack of communication, it's that the point is bullcrap.
I'm not sure that point is bullcrap, but pretty much every system that's been implemented on a wide-scale, including communism, relies to a great extent upon greed.
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on June 30, 2012, 03:34:01 PM
Quote from: Ideologue on June 30, 2012, 06:19:49 AM
Give me ten thousand bombers, and I can change the banking culture in a single night.
You have to do it during the day. While they're at work.
Nice try, Hermann. Dehousing is best done at night.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on June 30, 2012, 06:47:56 PM
I'm not sure that point is bullcrap, but pretty much every system that's been implemented on a wide-scale, including communism, relies to a great extent upon greed.
No. It relies on selflessness, and thus, it fails.
Same reason why government interference with the economy, and social engineering, fail everywhere but the most disciplined and advanced states. Just look at the present state of the EU.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on June 30, 2012, 05:25:59 PM
I think the point Beetlejuice was trying to make is that economic systems like communism that rely on good will and solidarity fail, unlike ones that rely on greed.
But, being a gypsy, he did a very poor job of communicating his point.
I would argue, Mr. Whats-the-drity-word-for-Korean, that my mistake was overestimating the comprehension ability of the posters here.
QuoteMr. Whats-the-drity-word-for-Korean
Chink
Slant eyes
Zipperhead
Gook.
How could I have forgotten that one?
Quote from: Tamas on July 01, 2012, 01:56:49 PM
I would argue, Mr. Whats-the-drity-word-for-Korean, that my mistake was overestimating the comprehension ability of the posters here.
Apparently so, as I consider your statement to be much further reaching and easily dismissed than Yi's summation of it.
Governments can use the carrot to incentivize actions or the stick to disincentivize actions where the government feels the greater good is helped by doing so. This power can easily be misused but that doesn't mean it always is. But whether you agree with it or not, by doing so the government is relying on people acting in their own self-interest to take the carrot and avoid the stick.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on July 01, 2012, 03:00:32 PM
Governments can use the carrot to incentivize actions or the stick to disincentivize actions where the government feels the greater good is helped by doing so. This power can easily be misused but that doesn't mean it always is.
Even when not deliberately misused, such efforts often fail due to unexpected consequences.
Quote from: dps on July 01, 2012, 06:35:33 PM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on July 01, 2012, 03:00:32 PM
Governments can use the carrot to incentivize actions or the stick to disincentivize actions where the government feels the greater good is helped by doing so. This power can easily be misused but that doesn't mean it always is.
Even when not deliberately misused, such efforts often fail due to unexpected consequences.
So? That could be said about anything.
Quote from: Ed Anger on July 01, 2012, 02:04:28 PM
QuoteMr. Whats-the-drity-word-for-Korean
Chink
Slant eyes
Zipperhead
The grunts over there prefer to use "buckethead" as well.
Quote from: Razgovory on July 01, 2012, 06:49:08 PM
Quote from: dps on July 01, 2012, 06:35:33 PM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on July 01, 2012, 03:00:32 PM
Governments can use the carrot to incentivize actions or the stick to disincentivize actions where the government feels the greater good is helped by doing so. This power can easily be misused but that doesn't mean it always is.
Even when not deliberately misused, such efforts often fail due to unexpected consequences.
So? That could be said about anything.
You're probably not really a fool--why do you enjoy playing one here?
Quote from: Tamas on July 01, 2012, 01:55:32 PM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on June 30, 2012, 06:47:56 PM
I'm not sure that point is bullcrap, but pretty much every system that's been implemented on a wide-scale, including communism, relies to a great extent upon greed.
No. It relies on selflessness, and thus, it fails.
Same reason why government interference with the economy, and social engineering, fail everywhere but the most disciplined and advanced states. Just look at the present state of the EU.
On the other hand, laissez-faire has never produced much in the way of positive results either, but is far more brutal than interventionist systems.
Quote from: dps on July 01, 2012, 07:04:07 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on July 01, 2012, 06:49:08 PM
Quote from: dps on July 01, 2012, 06:35:33 PM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on July 01, 2012, 03:00:32 PM
Governments can use the carrot to incentivize actions or the stick to disincentivize actions where the government feels the greater good is helped by doing so. This power can easily be misused but that doesn't mean it always is.
Even when not deliberately misused, such efforts often fail due to unexpected consequences.
So? That could be said about anything.
You're probably not really a fool--why do you enjoy playing one here?
I do no share you ideology. You answer is predicated on an ideological conceit.
Quote from: Neil on July 01, 2012, 07:12:49 PM
Quote from: Tamas on July 01, 2012, 01:55:32 PM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on June 30, 2012, 06:47:56 PM
I'm not sure that point is bullcrap, but pretty much every system that's been implemented on a wide-scale, including communism, relies to a great extent upon greed.
No. It relies on selflessness, and thus, it fails.
Same reason why government interference with the economy, and social engineering, fail everywhere but the most disciplined and advanced states. Just look at the present state of the EU.
On the other hand, laissez-faire has never produced much in the way of positive results either, but is far more brutal than interventionist systems.
I would say that it produced the basis for post-WW2 welfare states. And now we will return to a system more akin to it, after the imminent collapse of European social-liberalism. I just hope it will be a purer form of liberalism, and not autocracy.
Quote from: dps on July 01, 2012, 07:04:07 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on July 01, 2012, 06:49:08 PM
Quote from: dps on July 01, 2012, 06:35:33 PM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on July 01, 2012, 03:00:32 PM
Governments can use the carrot to incentivize actions or the stick to disincentivize actions where the government feels the greater good is helped by doing so. This power can easily be misused but that doesn't mean it always is.
Even when not deliberately misused, such efforts often fail due to unexpected consequences.
So? That could be said about anything.
You're probably not really a fool--why do you enjoy playing one here?
I don't think Raz's response is that of a fool - in fact yours is. If we did not do things because of unexpected consequences, we would not do anything.
Quote from: Tamas on July 02, 2012, 02:17:13 AM
I would say that it produced the basis for post-WW2 welfare states. And now we will return to a system more akin to it, after the imminent collapse of European social-liberalism. I just hope it will be a purer form of liberalism, and not autocracy.
I think social democracy with liberalism was the basis of all mixed market economies - which include the entire developed world.
I don't think you can change the culture of banking. I think you can regulate them heavily to stop things like the PPI mis-selling, the mis-selling of products to small businesses or the LIBOR scandal. I think Martin Wolf's interesting on this because he was part of the banking reform committee we had over here:
QuoteBanking reforms after the Libor scandal
July 2, 2012 11:49 am
On June 14 2012, I wrote a column [Two cheers for Britain's bank reform plans] on the government's plans to implement the recommendations of the Independent Commission on Banking, chaired by Sir John Vickers, of which I was a member.
I noted that the government had rejected the Commission's recommendations on several points, in favour of the banks. After the scandal of the deliberate misreporting of the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), these concessions must now be reconsidered.
In particular, I noted:
Quote"The government has rejected proposals from the ICB that equity should fund at least 4 per cent of the balance sheet of systemically important banks, instead of the 3 per cent proposed by the Basel committee. The government also proposes to let ring-fenced banks offer "simple derivative products" to its clients, contrary to the ICB proposal that these banks act as agents only for their clients. In addition, it has agreed to waive loss-absorbency requirements for foreign subsidiaries of globally significant international banks, provided these entities are believed to pose no risk to the battered UK taxpayers. Finally, the government plans to exempt banks with mandated deposits of less than £25bn from the obligation to set up a ring-fenced retail bank."
My interpretation of the Libor scandal is the obvious one: banks, as presently constituted and managed, cannot be trusted to perform any publicly important function, against the perceived interests of their staff. Today's banks represent the incarnation of profit-seeking behaviour taken to its logical limits, in which the only question asked by senior staff is not what is their duty or their responsibility, but what can they get away with.
As my colleague John Kay, has frequently point out, such behaviour, which might seem to be the logical consequence of profit-maximisation, is incompatible with the survival of a sophisticated market economy. Without trust in the probity of those one deals with a host of potentially profitable long-term arrangements will collapse. This is particularly true in banking, Trust is not an optional extra in banking, it is, as the salience of the word "credit" to this industry implies, of the essence.
It is difficult to know how to restore not just the reality, but the perception, of trustworthiness, to this industry. But part of the answer must be a separation of the self-interested trading culture of today's investment banking from the service-oriented culture of old-fashioned commercial banking. That has always seemed to me to be a strong argument for the ring-fencing of retail from investment banking that the ICB proposed.
Some may feel that we should have gone further. Our view, in not doing so, was that a more diversified balance sheet for a group might be more stable, in a crisis. What seems clear, however, is that the government should now be asked why it diluted our proposals on the lines I have indicated above. Does anybody now believe that the ability of the new retail banks to offer so-called "simple derivatives" to customers will not be abused? Again, do many people really trust banks to run their non-domestic banking subsidiaries in ways that do not threaten the UK taxpayer in a global crisis? Finally, does anybody really believe that the fundamental model of contemporary banking, which is to operate with the barest minimum of capital, with a view to maximising expected non-risk-adjusted returns on equity, for the benefit of bankers' remuneration, at the expense of both shareholders and taxpayers, is defensible?
I do not see the sense in starting more lengthy inquiries. Why not start by implementing the full recommendations of the one the government set up at the start of its period in office? The banking industry performs a set of vital public functions – the provision of credit and the management of money. But its culture is not that of service-oriented utilities, but rather of huge entities acting solely for their own purposes.
A full retail ring-fence, which separates the investment banking from the retail banking, plus much higher capital requirements, would be a good start. This combination would, I believe, see the disappearance of much unnecessary trading activity. Good riddance, I would say. But the UK would also have to accept that the present charging model for retail banking – free, if in credit – is also one of the reasons for the endless series of scandals. The model is broken, in the current low-interest rate environment. Banks must be encouraged to charge open fees for service, rather than make money by covert means.
Critics might well argue that the ICB should have gone further. But surely they should insist that the government should go at least as far as it did.
Must be interesting to live in a country where the banking industry is responsible to the government, and not running it.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on July 02, 2012, 07:14:05 AM
Must be interesting to live in a country where the banking industry is responsible to the government, and not running it.
no, it really is not.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on July 02, 2012, 07:14:05 AM
Must be interesting to live in a country where the banking industry is responsible to the government, and not running it.
Which country is that ? :unsure:
Gotta love this shit:
http://ukingermany.fco.gov.uk/en/news/?view=Speech&id=4616377 (http://ukingermany.fco.gov.uk/en/news/?view=Speech&id=4616377)
Quote
Gordon Brown: Mansion House speech
HM Treasury, 20 June 2007
My Lord Mayor, Mr Governor, my Lords, Aldermen, Mr Recorder, Sheriffs, ladies and gentlemen.
Over the ten years that I have had the privilege of addressing you as Chancellor, I have been able year by year to record how the City of London has risen by your efforts, ingenuity and creativity to become a new world leader.
Now today over 40 per cent of the world's foreign equities are traded here, more than New York:
over 30 per cent of the world's currencies exchanges take place here, more than New York and Tokyo combined,
while New York and Tokyo are reliant mainly on their large American and Asian domestic markets, 80 per cent of our business is international, and
in a study last week of the top 50 financial cities, the City of London came first.
So I congratulate you Lord Mayor and the City of London on these remarkable achievements, an era that history will record as the beginning of a new golden age for the City of London.
And I believe the lesson we learn from the success of the City has ramifications far beyond the City itself - that we are leading because we are first in putting to work exactly that set of qualities that is needed for global success:
openness to the world and global reach,
pioneers of free trade and its leading defenders,
with a deep and abiding belief in open markets,
champions of diversity in ownership and talent, and of flexibility and adaptability to change, and
a basic faith that from wherever it comes and from whatever background, what matters is that the talent, ingenuity and potential of people is harnessed to drive performance.
And I believe it will be said of this age, the first decades of the 21st century, that out of the greatest restructuring of the global economy, perhaps even greater than the industrial revolution, a new world order was created.
...
The previous year is quite amusing:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2006/jun/22/politics.economicpolicy (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2006/jun/22/politics.economicpolicy)
including:
Quote
......
Mr Lord Mayor ten years ago there were nine separate regulatory bodies for financial services.
To meet the challenge of global markets we created a single unified FSA.
In 2003, just at the time of a previous Mansion House speech, the Worldcom accounting scandal broke. And I will be honest with you, many who advised me including not a few newspapers, favoured a regulatory crackdown.
I believe that we were right not to go down that road which in the United States led to Sarbannes-Oxley, and we were right to build upon our light touch system through the leadership of Sir Callum McCarthy - fair, proportionate, predictable and increasingly risk based. I know Sir Callum is committed to reducing regulatory administrative burdens and the National Audit Office will now look at the efficiency and value for money of our system.
....
Quote from: CountDeMoney on July 02, 2012, 07:14:05 AM
Must be interesting to live in a country where the banking industry is responsible to the government, and not running it.
That certainly isn't the UK
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on July 02, 2012, 12:13:51 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on July 02, 2012, 07:14:05 AM
Must be interesting to live in a country where the banking industry is responsible to the government, and not running it.
That certainly isn't the UK
A boy can dream, can't he?
Quote from: CountDeMoney on July 02, 2012, 12:14:38 PM
A boy can dream, can't he?
Be careful what you wish for.
The country that probably best meets the condition of the banking industry being responsible to the government is . . . China.
Although arguably that is because there isn't a dime's worth of difference between them.
Spanish cajas were bound to regional governments. Didn't turn out that well.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on July 03, 2012, 11:06:10 AM
Although arguably that is because there isn't a dime's worth of difference between them.
So kinda like here, then.
Our state-owned banks did their utmost to outdo the worst private banks and only failed because of the sheer size of some of the private banks. But they certainly tried.
We didn't have any state owned banks. After the crisis we've got two nationalised, one boardless after pressure from the BofE and only HSBC and Santander kind of independent. Michael Foot probably never dreamt of as much :(
You're calling Banco de Santander a British bank? :huh:
Effectively. They bought, I think, Abbey National and I believe are more or less totally separate from the Spanish parent.
Quote from: Martinus on July 02, 2012, 04:05:29 AM
Quote from: dps on July 01, 2012, 07:04:07 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on July 01, 2012, 06:49:08 PM
Quote from: dps on July 01, 2012, 06:35:33 PM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on July 01, 2012, 03:00:32 PM
Governments can use the carrot to incentivize actions or the stick to disincentivize actions where the government feels the greater good is helped by doing so. This power can easily be misused but that doesn't mean it always is.
Even when not deliberately misused, such efforts often fail due to unexpected consequences.
So? That could be said about anything.
You're probably not really a fool--why do you enjoy playing one here?
I don't think Raz's response is that of a fool - in fact yours is. If we did not do things because of unexpected consequences, we would not do anything.
Given that I didn't say that we shouldn't do things because of unexpected consequences, I don't think you have much of a point.
What was the point of your statement then? To make a bland useless acknowledgement?
Quote from: Razgovory on July 03, 2012, 07:36:56 PM
What was the point of your statement then? To make a bland useless acknowledgement?
Pretty much.
I'm sorry I attributed meaning and thought behind your posts. I'll refrain from that in future.
The Downside of Libertyhttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/04/opinion/the-downside-of-liberty.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/04/opinion/the-downside-of-liberty.html)
'This spring I was on a panel at the Woodstock Writers Festival. An audience member asked a question: Why had the revolution dreamed up in the late 1960s mostly been won on the social and cultural fronts — women's rights, gay rights, black president, ecology, sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll — but lost in the economic realm, with old-school free-market ideas gaining traction all the time?
There was a long pause. People shrugged and sighed. I had an epiphany, which I offered, bumming out everybody in the room.
What has happened politically, economically, culturally and socially since the sea change of the late '60s isn't contradictory or incongruous. It's all of a piece. For hippies and bohemians as for businesspeople and investors, extreme individualism has been triumphant. Selfishness won.'
QuoteFrom the beginning, the American idea embodied a tension between radical individualism and the demands of the commonweal. The document we're celebrating today says in its second line that axiomatic human rights include "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" — individualism in a nutshell. But the Declaration's author was not a greed-is-good guy: "Self-love," Jefferson wrote to a friend 38 years after the Declaration, "is no part of morality. Indeed it is exactly its counterpart. It is the sole antagonist of virtue leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others."
Periodically Americans have gone overboard indulging our propensities to self-gratification — during the 1840s, during the Gilded Age, and again in the Roaring Twenties. Yet each time, thanks to economic crises and reassertions of moral disapproval, a rough equilibrium between individualism and the civic good was restored.
Consider America during the two decades after World War II. Stereotypically but also in fact, the conformist pressures of bourgeois social norms were powerful. To dress or speak or live life in unorthodox, extravagantly individualist ways required real gumption. Yet just as beatniks were rare and freakish, so were proudly money-mad Ayn Randian millionaires. My conservative Republican father thought marginal income tax rates of 91 percent were unfairly high, but he and his friends never dreamed of suggesting they be reduced below, say, 50 percent. Sex outside marriage was shameful, beards and divorce were outré — but so were boasting of one's wealth and blaming unfortunates for their hard luck. When I was growing up in Omaha, rich people who could afford to build palatial houses did not and wouldn't dream of paying themselves 200 or 400 times what they paid their employees. Greed as well as homosexuality was a love that dared not speak its name.
But then came the late 1960s, and over the next two decades American individualism was fully unleashed. A kind of tacit grand bargain was forged between the counterculture and the establishment, between the forever-young and the moneyed.
Going forward, the youthful masses of every age would be permitted as never before to indulge their self-expressive and hedonistic impulses. But capitalists in return would be unshackled as well, free to indulge their own animal spirits with fewer and fewer fetters in the forms of regulation, taxes or social opprobrium.
"Do your own thing" is not so different than "every man for himself." If it feels good, do it, whether that means smoking weed and watching porn and never wearing a necktie, retiring at 50 with a six-figure public pension and refusing modest gun regulation, or moving your factories overseas and letting commercial banks become financial speculators. The self-absorbed "Me" Decade, having expanded during the '80s and '90s from personal life to encompass the political economy, will soon be the "Me" Half-Century.
People on the political right have blamed the late '60s for what they loathe about contemporary life — anything-goes sexuality, cultural coarseness, multiculturalism. And people on the left buy into that, seeing only the '60s legacies of freedom that they define as progress. But what the left and right respectively love and hate are mostly flip sides of the same libertarian coin minted around 1967. Thanks to the '60s, we are all shamelessly selfish.
In that letter from 1814, Jefferson wrote that our tendencies toward selfishness where liberty and our pursuit of happiness lead us require "correctives which are supplied by education" and by "the moralist, the preacher, and legislator."
On this Independence Day, I'm doing my small preacherly bit.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fgraphics8.nytimes.com%2Fimages%2F2012%2F07%2F04%2Fopinion%2F0704OPEDmortis%2F0704OPEDmortis-articleLarge.jpg&hash=b3aafce574433527f63ffb2af5481d755a7289ae)
That's an interesting line of thought.
Yes. Thought provoking.
So we should go back to herding people into camps?
Quote from: The Brain on July 04, 2012, 12:55:51 PM
So we should go back to herding people into camps?
I'd be willing to live less large if it means that hipsters and Martinus were jailed.
Quote from: Neil on July 04, 2012, 12:47:36 PM
That's an interesting line of thought.
Hardly original, though. Even back in the 80's, it was noted that some of the prominent corporate raiders and the like had been hippies 2 decades earlier. They were just applying their philosophies of "If it feels good, do it" and "screw the rules" to economics instead of culture.
Quote from: Phillip V on July 04, 2012, 12:13:11 PM
The Downside of Liberty
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/04/opinion/the-downside-of-liberty.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/04/opinion/the-downside-of-liberty.html)
'This spring I was on a panel at the Woodstock Writers Festival. An audience member asked a question: Why had the revolution dreamed up in the late 1960s mostly been won on the social and cultural fronts — women's rights, gay rights, black president, ecology, sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll — but lost in the economic realm, with old-school free-market ideas gaining traction all the time?
There was a long pause. People shrugged and sighed. I had an epiphany, which I offered, bumming out everybody in the room.
What has happened politically, economically, culturally and socially since the sea change of the late '60s isn't contradictory or incongruous. It's all of a piece. For hippies and bohemians as for businesspeople and investors, extreme individualism has been triumphant. Selfishness won.'
The question is based on a flawed premise. The old-school free-market idea didn't "win". Every modern economy on Earth has a highly-developed welfare state. All of the policy machines that control our high-level economic functions are firmly rooted in Keynesian tradition. It's a social democratic world.
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on July 04, 2012, 03:00:02 PM
The question is based on a flawed premise. The old-school free-market idea didn't "win". Every modern economy on Earth has a highly-developed welfare state. All of the policy machines that control our high-level economic functions are firmly rooted in Keynesian tradition. It's a social democratic world.
As a minor quibble Keynesianism is not the same thing as the welfare state.
Quote from: dps on July 01, 2012, 07:04:07 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on July 01, 2012, 06:49:08 PM
So? That could be said about anything.
You're probably not really a fool--why do you enjoy playing one here?
I don't think Raz said anything foolish here, and in fact you're the one who looks foolish here by engaging in an unprovoked attack.
In a similar but more seething vein I'm reminded of Peter Oborne's response to the riots in the summer.
QuoteThe moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom
By Peter Oborne Politics Last updated: August 11th, 2011
David Cameron, Ed Miliband and the entire British political class came together yesterday to denounce the rioters. They were of course right to say that the actions of these looters, arsonists and muggers were abhorrent and criminal, and that the police should be given more support.
But there was also something very phony and hypocritical about all the shock and outrage expressed in parliament. MPs spoke about the week's dreadful events as if they were nothing to do with them.
I cannot accept that this is the case. Indeed, I believe that the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society. The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite. It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat. An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up.
It is not just the feral youth of Tottenham who have forgotten they have duties as well as rights. So have the feral rich of Chelsea and Kensington. A few years ago, my wife and I went to a dinner party in a large house in west London. A security guard prowled along the street outside, and there was much talk of the "north-south divide", which I took literally for a while until I realised that my hosts were facetiously referring to the difference between those who lived north and south of Kensington High Street.
Most of the people in this very expensive street were every bit as deracinated and cut off from the rest of Britain as the young, unemployed men and women who have caused such terrible damage over the last few days. For them, the repellent Financial Times magazine How to Spend It is a bible. I'd guess that few of them bother to pay British tax if they can avoid it, and that fewer still feel the sense of obligation to society that only a few decades ago came naturally to the wealthy and better off.
Yet we celebrate people who live empty lives like this. A few weeks ago, I noticed an item in a newspaper saying that the business tycoon Sir Richard Branson was thinking of moving his headquarters to Switzerland. This move was represented as a potential blow to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, because it meant less tax revenue.
I couldn't help thinking that in a sane and decent world such a move would be a blow to Sir Richard, not the Chancellor. People would note that a prominent and wealthy businessman was avoiding British tax and think less of him. Instead, he has a knighthood and is widely feted. The same is true of the brilliant retailer Sir Philip Green. Sir Philip's businesses could never survive but for Britain's famous social and political stability, our transport system to shift his goods and our schools to educate his workers.
Yet Sir Philip, who a few years ago sent an extraordinary £1 billion dividend offshore, seems to have little intention of paying for much of this. Why does nobody get angry or hold him culpable? I know that he employs expensive tax lawyers and that everything he does is legal, but he surely faces ethical and moral questions just as much as does a young thug who breaks into one of Sir Philip's shops and steals from it?
Our politicians – standing sanctimoniously on their hind legs in the Commons yesterday – are just as bad. They have shown themselves prepared to ignore common decency and, in some cases, to break the law. David Cameron is happy to have some of the worst offenders in his Cabinet. Take the example of Francis Maude, who is charged with tackling public sector waste – which trade unions say is a euphemism for waging war on low‑paid workers. Yet Mr Maude made tens of thousands of pounds by breaching the spirit, though not the law, surrounding MPs' allowances.
A great deal has been made over the past few days of the greed of the rioters for consumer goods, not least by Rotherham MP Denis MacShane who accurately remarked, "What the looters wanted was for a few minutes to enter the world of Sloane Street consumption." This from a man who notoriously claimed £5,900 for eight laptops. Of course, as an MP he obtained these laptops legally through his expenses.
Yesterday, the veteran Labour MP Gerald Kaufman asked the Prime Minister to consider how these rioters can be "reclaimed" by society. Yes, this is indeed the same Gerald Kaufman who submitted a claim for three months' expenses totalling £14,301.60, which included £8,865 for a Bang & Olufsen television.
Or take the Salford MP Hazel Blears, who has been loudly calling for draconian action against the looters. I find it very hard to make any kind of ethical distinction between Blears's expense cheating and tax avoidance, and the straight robbery carried out by the looters.
The Prime Minister showed no sign that he understood that something stank about yesterday's Commons debate. He spoke of morality, but only as something which applies to the very poor: "We will restore a stronger sense of morality and responsibility – in every town, in every street and in every estate." He appeared not to grasp that this should apply to the rich and powerful as well.
The tragic truth is that Mr Cameron is himself guilty of failing this test. It is scarcely six weeks since he jauntily turned up at the News International summer party, even though the media group was at the time subject to not one but two police investigations. Even more notoriously, he awarded a senior Downing Street job to the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, even though he knew at the time that Coulson had resigned after criminal acts were committed under his editorship. The Prime Minister excused his wretched judgment by proclaiming that "everybody deserves a second chance". It was very telling yesterday that he did not talk of second chances as he pledged exemplary punishment for the rioters and looters.
These double standards from Downing Street are symptomatic of widespread double standards at the very top of our society. It should be stressed that most people (including, I know, Telegraph readers) continue to believe in honesty, decency, hard work, and putting back into society at least as much as they take out.
But there are those who do not. Certainly, the so-called feral youth seem oblivious to decency and morality. But so are the venal rich and powerful – too many of our bankers, footballers, wealthy businessmen and politicians.
Of course, most of them are smart and wealthy enough to make sure that they obey the law. That cannot be said of the sad young men and women, without hope or aspiration, who have caused such mayhem and chaos over the past few days. But the rioters have this defence: they are just following the example set by senior and respected figures in society. Let's bear in mind that many of the youths in our inner cities have never been trained in decent values. All they have ever known is barbarism. Our politicians and bankers, in sharp contrast, tend to have been to good schools and universities and to have been given every opportunity in life.
Something has gone horribly wrong in Britain. If we are ever to confront the problems which have been exposed in the past week, it is essential to bear in mind that they do not only exist in inner-city housing estates.
The culture of greed and impunity we are witnessing on our TV screens stretches right up into corporate boardrooms and the Cabinet. It embraces the police and large parts of our media. It is not just its damaged youth, but Britain itself that needs a moral reformation.
I imagine now there'd be far more on the bankers.
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 05, 2012, 03:41:15 AM
the feral rich
I like that.
Then again, your feral rich over there don't run for President.
I like that line:
QuoteOur politicians – standing sanctimoniously on their hind legs in the Commons yesterday – are just as bad.
Brits have some of the best social-outrage writers in the world. :lol:
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on July 04, 2012, 03:00:02 PM
Quote from: Phillip V on July 04, 2012, 12:13:11 PM
The Downside of Liberty
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/04/opinion/the-downside-of-liberty.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/04/opinion/the-downside-of-liberty.html)
'This spring I was on a panel at the Woodstock Writers Festival. An audience member asked a question: Why had the revolution dreamed up in the late 1960s mostly been won on the social and cultural fronts — women's rights, gay rights, black president, ecology, sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll — but lost in the economic realm, with old-school free-market ideas gaining traction all the time?
There was a long pause. People shrugged and sighed. I had an epiphany, which I offered, bumming out everybody in the room.
What has happened politically, economically, culturally and socially since the sea change of the late '60s isn't contradictory or incongruous. It's all of a piece. For hippies and bohemians as for businesspeople and investors, extreme individualism has been triumphant. Selfishness won.'
The question is based on a flawed premise. The old-school free-market idea didn't "win". Every modern economy on Earth has a highly-developed welfare state. All of the policy machines that control our high-level economic functions are firmly rooted in Keynesian tradition. It's a social democratic world.
I'm going to disagree with you there. The "welfare" state was a compromise reached between free market capitalism and "socialism". Now, this compromise is being torn down by neo-cons and neo-liberals alike (already a "welfare" state, not to mention "socialism" is pretty much an insult, including in countries that never experienced a functioning example of either, like the former Eastern Bloc, where it is fashionable to be ruthlessly individualistic and selfish). The reason for that is the capitalist side (in the form of corporations) went global and thus much more powerful than nationalistic governments (which used to be the last mainstay of "socialism" and "welfare state") - and both the liberals and the conservatives mistrust the next natural step to restore the balance - supra-national "world governments".
Quote from: Neil on July 04, 2012, 12:47:36 PM
That's an interesting line of thought.
Not that much - it's pretty obvious. The free market devours all values, whether the ones sacred to the conservatives and the socialists. The fun/ironic part, however, is that so many conservatives seem to be worshipping at its altar withour realising it is much better than any sex revolution or gay pride parade at trivializing and destroying "God".
Quote from: Martinus on July 05, 2012, 09:22:11 AM
I like that line:
QuoteOur politicians – standing sanctimoniously on their hind legs in the Commons yesterday – are just as bad.
Brits have some of the best social-outrage writers in the world. :lol:
"Feral rich" was good, but the Animal Farm callback was a little obvious.
Quote from: Ideologue on July 05, 2012, 10:32:19 AM
"Feral rich" was good, but the Animal Farm callback was a little obvious.
Meh, didn't think it was overtly Orwellian, but more of a Barnumesque reference.
"It should be stressed that most people (including, I know, Telegraph readers) continue to believe in honesty, decency, hard work, and putting back into society at least as much as they take out."
I would take issue with this, IMO the rot extends throughout British society, it is really quite sickening.
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on July 05, 2012, 10:42:51 AM
"It should be stressed that most people (including, I know, Telegraph readers) continue to believe in honesty, decency, hard work, and putting back into society at least as much as they take out."
I would take issue with this, IMO the rot extends throughout British society, it is really quite sickening.
This.
Quote from: Martinus on July 05, 2012, 09:32:40 AM
Quote from: Neil on July 04, 2012, 12:47:36 PM
That's an interesting line of thought.
Not that much - it's pretty obvious. The free market devours all values, whether the ones sacred to the conservatives and the socialists. The fun/ironic part, however, is that so many conservatives seem to be worshipping at its altar withour realising it is much better than any sex revolution or gay pride parade at trivializing and destroying "God".
But do you agree that any solution must include killing you?
Quote from: Neil on July 05, 2012, 11:46:38 AM
But do you agree that any solution must include killing you?
If you were really Neil, you wouldn't give a fuck whether he agrees or disagrees.
Quote from: DGuller on July 04, 2012, 05:25:27 PM
Quote from: dps on July 01, 2012, 07:04:07 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on July 01, 2012, 06:49:08 PM
So? That could be said about anything.
You're probably not really a fool--why do you enjoy playing one here?
I don't think Raz said anything foolish here, and in fact you're the one who looks foolish here by engaging in an unprovoked attack.
Reading back through the thread, you're probably right, if you go just by what's in the thread itself.
Quote from: Gups on July 05, 2012, 12:02:49 PM
Quote from: Neil on July 05, 2012, 11:46:38 AM
But do you agree that any solution must include killing you?
If you were really Neil, you wouldn't give a fuck whether he agrees or disagrees.
I just want him to endorse his own destruction.
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on July 04, 2012, 03:00:02 PM
The question is based on a flawed premise. The old-school free-market idea didn't "win". Every modern economy on Earth has a highly-developed welfare state. All of the policy machines that control our high-level economic functions are firmly rooted in Keynesian tradition. It's a social democratic world.
In the same vein:
QuoteIs Marxism Coming Back?
It is true that as the financial and economic crises roll on, as more and more disasters accumulate, as more people are thrown into unemployment and suffering that more and more of us will question the fundamentals of our economic system. It is inevitable that many will be drawn to some of the criticisms of capitalism, including Marxism.
The Guardian today published a salutary overview of this revival:
In his introduction to a new edition of The Communist Manifesto, Professor Eric Hobsbawm suggests that Marx was right to argue that the "contradictions of a market system based on no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous 'cash payment', a system of exploitation and of 'endless accumulation' can never be overcome: that at some point in a series of transformations and restructurings the development of this essentially destabilising system will lead to a state of affairs that can no longer be described as capitalism".
That is post-capitalist society as dreamed of by Marxists. But what would it be like? "It is extremely unlikely that such a 'post-capitalist society' would respond to the traditional models of socialism and still less to the 'really existing' socialisms of the Soviet era," argues Hobsbawm, adding that it will, however, necessarily involve a shift from private appropriation to social management on a global scale. "What forms it might take and how far it would embody the humanist values of Marx's and Engels's communism, would depend on the political action through which this change came about."
Marxism is a strange thing; it provides a clean and straightforward narrative of history, one that irons out detail and complication. It provides a simplistic "us versus them" narrative of the present. And it provides a relatively utopian narrative of the future; that the working classes united will overthrow capitalism and establish a state run by and for the working classes.
Trouble is, history is vastly more complicated than the teleological narrative provided by dialectical materialism. The economic and social reality of the present is vastly more complicated than Marx's linear and binary classifications. And the future that Marx predicted never came to fruit; his 19th Century ideas turned into a 20th Century reality of mass starvation, failed central planning experiments, and millions of deaths.
Certainly, the system we have today is unsustainable. The state-supported financial institutions, and the corporations that have grown up around them do not live because of their own genius, their own productivity or innovation. They exist on state largesse — money printing, subsidies, limited liability, favourable regulation, barriers to entry. Every blowup and scandal — from the LIBOR-rigging, to the London Whale, to the bungled trades that destroyed MF Global — illustrates the incompetence and failure that that dependency has allowed to flourish.
The chief problem that Marxists face is their misidentification of the present economic system as free market capitalism. How can we meaningfully call a system where the price of money is controlled by the state a free market? How can we meaningfully call a system where financial institutions are routinely bailed out a free market? How can we meaningfully call a system where upwards of 40% of GDP is spent by the state a free market? How can we call a system where the market trades the possibility of state intervention rather than underlying fundamentals a free market?
Today we do not have a market economy; we have a corporate economy.
As Saifedean Ammous and Edmund Phelps note:
The term "capitalism" used to mean an economic system in which capital was privately owned and traded; owners of capital got to judge how best to use it, and could draw on the foresight and creative ideas of entrepreneurs and innovative thinkers. This system of individual freedom and individual responsibility gave little scope for government to influence economic decision-making: success meant profits; failure meant losses. Corporations could exist only as long as free individuals willingly purchased their goods – and would go out of business quickly otherwise.
Capitalism became a world-beater in the 1800's, when it developed capabilities for endemic innovation. Societies that adopted the capitalist system gained unrivaled prosperity, enjoyed widespread job satisfaction, obtained productivity growth that was the marvel of the world and ended mass privation.
Now the capitalist system has been corrupted. The managerial state has assumed responsibility for looking after everything from the incomes of the middle class to the profitability of large corporations to industrial advancement. This system, however, is not capitalism, but rather an economic order that harks back to Bismarck in the late nineteenth century and Mussolini in the twentieth: corporatism.
The system of corporatism we have today has far more akin with Marxism and "social management" than Marxists might like to admit. Both corporatism and Marxism are forms of central economic control; the only difference is that under Marxism, the allocation of capital is controlled by the state bureaucracy-technocracy, while under corporatism the allocation of capital is undertaken by the state apparatus in concert with large financial and corporate interests. The corporations accumulate power from the legal protections afforded to them by the state (limited liability, corporate subsidies, bailouts), and politicians can win re-election showered by corporate money.
The fundamental choice that we face today is between economic freedom and central economic planning. The first offers individuals, nations and the world a complex, multi-dimensional allocation of resources, labour and capital undertaken as the sum of human preferences expressed voluntarily through the market mechanism. The second offers allocation of resources, labour and capital by the elite — bureaucrats, technocrats and special interests. The first is not without corruption and fallout, but its various imperfect incarnations have created boundless prosperity, productivity and growth. Incarnations of the second have led to the deaths by starvation of millions first in Soviet Russia, then in Maoist China.
Marxists like to pretend that the bureaucratic-technocratic allocation of capital, labour and resources is somehow more democratic, and somehow more attuned to the interests of society than the market. But what can be more democratic and expressive than a market system that allows each and every individual to allocate his or her capital, labour, resources and productivity based on his or her own internal preferences? And what can be less democratic than the organisation of society and the allocation of capital undertaken through the mechanisms of distant bureaucracy and forced planning? What is less democratic than telling the broad population that rather than living their lives according to their own will, their own traditions and their own economic interests that they should instead follow the inclinations and orders of a distant bureaucratic-technocratic elite?
I'm not sure that Marxists have ever understood capitalism; Das Kapital is a mammoth work concentrating on many facets of 19th Century industrial and economic development, but it tends to focus in on obscure minutiae without ever really considering the coherent whole. If Marxists had ever come close to grasping the broader mechanisms of capitalism — and if they truly cared about democracy — they would have been far less likely to promulgate a system based on dictatorial central planning.
Nonetheless, as the financial system and the financial oligarchy continue to blunder from crisis to crisis, more and more people will surely become entangled in the seductive narratives of Marxism. More and more people may come to blame markets and freedom for the problems of corporatism and statism. This is deeply ironic — the Marxist tendency toward central planning and control exerts a far greater influence on the policymakers of today than the Hayekian or Smithian tendency toward decentralisation and economic freedom.
Quote from: Martinus on July 05, 2012, 09:26:51 AM
both the liberals and the conservatives mistrust the next natural step to restore the balance - supra-national "world governments".
As pointed out elsewhere to you - why wouldn't they? Said supra-national organizations tend to be less democratic.
Quote from: dps on July 05, 2012, 01:24:55 PM
Quote from: DGuller on July 04, 2012, 05:25:27 PM
Quote from: dps on July 01, 2012, 07:04:07 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on July 01, 2012, 06:49:08 PM
So? That could be said about anything.
You're probably not really a fool--why do you enjoy playing one here?
I don't think Raz said anything foolish here, and in fact you're the one who looks foolish here by engaging in an unprovoked attack.
Reading back through the thread, you're probably right, if you go just by what's in the thread itself.
Yeah, you have to go to my live journal to find the really stupid shit.
Quote from: Martinus on July 05, 2012, 09:22:11 AMBrits have some of the best social-outrage writers in the world. :lol:
Especially the Telegraph. They specialise in outrage and obituaries. But this came to mind when I read Bagehot's latest (and I think this Bagehot's last) column:
QuoteTHE rich West is a pessimistic place right now. Just 12% of the French, 21% of Americans and 28% of the British think the next generation will fare better than them, according to polling by the Boston Consulting Group. In China, by contrast, the optimists score 83%.
British voters are duly punishing their politicians, who seem impotent in the face of global economic storms. One leading pollster calls the net approval ratings of Britain's three big party leaders an "ugliness contest", with the Conservative prime minister David Cameron on minus 18, Labour's Ed Miliband on minus 27 and—exploring such depths of public disdain that he will soon need his own bathysphere—the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg on minus 53.
Pessimism has slid into general disillusionment and anger directed at higher-ups and better-offs. The peculiarly British scandal of MPs' expenses (think claims for duck houses and bills for moat-cleaning) broke at a wretched time, just as voter anger exploded at the rewards grabbed by City of London whizz kids who seemed to have blown up the economy. A research project by Policy Exchange, the prime minister's favourite think-tank, found voters disagreeing that Britain is a meritocracy by 74% to 21%.
Gloom also stokes the unusually intense rage over immigration. The British are more likely to describe immigration as a top concern than any other European nation, and they are quicker than people in most rich countries to call immigration a problem rather than an opportunity. Conservative Party analysts prepare a weekly word cloud of the issues that voters would raise with the prime minister if they met him. Immigration is the largest word each time. Because the British are so down on their own country, explains a senior Tory, their best explanation for why foreigners head there is that Britain stupidly hands generous benefits to newcomers.
Anti-immigrant anger is, in part, a British manifestation of the unhappiness about global competition that suffuses rich-world politics. On June 22nd Mr Miliband apologised for what he called the Blair government's mistaken decision to open Britain's employment market to workers from ex-communist countries as they joined the European Union. We were "too dazzled" by globalisation, Mr Miliband sorrowed: mass migration from the east was great for homeowners wanting a Polish builder but less good for local craftsmen. That is an empty apology. When Poland and the rest joined the EU, their citizens quite properly gained the right of free movement round the union, so huge numbers would have come anyway. Barring their road to legal work (as Germany, France and others did) merely expanded local black markets. By offering legal work, Britain got the youngest, best educated east Europeans. Still, voters are convinced that migrants steal jobs.
British attitudes to Europe, never warm, have also been made frostier by the general sense of impotence. Lots of voters dismiss the idea that Britain can shape the EU and conclude that they should seek a much more distant relationship.
Finally, there is a near-consensus that Britain's current social contract unfairly hits hard-working ordinary folk, while showering undeserved rewards on those at the top (eg, bankers) and at the bottom (ie, welfare recipients and migrants). Seeking to build on a popular plan to cap all household benefits, Mr Cameron hinted this week that a future Tory government would slash handouts further, perhaps cutting payments to those young enough to live with their parents.
So far, so sullen. But Bagehot—who leaves Britain this week for a new posting in America—finds himself oddly encouraged by the nature of British pessimism. This columnist came to Britain after 12 years in the new world and Europe. From afar, the British seemed to have found a distinctive way of handling globalisation: a mid-Atlantic compact based on greater individualism and tolerance of competition than the French, say, balanced with a more generous welfare safety net than might be found in America. To simplify, Britain looked American at the top and European at the bottom, and it seemed to work.
They are angry because they aspire to a better country
Bagehot thinks that compact is intact, if fragile. In much of Europe, competition is seen as a necessary evil and the opposite of solidarity. In Britain, competition is still tolerated so long as the rules of the game are just. (This difference of view has deep roots: several southern European languages talk of "disloyal" competition when English uses the term "unfair".)
In other debt-ridden Western countries, including much of the euro zone, vested interests and tribal voter blocks are hunkering down to resist reforms and defend dwindling privileges. Yet the British still yearn to live in a meritocracy: 87% told Policy Exchange that in a fair society incomes should depend on hard work and talent.
Though the British are immigration-obsessed, overt racism is all-but taboo. Consider how the United Kingdom Independence Party, a populist outfit that wants much tighter curbs on foreigners, has played down issues of ethnicity or religion as it rises in the polls, recently ditching calls to ban Muslim headscarves. Even those who would quit the EU are guilty of excess optimism along with excess gloom: Eurosceptics cling to the rash belief that Britain could secure free-rider access to EU markets by walking out.
If the British are obsessed with society's unfairness, that is because they want it fixed—a finer ambition than clinging, fatalistically and cynically, to a crumbling status quo. Bagehot bids farewell to an unhappy country. But it is an unhappiness that looks to the future and wants to improve it. Britain is lost in this crisis. With luck and grown-up leadership, it will find a way out.
Also I think the socialism v. free market debate is so painfully sterile. The only countries and time that anyone of us would actually want to live in are the mixed economies. The mixes vary and you may prefer the bracing market of Hong Kong or the more comfortable life in France. But really these are the vanities of small differences and anyone going for a pure socialist or free market model is a mentalist who deserves to be ignored/scorned depending on your style :P
We live under the reign and thumb of Mammon - repent! :pope:
G.
Quote from: Grallon on July 05, 2012, 08:47:40 PM
We live under the reign and thumb of Mammon - repent! :pope:
Why? This is the world you've made.