The barbarity and intellectual sterility of free market neoliberalism was brought into sharp focus today by a person named Myron Ebell, an adviser to Donald Trump and an enthusiastic climate change denier. He is a prominent member of an anti-regulation thinktank in the United States called the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He is in Britain just now and I watched an interview with him on national news when he told us that “The environmental movement is, in my view, the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity in the modern world.” In another interview, reported in the press he said that “Our special interest is, I would say, freedom,” His explanation of the environmental movements threat to freedom is its demands for regulatory constraints on fossil fuels and carbon emissions etc. I have discussed freedom before in this blog so I will not bore you with repetition other than to note that people like Mr Ebell do not even begin to understand what the concept is, as he obviously takes the view that freedom is the right to do whatever you please.
This is classic neoliberalism, the claim that any restraint on the drive for profits (prosperity) is a threat to freedom and therefore the sign of an authoritarian state and of the dreaded socialism. Now, it is an obvious empirical fact that the past 40 years has witnessed a deliberate and purposeful redistribution of resources upwards in both America and the west in general to the position whereby around 20% of our populations own more than the other 80%, which, as I noted yesterday, as Supreme Court Justice Brandeis warned us it would, has seriously eroded our democratic structures and institutions. The other side of this argument is that any move to the contrary, such as redistributing wealth downwards in order to consciously reduce inequality, is dangerous state intervention in the market which will lead to the downfall of civilisation itself. I will quote Alfred Marshall here, not Marx, Lenin or Engels, but the founder of modern neoclassical economics and Professor of Economics at Cambridge.
"Increased prosperity has made us rich and strong enough to impose new restraints on free enterprise; some temporary material loss being submitted to for the sake of a higher and ultimate greater gain. But these new restraints are different from the old. They are imposed not as a means of class domination; but with the purpose of defending the weak, and especially children and the mothers of children, in matters in which they are not able to use the forces of competition in their own defence. The aim is to devise, deliberately and promptly, remedies adapted to the quickly changing circumstances of modern industry; and thus to obtain the good, without the evil, of the old defence of the weak that in other ages was gradually evolved by custom".
Here we have a pillar of capitalist economic theory and practice, the man who founded the study of economics at Cambridge, writing in 1890, for the imposition of restraints on free enterprise with the deliberate aim of imposing temporary material loss. Why? In defence of the weak and those not able to use the forces of competition in their own defence! That my free market friends means government imposed regulatory restraints and a deliberate redistribution of resources, and you can call that socialism or communism till you are blue in the face, but Marshall, in the finest tradition of Adam Smith, calls that justice.
You see regulatory controls are often beneficial and cost effective. A regulation may cost one pound per hourly unit of working time for example, but save lives. A health and safety regulation may cost an employer so much, but save the employers many times more than that through a safe and healthy working environment. I have shown you in earlier posts how Adam Smith told us that a wise and prudent employer will make far more money by paying his/her workers more and reducing their hours. Thus, although their higher wages and reduced hours are a regulatory cost to them, they will benefit more in the long run. That is why I persistently tell you that modern economics are not in fact economics but something else and that they are in fact both fraudulent and stupid. Thus, by all means remove all regulatory controls on environmental protection and climate change, but prepare for an early death. Oh, you will benefit in the short term, but you will also die in that short term, as by the way, will all your family and friends. On reflection people like Myron Ebell are so stupid and shallow that as long as they die wealthy they won't mind too much. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Monday 30 January 2017
Sunday 29 January 2017
Trump is an effect, he is not the cause
Never in my lifetime have so many words been written about one man, nor news reports been dominated by one figure as I have witnessed since Donald Trump decided to run for the American Presidency, and its getting worse. Just today I counted twelve news articles about him on the Guardian website and eight comment articles on the Opinion page. There are as many on the Independent and Huffington Post has its fair share as well. What is heartening about it is that America is not a European country and appears to be reacting in a way that suggests that his presidency may not last too long as a goodly number of Americans look as though they are horrified by the man and prepared to do something about him. The downside is the grovelling and fawning of the British who are doing everything except kiss his backside. The Tories are indeed the epitome of a moral sewer. I have been warning you in this blog since I first started about our slow but seemingly inexorable slide into fascism. Our press and media are awash with articles and reports from commentators of all sorts warning us of the dangers of Britain and the US descending into an authoritarian crypto-fascist political system and likening today's political climate to the darkest days of the 1930's. We even have the Chinese warning that Trump is threatening a military conflict and he has only been in the job a week and a half. I am glad that people are finally wakening up to this environment, but it is quite incorrect to blame this on Donald Trump. I have been warning of this for many years, long before Trump even thought about standing for office. Trump may be capitalising on it and expressing it in a manner that is now ripping the veil from undercurrents that have been lurking for many years, but those developments have indeed been long in the making, simply waiting for Trump or someone like him. The real culprit is the free market economic ideology that has been laying the foundations for the toxic political and economic climate we find ourselves in. As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis told us as early as the 1930's
"We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
As I have mentioned before, I saw this developing with Thatcher's class war approach, her exclusivity and her dismissal of all who disagreed with her. In particular, I saw it developing through her determination to transfer the wealth of the nation upwards which necessitated a ferocious centralisation of power. It was manifest in her attacks on working people and her destruction of the trades union movement. This resulted in the emergence of the managerial bullies and authoritarians within the British middle class managerial ranks as they waged war on workers and their rights. Like a stone thrown into a pool, this rippled out until it became legitimate to bully and express hatred for those who you consider to be of a lesser class than yourself, or who you consider unworthy of your consideration. What we are witnessing is the logical result of exclusivity, elitism and class warfare. If we add to this witches brew a malignant racism we see, laid bare before us, the scapegoat mentality that supports the elite narrative and deflects the blame for our ills onto those whom our elite hold in utter contempt, the disadvantaged, the poor, but particularly 'the others'.
Thatcher was a ferocious bully, and established a political culture of bullying and lying that has resulted in Trump. At last we are seeing a significant reaction to this. The difficulty lies in the fact that ordinary people turn to strong leaders who will support them in the face of forces they cannot really understand, let alone combat. What is so unfortunate is that they have turned to the biggest bullies of them all, both in this sorry country and in the United States. This present Tory Party and the Donald are even bigger bullies than Thatcher and so they cannot even begin to understand the problem, because the problem is the very culture that they support so stoutly. The solution to this problem is an economic solution, but must begin with the political and intellectual rejection of the ideological poison that lies at its root. There must be a serious redistribution of wealth and resources, but as importantly, of opportunity. The real battle is a battle of ideas. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
"We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
As I have mentioned before, I saw this developing with Thatcher's class war approach, her exclusivity and her dismissal of all who disagreed with her. In particular, I saw it developing through her determination to transfer the wealth of the nation upwards which necessitated a ferocious centralisation of power. It was manifest in her attacks on working people and her destruction of the trades union movement. This resulted in the emergence of the managerial bullies and authoritarians within the British middle class managerial ranks as they waged war on workers and their rights. Like a stone thrown into a pool, this rippled out until it became legitimate to bully and express hatred for those who you consider to be of a lesser class than yourself, or who you consider unworthy of your consideration. What we are witnessing is the logical result of exclusivity, elitism and class warfare. If we add to this witches brew a malignant racism we see, laid bare before us, the scapegoat mentality that supports the elite narrative and deflects the blame for our ills onto those whom our elite hold in utter contempt, the disadvantaged, the poor, but particularly 'the others'.
Thatcher was a ferocious bully, and established a political culture of bullying and lying that has resulted in Trump. At last we are seeing a significant reaction to this. The difficulty lies in the fact that ordinary people turn to strong leaders who will support them in the face of forces they cannot really understand, let alone combat. What is so unfortunate is that they have turned to the biggest bullies of them all, both in this sorry country and in the United States. This present Tory Party and the Donald are even bigger bullies than Thatcher and so they cannot even begin to understand the problem, because the problem is the very culture that they support so stoutly. The solution to this problem is an economic solution, but must begin with the political and intellectual rejection of the ideological poison that lies at its root. There must be a serious redistribution of wealth and resources, but as importantly, of opportunity. The real battle is a battle of ideas. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Thursday 26 January 2017
At least the Americans have the 25th Amendment, we have the Spider
It occurred to me today that we may well see, in the not too distant future, the implementation of the 25th Amendment to the American Constitution. I have just watched a senior adviser to the Chinese government telling an interviewer from Channel Four News that the Chinese are preparing two trade and foreign policy strategies with respect to their relationship with the American government. One is preparation for normal bilateral negotiations and the other is for a trade war that may be initiated by the USA or a military conflict over US foreign policy. During the same Channel Four news programme I watched President Trump telling me that he supports torture. Now, many people sympathise with that view, but what Americans should consider is that their president has just given sanction to any other country in the world inflicting torture on Americans. In other news today we had a Tory MP admit that, whilst an officer in the British army, he personally tortured Irishmen (and probably women too), claiming that it was justified by the circumstances. There can be few activities that represent pure terror greater than the practice of torture, so, by any sense of definition, torturers must rank amongst the very highest categories of terrorists. What categorises white Anglo-Saxon elitists is their sense of entitlement. Thus, the US and British establishment elites genuinely consider that they are entitled to engage in activities that they label as barbarism from anyone else, and, in the case of the British we know that they have inflicted torture on people, such as the Birmingham Six, whom they already knew were innocent, and whom they wanted to confess to crimes that the British knew they did not commit.
For the past five years I have been warning you about the descent into slavery that is progressing in Britain. Next Tuesday we are getting a television programme screened called 'The Modern British Slave Trade'. The only problem with this is that they have not asked me to present it, because I seem to be the only person who identified this problem many years ago, and also identified its causes. But, I am not complaining too much as at last people are starting to notice what has been blindingly obvious to me for many years. This programme will make no difference however as it is this Tory government that has laid the parameters that allowed this abomination to flourish and it is this government who, whilst not openly supporting it, does absolutely nothing to either condemn it or prevent it. What I am trying to warn about in this post is that both Britain and the USA, under the influence of an abominable ideology are quite freely abandoning civilisation.
With respect to Britain we are undergoing the mad delusions of an incompetent and barely sane shambles known as Brexit. What people seem to fail to understand is that Brexit is not a political or economic problem, it is a whole society problem encompassing politics, economics, social, legal, financial, fiscal, civil, military and strategic issues, plus others I have forgotten to mention. It affects every person in this country at every level of their daily life. We were presented today with the news that the pigsty has been presented with a Bill for exiting the EU that the Tories expect to pass in ONE WEEK. That the Tories and the rest of the pigsty exhibit complete contempt for the people of this midden can be no more graphically demonstrated. Perhaps people will start to believe me. Underlying all of this recent activity in both the US and Britain is a racism of the most feral kind. Never in my lifetime have we had such an appalling set of politicians, and it astonishes me to have to say that because I never thought it could get any worse than Mad Tony and his gang of war criminals. As a final aside we had the spectacle today of the Spider actually admitting that the pigsty has had it all wrong in relation to President Assad and the Russians, this is an example of the Tories grovelling to Trump already. We are indeed doomed. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
For the past five years I have been warning you about the descent into slavery that is progressing in Britain. Next Tuesday we are getting a television programme screened called 'The Modern British Slave Trade'. The only problem with this is that they have not asked me to present it, because I seem to be the only person who identified this problem many years ago, and also identified its causes. But, I am not complaining too much as at last people are starting to notice what has been blindingly obvious to me for many years. This programme will make no difference however as it is this Tory government that has laid the parameters that allowed this abomination to flourish and it is this government who, whilst not openly supporting it, does absolutely nothing to either condemn it or prevent it. What I am trying to warn about in this post is that both Britain and the USA, under the influence of an abominable ideology are quite freely abandoning civilisation.
With respect to Britain we are undergoing the mad delusions of an incompetent and barely sane shambles known as Brexit. What people seem to fail to understand is that Brexit is not a political or economic problem, it is a whole society problem encompassing politics, economics, social, legal, financial, fiscal, civil, military and strategic issues, plus others I have forgotten to mention. It affects every person in this country at every level of their daily life. We were presented today with the news that the pigsty has been presented with a Bill for exiting the EU that the Tories expect to pass in ONE WEEK. That the Tories and the rest of the pigsty exhibit complete contempt for the people of this midden can be no more graphically demonstrated. Perhaps people will start to believe me. Underlying all of this recent activity in both the US and Britain is a racism of the most feral kind. Never in my lifetime have we had such an appalling set of politicians, and it astonishes me to have to say that because I never thought it could get any worse than Mad Tony and his gang of war criminals. As a final aside we had the spectacle today of the Spider actually admitting that the pigsty has had it all wrong in relation to President Assad and the Russians, this is an example of the Tories grovelling to Trump already. We are indeed doomed. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Monday 23 January 2017
I conclude that our rulers are alt-human
As I repeatedly warn you in this blog, the very concept of democracy is being destroyed piece by piece on a daily basis, both here and in the United States. Three things happened over this weekend that demonstrate the dangers we face from our leaders and their determination to do exactly as they wish regardless of the consequences, whilst treating the entire fabric of our societies with utter contempt. You will be very familiar with them, but I ask you to seriously consider them. They are not unexceptional and are simply examples of how our rulers think they should be able to say and do anything they want to without any form of accountability. First, Donald Trump and his team attacked and attempted to demonise the media for reporting the facts about the numbers of people attending his inauguration. Thus, Trump's presidency began with a barefaced lie. They quite unashamedly rubbished the evidence of photos and television coverage showing the numbers and accused the media of a conspiracy. In addition, Trump and his team threatened the media with reprisals because they had the temerity to compare Trump's popularity negatively with Obama's. Following that we had the quite astonishing spectacle of Trump's spokesperson, Kellyanne Conway, telling us that they had not lied, they had offered alternative facts. This is extremely serious as it comes from the most important office on the planet. So, as well as having what is commonly known as an alt-right movement, which is not a right wing movement according to its supporters, but is something else, we now have an alt-fact, which again is not a fact but something else that a head of state is allowed to use to give their version of the truth. Next we will have the alt-lie, which will allow them to admit to lying but also allow them to demand that we must except it as fact because it is not a lie, it is something else. I am left wondering when we are going to see the Trump administration's version of alt-truth, or alt-freedom, or alt-justice etc. We are moving into a really dangerous world that is starting to resemble science fiction.
On this side of the Atlantic we had the Prime Minister point blank refusing four attempts to get her to tell us if she was aware that a nuclear missile trial had gone disastrously wrong. Instead of heading out to a target at sea, it went towards the United States before it could be stopped. We were reassured by Downing Street that the missile was not armed. So that's OK. Should a missile have landed in Washington or New York it would have been Ok because it was not armed. We were informed by our news programmes that this missile itself, when unarmed, weighs sixty tonnes, but the citizens of the United States, or any other nation for that matter, are unimportant and our politicians are entitled
to deny, or refuse to admit, to a botched missile test because it is a matter of national security, and anyway the missile was not armed, and the damage that sixty tonnes of metal, full of rocket fuel, would have inflicted on the people of the United States on whom it landed is not nearly important as keeping the whole thing quiet to protect the British government from embarrassment. Democracy of course does not permit the great unwashed to know anything their governments are doing.
I have told you before about how the British Prime Minister is a barefaced liar. We now have an American president who is worse. The political class in both Britain and the United States have become genuinely dangerous, not only to their own citizens, but to the rest of the world. They lie persistently and as a matter of policy. It is now impossible to believe anything they say about anything. In Britain we have a Foreign Secretary who is demonstrably mad and an entire government whose management of the nation is criminally incompetent. Thank goodness for our women, who have said enough is enough and have taken to the streets to say that this type of government has to stop. Our future as free people is genuinely at stake. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
On this side of the Atlantic we had the Prime Minister point blank refusing four attempts to get her to tell us if she was aware that a nuclear missile trial had gone disastrously wrong. Instead of heading out to a target at sea, it went towards the United States before it could be stopped. We were reassured by Downing Street that the missile was not armed. So that's OK. Should a missile have landed in Washington or New York it would have been Ok because it was not armed. We were informed by our news programmes that this missile itself, when unarmed, weighs sixty tonnes, but the citizens of the United States, or any other nation for that matter, are unimportant and our politicians are entitled
to deny, or refuse to admit, to a botched missile test because it is a matter of national security, and anyway the missile was not armed, and the damage that sixty tonnes of metal, full of rocket fuel, would have inflicted on the people of the United States on whom it landed is not nearly important as keeping the whole thing quiet to protect the British government from embarrassment. Democracy of course does not permit the great unwashed to know anything their governments are doing.
I have told you before about how the British Prime Minister is a barefaced liar. We now have an American president who is worse. The political class in both Britain and the United States have become genuinely dangerous, not only to their own citizens, but to the rest of the world. They lie persistently and as a matter of policy. It is now impossible to believe anything they say about anything. In Britain we have a Foreign Secretary who is demonstrably mad and an entire government whose management of the nation is criminally incompetent. Thank goodness for our women, who have said enough is enough and have taken to the streets to say that this type of government has to stop. Our future as free people is genuinely at stake. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Sunday 22 January 2017
Why free market theory is wrong and a fraud - Utility (contd.)
I have repeatedly told you how the free market economic model has assumed a monopoly and a dominance that allows its supporters to claim that there is no alternative to it. That this economic model is taken for granted and is regarded as the only viable option available, was highlighted by an article in the New York Times on 11th July 2007, when the writer, Patricia Cohen, began by commenting that
“For many economists, questioning free-market orthodoxy is akin to expressing a belief in intelligent design at a Darwin convention: Those who doubt the naturally beneficial workings of the market are considered either deluded or crazy”.
Well, what I have consistently said since I first started this blog is that I am adopting a little delusion and craziness and challenging the fundamental assumptions of free market orthodoxy. Indeed I have just been trying to explain how these matters are assumptions about general tendencies as opposed to scientific constructs, that what we are being presented with are not scientific conclusions, but a whole raft of assumptions about the human being, and also importantly, the admission that if we are motivated by other instincts that may overcome our acquisitive instincts then most economic theories about markets and production begin to break down. When pressed, most economists will admit I am correct and that they are indeed dealing with assumptions resulting from the adoption of a scientific methodology as opposed to scientific truths, but, and I do not apologise for repeating, this is then translated into a scenario that is utilised by unscrupulous politicians and their policy makers to justify telling us that there is no alternative to their approach and that the chaos they have inflicted on our economy and society was not their fault, nor the nature of their free market approach, and that there is no alternative to the damage we are suffering from their attempts at recovery which are simply a repetition of the factors that caused the crisis in the first place. This is mendacity of quite staggering proportions, a denial of reality and unacceptable. In addition, even if their methodology is quite accurate and explanatory I ask you to consider the following. Even if the invention of the util and the development of mathematical models based on measuring utils are a fairly accurate reflection of behaviour, mathematics itself is, as David Hume shows us, a human activity. What do I mean by that? I have never been able to grasp mathematics, I am a mathematical imbecile. One of the reasons for this sorry state of affairs is that in order to learn anything I have to understand it, I cannot adequately learn anything unless I can transcend faith and have a satisfactory explanation. The great stumbling block that I met in my school life was the concept that a minus times a minus equals a plus. Now, I occasionally have bouts of rationality, and when faced with this equation my rational self always came to the fore to ask why this is so; I wanted to know why minus times minus equals a plus rather than just take it on faith in order that I could understand it. To cut a long story short, no-one has ever been able to tell me why minus times minus equals a plus, none of my teachers or any of the experts I have encountered throughout my life. I was intimately associated with an academic environment for 40 years, and throughout that time I have asked many mathematicians, economists and statistical experts why minus time minus equals a plus, and no-one has ever been able to tell me; it just does, they invariably say. I worried about this for many years and wondered if I was spectacularly stupid until I came across the American poet Ogden Nash who wrote that
Minus times minus results in a plus
The reason for this, we needn't discuss.
I am eternally grateful to Mr Nash for confirming to me that this is the general state of that particular equation within the science we know as mathematics and that people in America suffer from the same affliction that I do. Now, as David Hume also shows us, truth is relative, and we hold things to be true because we have expectations based on our human experience. However, as Hume also teaches us, because the sun comes up every morning does not mean that it will always come up, or because we cannot walk on water does not mean we will never be able to. We live our lives based on our experience of reality, which we hold to be true until something alters that experience; I thus avoid trying to walk on water in case I drown. But, although I am perfectly happy to accept that minus times minus equals a plus has provided a sound basis for scientific and therefore human progress, Hume’s scepticism has led me to question whether minus times minus always makes a plus? Are there indeed instances in the natural or physical world when minus times minus does not make a plus? Now, I do not doubt the reliability of mathematics, because, as all my tutors used to assure me, it works. Nor do I doubt its ability to allow the human being to explain and harness nature and do wonderful things; that is self-evident. What I doubt is that it is an absolute, and is true in the sense of being without flaw, because, as mathematics is a human activity, as far as I am concerned it must have flaws. Mathematics is a dynamic discipline because it develops and improves through trial, error, and experimentation, in other words, at any given time in human history, mathematical knowledge is incomplete and capable of improvement. This leads me to believe that whenever mathematicians develop a particular area of their discipline, what they believed prior to any particular development or improvement, whilst not necessarily wrong, was incomplete and therefore flawed. I therefore wonder if, for example, many of the unexplained phenomena we encounter in our lives are the result of instances when minus times minus did not make a plus, such as failures to predict natural disasters, or failures in scientific and mechanical functions that have led to human disasters, or failures to predict a serious economic crisis that was obvious to anyone who was exercising a scintilla of rational thinking, and, if someday mathematics will discover that minus times minus does not always make a plus. For example, one of the things that convinces me about the phenomenon of global warming is how, armed with very sophisticated mathematical models, weather experts keep getting their forecasts disastrously wrong. Indeed it must have been excruciatingly embarrassing for our foremost economics experts, armed with a whole barrowload of mathematical models and charts, to admit to the Queen that they hadn’t a clue the financial crash was coming, that they could not explain how it happened, and hadn’t a clue how to resolve it. So, if the concept that minus times minus equals plus is in fact a truism, but not an absolute truth, and does not always work with relation to science, engineering and weather forecasting, how many more mathematical assumptions might be flawed, and therefore how much more must the possibilities be for mistakes when applied to a science of human behaviour such as economics, and particularly in circumstances where it has been applied by people who have based their hypotheses on the assumption that human nature is rational and that they can measure the unmeasurable.
I therefore present the reader with three suggestions, one, that mathematical models are not necessarily always reliable in the study of human behaviour, two, that economic mathematical models are even less reliable, and three, that their conclusions should never be regarded as ‘the truth’ or providing ‘proof’. All science is a matter of probability and never involves certainty. Thus, if we proceed from the assumption that our dominant mathematical economic models are always providing an accurate picture of economic behaviour and are then applying such conclusions to another incorrect assumption about a supposed rational consumer, then we are being dominated by an economic orthodoxy that has been established by erecting one false hypothesis on top of another. To compound this felony, our dominant economic model then bases its analytical conclusions on the notion that each individual is not only a rational consumer, but an aggressive and atomised individual, when in reality that individual is indeed a social being by its nature and therefore motivated by different impulses and desires. If we then add to this brew the dominant basis of public policy formation in the UK that there is in reality no such thing as society and that our economic activity is guided by some kind of spurious economic device that we call an invisible hand, is it any wonder our economic world finally crashes about our ears and we descend into financial and economic chaos? What we are confronted with is a philosophical and policy driven political and economic model of the modern world that is erected on error after error about the nature and behaviour of the human being and the world that being inhabits. If I am even partially correct, then the modern discipline of economics (particularly neoclassical and neoliberal economics) is in a sorry state and must never be considered a reliable guide to human behaviour of any kind but particularly economic behaviour, and most certainly must never be embedded as the one and only basis of public policy-making for which there is no alternative, which brings us back to the difference between economics and political economy (I trust you are still with me here as I am not sure that I am still with me).
Thus I conclude that if we stop to consider the nonsense of the claim that there is no such thing as society, the fictional modern presentation of the individual, the sinister gobbledegook that passes as Objective philosophy, the economic concept of utility and the claim that it gives us a scientific basis for economic theorising, I trust you will agree with me that modern economics are both wrong and a fraud. Add in to this the philosophical notion that the human being is rational and you get a view of the so-called science of economics that must lead to despair. I have dealt with the concept of rationality several times previously in this blog and so will refrain from repeating myself, simply noting that the free market concept of rationality is another fairy tale. I again apologise for the length of this post but trust you have not been too bored with it, and that, even if you disagree with me it will give you pause for thought. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
“For many economists, questioning free-market orthodoxy is akin to expressing a belief in intelligent design at a Darwin convention: Those who doubt the naturally beneficial workings of the market are considered either deluded or crazy”.
Well, what I have consistently said since I first started this blog is that I am adopting a little delusion and craziness and challenging the fundamental assumptions of free market orthodoxy. Indeed I have just been trying to explain how these matters are assumptions about general tendencies as opposed to scientific constructs, that what we are being presented with are not scientific conclusions, but a whole raft of assumptions about the human being, and also importantly, the admission that if we are motivated by other instincts that may overcome our acquisitive instincts then most economic theories about markets and production begin to break down. When pressed, most economists will admit I am correct and that they are indeed dealing with assumptions resulting from the adoption of a scientific methodology as opposed to scientific truths, but, and I do not apologise for repeating, this is then translated into a scenario that is utilised by unscrupulous politicians and their policy makers to justify telling us that there is no alternative to their approach and that the chaos they have inflicted on our economy and society was not their fault, nor the nature of their free market approach, and that there is no alternative to the damage we are suffering from their attempts at recovery which are simply a repetition of the factors that caused the crisis in the first place. This is mendacity of quite staggering proportions, a denial of reality and unacceptable. In addition, even if their methodology is quite accurate and explanatory I ask you to consider the following. Even if the invention of the util and the development of mathematical models based on measuring utils are a fairly accurate reflection of behaviour, mathematics itself is, as David Hume shows us, a human activity. What do I mean by that? I have never been able to grasp mathematics, I am a mathematical imbecile. One of the reasons for this sorry state of affairs is that in order to learn anything I have to understand it, I cannot adequately learn anything unless I can transcend faith and have a satisfactory explanation. The great stumbling block that I met in my school life was the concept that a minus times a minus equals a plus. Now, I occasionally have bouts of rationality, and when faced with this equation my rational self always came to the fore to ask why this is so; I wanted to know why minus times minus equals a plus rather than just take it on faith in order that I could understand it. To cut a long story short, no-one has ever been able to tell me why minus times minus equals a plus, none of my teachers or any of the experts I have encountered throughout my life. I was intimately associated with an academic environment for 40 years, and throughout that time I have asked many mathematicians, economists and statistical experts why minus time minus equals a plus, and no-one has ever been able to tell me; it just does, they invariably say. I worried about this for many years and wondered if I was spectacularly stupid until I came across the American poet Ogden Nash who wrote that
Minus times minus results in a plus
The reason for this, we needn't discuss.
I am eternally grateful to Mr Nash for confirming to me that this is the general state of that particular equation within the science we know as mathematics and that people in America suffer from the same affliction that I do. Now, as David Hume also shows us, truth is relative, and we hold things to be true because we have expectations based on our human experience. However, as Hume also teaches us, because the sun comes up every morning does not mean that it will always come up, or because we cannot walk on water does not mean we will never be able to. We live our lives based on our experience of reality, which we hold to be true until something alters that experience; I thus avoid trying to walk on water in case I drown. But, although I am perfectly happy to accept that minus times minus equals a plus has provided a sound basis for scientific and therefore human progress, Hume’s scepticism has led me to question whether minus times minus always makes a plus? Are there indeed instances in the natural or physical world when minus times minus does not make a plus? Now, I do not doubt the reliability of mathematics, because, as all my tutors used to assure me, it works. Nor do I doubt its ability to allow the human being to explain and harness nature and do wonderful things; that is self-evident. What I doubt is that it is an absolute, and is true in the sense of being without flaw, because, as mathematics is a human activity, as far as I am concerned it must have flaws. Mathematics is a dynamic discipline because it develops and improves through trial, error, and experimentation, in other words, at any given time in human history, mathematical knowledge is incomplete and capable of improvement. This leads me to believe that whenever mathematicians develop a particular area of their discipline, what they believed prior to any particular development or improvement, whilst not necessarily wrong, was incomplete and therefore flawed. I therefore wonder if, for example, many of the unexplained phenomena we encounter in our lives are the result of instances when minus times minus did not make a plus, such as failures to predict natural disasters, or failures in scientific and mechanical functions that have led to human disasters, or failures to predict a serious economic crisis that was obvious to anyone who was exercising a scintilla of rational thinking, and, if someday mathematics will discover that minus times minus does not always make a plus. For example, one of the things that convinces me about the phenomenon of global warming is how, armed with very sophisticated mathematical models, weather experts keep getting their forecasts disastrously wrong. Indeed it must have been excruciatingly embarrassing for our foremost economics experts, armed with a whole barrowload of mathematical models and charts, to admit to the Queen that they hadn’t a clue the financial crash was coming, that they could not explain how it happened, and hadn’t a clue how to resolve it. So, if the concept that minus times minus equals plus is in fact a truism, but not an absolute truth, and does not always work with relation to science, engineering and weather forecasting, how many more mathematical assumptions might be flawed, and therefore how much more must the possibilities be for mistakes when applied to a science of human behaviour such as economics, and particularly in circumstances where it has been applied by people who have based their hypotheses on the assumption that human nature is rational and that they can measure the unmeasurable.
I therefore present the reader with three suggestions, one, that mathematical models are not necessarily always reliable in the study of human behaviour, two, that economic mathematical models are even less reliable, and three, that their conclusions should never be regarded as ‘the truth’ or providing ‘proof’. All science is a matter of probability and never involves certainty. Thus, if we proceed from the assumption that our dominant mathematical economic models are always providing an accurate picture of economic behaviour and are then applying such conclusions to another incorrect assumption about a supposed rational consumer, then we are being dominated by an economic orthodoxy that has been established by erecting one false hypothesis on top of another. To compound this felony, our dominant economic model then bases its analytical conclusions on the notion that each individual is not only a rational consumer, but an aggressive and atomised individual, when in reality that individual is indeed a social being by its nature and therefore motivated by different impulses and desires. If we then add to this brew the dominant basis of public policy formation in the UK that there is in reality no such thing as society and that our economic activity is guided by some kind of spurious economic device that we call an invisible hand, is it any wonder our economic world finally crashes about our ears and we descend into financial and economic chaos? What we are confronted with is a philosophical and policy driven political and economic model of the modern world that is erected on error after error about the nature and behaviour of the human being and the world that being inhabits. If I am even partially correct, then the modern discipline of economics (particularly neoclassical and neoliberal economics) is in a sorry state and must never be considered a reliable guide to human behaviour of any kind but particularly economic behaviour, and most certainly must never be embedded as the one and only basis of public policy-making for which there is no alternative, which brings us back to the difference between economics and political economy (I trust you are still with me here as I am not sure that I am still with me).
Thus I conclude that if we stop to consider the nonsense of the claim that there is no such thing as society, the fictional modern presentation of the individual, the sinister gobbledegook that passes as Objective philosophy, the economic concept of utility and the claim that it gives us a scientific basis for economic theorising, I trust you will agree with me that modern economics are both wrong and a fraud. Add in to this the philosophical notion that the human being is rational and you get a view of the so-called science of economics that must lead to despair. I have dealt with the concept of rationality several times previously in this blog and so will refrain from repeating myself, simply noting that the free market concept of rationality is another fairy tale. I again apologise for the length of this post but trust you have not been too bored with it, and that, even if you disagree with me it will give you pause for thought. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Saturday 21 January 2017
Why free market theory is wrong and a fraud - 4- Utility
When discussing the concept of utility I am afraid I will need to cover it in more than one post as it is a topic that needs clarification. The champions of neoliberal free market economics are persistently telling us that there is no alternative to their economic model and its policy proposals. I have been critical of such an approach and have labelled it the beginnings of a totalitarian approach, arguing that if there really is no alternative to the free market model then it must by definition be true. Therefore, we should examine on what basis the neoliberals make such a claim and where they get their confidence from to make such a claim. The answer lies within the concept of utility. The question of what determines the price of goods, as opposed to what determined their value, was an important issue for classical economists such as Adam Smith. In The Wealth of Nations Book 1 ch. 1V Smith distinguishes two forms of value, what he calls ‘value in use’ and ‘value in exchange,’ and goes on to note;
“The things which have the greatest value in use have frequently little or no value in exchange; and, on the contrary, those which have the greatest value in exchange have frequently little or no value in use. Nothing is more useful than water, but it will purchase scarce anything; scarce anything can be had in exchange for it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any value in use; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange for it.” (Smith was of course writing before diamonds were used in industry).
The solution to this dilemma, how to explain the price of something when its value would suggest that it should be something different, was the great contribution of the neoclassical economists. Why does the value in exchange fail to reflect the value in use and vice versa? The answer given by neoclassical theory is found in the concept of ‘utility’. Utility is usefulness, it is defined as the satisfaction that you get from any good, product or service, and economists say that you will buy something because it yields you utility, or satisfaction. Thus, if something gives you pleasure, satisfaction, or a sense of well-being it is said to give you utility. For example, if I drink a cup of tea first thing in the morning, it will give me a high level of utility, but if I drink a cup of coffee, whilst it will give me a certain amount of utility, it will not be nearly as high as a cup of tea will give me because I enjoy tea far more than coffee, especially in the morning. I therefore place a greater value on tea than on coffee, it gives me greater satisfaction, greater utility. So, how does that relate to the price of tea and the price of coffee? What is apparent from that discussion is that utility is a psychological concept. Many people reading this will be able to reverse my thinking on tea and coffee, in that coffee will give them a far greater utility than tea, it is all a matter of personal taste. As a result, economists freely admit that utility cannot be measured; it is psychological and different for each individual, it is a subjective evaluation, a generalisation. However, economists get around this inconvenient fact by introducing what they term, 'the law of diminishing marginal utility.'
This economic concept argues that the source of value is found to be in ‘marginal’ as opposed to ‘total’ utility. So, what does that mean? Marginal utility is defined as the extra satisfaction gained from consuming one extra unit of a good within a given time period. The key to understanding this concept is the reference to ‘extra’. Whilst your total utility will continue to increase with each unit consumed, your marginal utility is with reference to each extra unit. What is significant about this concept is that marginal utility decreases with every extra unit consumed (economists say that it ‘diminishes’). For example, if I drink ten cups of tea in a day, each cup I consume will yield me slightly less satisfaction (or utility) than the one before it, that is, the utility from each additional (or extra) cup will be slightly less. As a result, whilst my total utility will increase, my marginal utility will decrease. So, as I progress throughout the day, if I keep on consuming cups of tea beyond my normal consumption of ten a day, I will reach a point where they will no longer give me any satisfaction, in other words, for the last extra cup consumed utility will be zero. As Marshall describes in Ch.3 of his Principles of Economics, “the marginal utility of a thing to anyone diminishes with every increase in the amount of it he already has”. Samuelson tells us in response to the water versus diamonds paradox raised by Adam Smith, (Economics 15th Edit. 1995 p.82-83) that “The utility of water as a whole does not determine its price or demand. Rather, water’s price is determined by its marginal utility, by the usefulness of the last glass of water. Because there is so much water, the last glass sells for very little. Even though the first few drops are worth life itself, the last few are needed only for watering the lawn or washing the car. We thus find that an immensely valuable commodity like water sells for next to nothing because its last drop is worth next to nothing”.
The importance of this is because in the hands of economists, this concept of diminishing marginal utility is transformed from a subjective, but valid, generalisation into a ‘law’, and economics textbooks refer to it as ‘the law of diminishing marginal utility’. For example “The law of diminishing marginal utility states that ‘other things being constant, as more and more units of a commodity are consumed the additional satisfaction, or utility, derived from the consumption of each successive unit will decrease’ ” (Beardshaw et al, Economics a Student’s Guide, 4th ed. 1998 P57). Indeed, according to Samuelson, utility is transformed into a ‘scientific construct’ (Economics 1995 p.73). However, Alfred Marshall in his Principles of Economics (1920) cautions us on the description of economic concepts as laws. Marshall is quite clear that when an economist uses the term law, he/she is simply referring to what he calls, general tendencies, telling us that “the term ‘law’ means nothing more than a general proposition or statement of tendencies, more or less certain, more or less definite”. The term law is ‘a statement that a certain course of action may be expected under certain conditions by members of a social group’. So, how can a statement of general tendencies develop into a scientific construct? We have already seen that utility cannot be measured, however, economists get around this problem by simply inventing a method for measuring marginal utility and designating this process as lawlike; thus (as Samuelson assures us) investing it with the authority of a scientific process and enabling them to build mathematical models that purport to explain human economic behaviour by the scientific method. They did this by inventing a unit of measurement they call a ‘util’. Alfred Marshall argued that it was possible to measure utility in cardinal numbers because he tells us that economic laws relate to tendencies that can be measured by a money price. For example, an economist will establish a demand curve by hypothesising that I get ten utils of utility from consuming the first unit of a commodity, 8 utils from the second, 6 from the third and so on. As a result, just as the concept of utility is psychological, so is the law of diminishing marginal utility; it exists only in the imagination of economists.
So, whilst constructing models to enable them to understand economic behaviour, economists take the crucial step to maintaining that when you wish to buy a cup of coffee, the only thing you are thinking of is whether you will enjoy it or not. They thus rule out all other alternatives. That is the only thing that you are thinking of and that is the only consideration motivating your decision whether or not to buy a cup of coffee. Now, that may well be true, but you have no way of knowing that unless you actually ask everyone who is buying coffee. What the economist does is make an assumption, which may very well be a valid assumption and useful for general purposes of speculating about human behaviour, but what has happened is that in the course of their theorising, they move from assumptions to certainties and designate their assumptions (which may or may not be valid) as scientific constructs, and, as we saw earlier, as ‘true’. We must also note that this model of economics is the result of the neo-classical economic model which is the dominant theoretical model taught in Western universities. Indeed, in many universities, particularly in Britain, it is the only model taught. Now, you must admire the modern economist who can establish a scientific analysis of human behaviour and then continually tell everyone that there is no alternative to its conclusions and its policy options on the basis that you freely admit that you cannot measure something, simply ignore that it cannot be measured, and then conveniently invent a measure by which the unmeasurable can be measured so accurately that you can claim that it is a scientific and mathematical model that provides a true and accurate reflection of human economic behaviour. That is indeed clever! Now, I have to concede that my criticisms of this process do not make this concept redundant or useless as it can be a valid generalisation of economic behaviour, and, indeed, the theory of diminishing marginal utility does actually provide a very useful contribution towards explaining human economic behaviour as long as it is kept in mind that it is merely a theoretical construct, a valid generalisation, an aid that is measuring a general tendency, and is, however valuable, limited in its explanatory ability, being subject to the principle of caterus parabus ( other things being constant’). In addition, whilst marginal utility is a useful construct, we must ask, is it accurate enough to invest it with the accolade of ‘scientific’? Is it really true that my utility will diminish with each extra cup of tea during any given period? Is it not possible that the cup of tea I drink after my evening meal, which may perhaps be the seventh or eighth cup that I have consumed that day, will actually give me more utility than the tea I have already consumed? Thus, whilst it is a useful generalisation, and can give us an insight into economic behaviour, we translate such a generalisation into a ‘scientific law’ at our peril! If I may give a mundane personal example; regardless of how much tea I drink in a day, there is no cup of tea that gives me as much pleasure as the cup I drink after having eaten chips (French fries). That is when my ‘tea utility’ is at its highest. Each individual will have similar experiences with all sorts of consumption where they find that their utility, rather than diminishing during a period of time, actually increases and diminishes in a quite random fashion. Another example that diminishes the explanatory ability of the law of diminishing marginal utility is that it is erected on the assumption that the human being is a rational consumer, a concept that readers of this blog will know I firmly reject. As I noted earlier, neoclassical economics is the dominant economic model taught in British schools and universities and has spawned the dominant political and economic model we call neoliberalism whose adherents persistently preach to us that there is no alternative. It is such assumptions that underpin all government economic and social policy in the UK, and, it is my assertion that it is these same assumptions that have caused the economic crisis, the war on benefits, the demonization of the unemployed, the disabled and the disadvantaged, the appalling inequality we see in modern Britain and real and genuine poverty. In themselves the concepts we are discussing are not particularly controversial and have contributed to a great deal of understanding of human economic behaviour, in short they are useful. However, there is a rather large difference between being useful and being scientific, and, in the hands of neoclassical economists, assumptions have been invested with the status of scientific knowledge and are today presented as ‘laws’ of economic behaviour in a quite different manner to which Alfred Marshall meant by a law. This is because, as I said above, by introducing the notion of the util, diminishing marginal utility assumed a mathematical status, and mathematical models were devised to explain the workings of the market economy. The conclusions established using such models are then presented to us by ideologically motivated politicians as ‘proofs’ of market behaviour and ‘the truth’ for which there is no alternative, and they are supported in this deception by economists who have been academically trained in neoclassical economics and who probably believe what they are saying given that their knowledge is limited to the discipline of neoclassical economics. If they had any grounding in other social sciences, particularly sociology, or even if they had a grounding in other economic models such as Keynesian or Marxist, it is doubtful if they would make such basic errors, thus highlighting the principal difference between economics and political economy. Of course there is no alternative to the truth; if anything poses as an alternative to something that is true and has been proven, it is by definition wrong, and this is the massive confidence trick that forms the basis of modern economics, that assumptions are magically converted into unassailable truths. I apologise for the length of this post, and will continue with the concept of utility next time.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
“The things which have the greatest value in use have frequently little or no value in exchange; and, on the contrary, those which have the greatest value in exchange have frequently little or no value in use. Nothing is more useful than water, but it will purchase scarce anything; scarce anything can be had in exchange for it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarce any value in use; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange for it.” (Smith was of course writing before diamonds were used in industry).
The solution to this dilemma, how to explain the price of something when its value would suggest that it should be something different, was the great contribution of the neoclassical economists. Why does the value in exchange fail to reflect the value in use and vice versa? The answer given by neoclassical theory is found in the concept of ‘utility’. Utility is usefulness, it is defined as the satisfaction that you get from any good, product or service, and economists say that you will buy something because it yields you utility, or satisfaction. Thus, if something gives you pleasure, satisfaction, or a sense of well-being it is said to give you utility. For example, if I drink a cup of tea first thing in the morning, it will give me a high level of utility, but if I drink a cup of coffee, whilst it will give me a certain amount of utility, it will not be nearly as high as a cup of tea will give me because I enjoy tea far more than coffee, especially in the morning. I therefore place a greater value on tea than on coffee, it gives me greater satisfaction, greater utility. So, how does that relate to the price of tea and the price of coffee? What is apparent from that discussion is that utility is a psychological concept. Many people reading this will be able to reverse my thinking on tea and coffee, in that coffee will give them a far greater utility than tea, it is all a matter of personal taste. As a result, economists freely admit that utility cannot be measured; it is psychological and different for each individual, it is a subjective evaluation, a generalisation. However, economists get around this inconvenient fact by introducing what they term, 'the law of diminishing marginal utility.'
This economic concept argues that the source of value is found to be in ‘marginal’ as opposed to ‘total’ utility. So, what does that mean? Marginal utility is defined as the extra satisfaction gained from consuming one extra unit of a good within a given time period. The key to understanding this concept is the reference to ‘extra’. Whilst your total utility will continue to increase with each unit consumed, your marginal utility is with reference to each extra unit. What is significant about this concept is that marginal utility decreases with every extra unit consumed (economists say that it ‘diminishes’). For example, if I drink ten cups of tea in a day, each cup I consume will yield me slightly less satisfaction (or utility) than the one before it, that is, the utility from each additional (or extra) cup will be slightly less. As a result, whilst my total utility will increase, my marginal utility will decrease. So, as I progress throughout the day, if I keep on consuming cups of tea beyond my normal consumption of ten a day, I will reach a point where they will no longer give me any satisfaction, in other words, for the last extra cup consumed utility will be zero. As Marshall describes in Ch.3 of his Principles of Economics, “the marginal utility of a thing to anyone diminishes with every increase in the amount of it he already has”. Samuelson tells us in response to the water versus diamonds paradox raised by Adam Smith, (Economics 15th Edit. 1995 p.82-83) that “The utility of water as a whole does not determine its price or demand. Rather, water’s price is determined by its marginal utility, by the usefulness of the last glass of water. Because there is so much water, the last glass sells for very little. Even though the first few drops are worth life itself, the last few are needed only for watering the lawn or washing the car. We thus find that an immensely valuable commodity like water sells for next to nothing because its last drop is worth next to nothing”.
The importance of this is because in the hands of economists, this concept of diminishing marginal utility is transformed from a subjective, but valid, generalisation into a ‘law’, and economics textbooks refer to it as ‘the law of diminishing marginal utility’. For example “The law of diminishing marginal utility states that ‘other things being constant, as more and more units of a commodity are consumed the additional satisfaction, or utility, derived from the consumption of each successive unit will decrease’ ” (Beardshaw et al, Economics a Student’s Guide, 4th ed. 1998 P57). Indeed, according to Samuelson, utility is transformed into a ‘scientific construct’ (Economics 1995 p.73). However, Alfred Marshall in his Principles of Economics (1920) cautions us on the description of economic concepts as laws. Marshall is quite clear that when an economist uses the term law, he/she is simply referring to what he calls, general tendencies, telling us that “the term ‘law’ means nothing more than a general proposition or statement of tendencies, more or less certain, more or less definite”. The term law is ‘a statement that a certain course of action may be expected under certain conditions by members of a social group’. So, how can a statement of general tendencies develop into a scientific construct? We have already seen that utility cannot be measured, however, economists get around this problem by simply inventing a method for measuring marginal utility and designating this process as lawlike; thus (as Samuelson assures us) investing it with the authority of a scientific process and enabling them to build mathematical models that purport to explain human economic behaviour by the scientific method. They did this by inventing a unit of measurement they call a ‘util’. Alfred Marshall argued that it was possible to measure utility in cardinal numbers because he tells us that economic laws relate to tendencies that can be measured by a money price. For example, an economist will establish a demand curve by hypothesising that I get ten utils of utility from consuming the first unit of a commodity, 8 utils from the second, 6 from the third and so on. As a result, just as the concept of utility is psychological, so is the law of diminishing marginal utility; it exists only in the imagination of economists.
So, whilst constructing models to enable them to understand economic behaviour, economists take the crucial step to maintaining that when you wish to buy a cup of coffee, the only thing you are thinking of is whether you will enjoy it or not. They thus rule out all other alternatives. That is the only thing that you are thinking of and that is the only consideration motivating your decision whether or not to buy a cup of coffee. Now, that may well be true, but you have no way of knowing that unless you actually ask everyone who is buying coffee. What the economist does is make an assumption, which may very well be a valid assumption and useful for general purposes of speculating about human behaviour, but what has happened is that in the course of their theorising, they move from assumptions to certainties and designate their assumptions (which may or may not be valid) as scientific constructs, and, as we saw earlier, as ‘true’. We must also note that this model of economics is the result of the neo-classical economic model which is the dominant theoretical model taught in Western universities. Indeed, in many universities, particularly in Britain, it is the only model taught. Now, you must admire the modern economist who can establish a scientific analysis of human behaviour and then continually tell everyone that there is no alternative to its conclusions and its policy options on the basis that you freely admit that you cannot measure something, simply ignore that it cannot be measured, and then conveniently invent a measure by which the unmeasurable can be measured so accurately that you can claim that it is a scientific and mathematical model that provides a true and accurate reflection of human economic behaviour. That is indeed clever! Now, I have to concede that my criticisms of this process do not make this concept redundant or useless as it can be a valid generalisation of economic behaviour, and, indeed, the theory of diminishing marginal utility does actually provide a very useful contribution towards explaining human economic behaviour as long as it is kept in mind that it is merely a theoretical construct, a valid generalisation, an aid that is measuring a general tendency, and is, however valuable, limited in its explanatory ability, being subject to the principle of caterus parabus ( other things being constant’). In addition, whilst marginal utility is a useful construct, we must ask, is it accurate enough to invest it with the accolade of ‘scientific’? Is it really true that my utility will diminish with each extra cup of tea during any given period? Is it not possible that the cup of tea I drink after my evening meal, which may perhaps be the seventh or eighth cup that I have consumed that day, will actually give me more utility than the tea I have already consumed? Thus, whilst it is a useful generalisation, and can give us an insight into economic behaviour, we translate such a generalisation into a ‘scientific law’ at our peril! If I may give a mundane personal example; regardless of how much tea I drink in a day, there is no cup of tea that gives me as much pleasure as the cup I drink after having eaten chips (French fries). That is when my ‘tea utility’ is at its highest. Each individual will have similar experiences with all sorts of consumption where they find that their utility, rather than diminishing during a period of time, actually increases and diminishes in a quite random fashion. Another example that diminishes the explanatory ability of the law of diminishing marginal utility is that it is erected on the assumption that the human being is a rational consumer, a concept that readers of this blog will know I firmly reject. As I noted earlier, neoclassical economics is the dominant economic model taught in British schools and universities and has spawned the dominant political and economic model we call neoliberalism whose adherents persistently preach to us that there is no alternative. It is such assumptions that underpin all government economic and social policy in the UK, and, it is my assertion that it is these same assumptions that have caused the economic crisis, the war on benefits, the demonization of the unemployed, the disabled and the disadvantaged, the appalling inequality we see in modern Britain and real and genuine poverty. In themselves the concepts we are discussing are not particularly controversial and have contributed to a great deal of understanding of human economic behaviour, in short they are useful. However, there is a rather large difference between being useful and being scientific, and, in the hands of neoclassical economists, assumptions have been invested with the status of scientific knowledge and are today presented as ‘laws’ of economic behaviour in a quite different manner to which Alfred Marshall meant by a law. This is because, as I said above, by introducing the notion of the util, diminishing marginal utility assumed a mathematical status, and mathematical models were devised to explain the workings of the market economy. The conclusions established using such models are then presented to us by ideologically motivated politicians as ‘proofs’ of market behaviour and ‘the truth’ for which there is no alternative, and they are supported in this deception by economists who have been academically trained in neoclassical economics and who probably believe what they are saying given that their knowledge is limited to the discipline of neoclassical economics. If they had any grounding in other social sciences, particularly sociology, or even if they had a grounding in other economic models such as Keynesian or Marxist, it is doubtful if they would make such basic errors, thus highlighting the principal difference between economics and political economy. Of course there is no alternative to the truth; if anything poses as an alternative to something that is true and has been proven, it is by definition wrong, and this is the massive confidence trick that forms the basis of modern economics, that assumptions are magically converted into unassailable truths. I apologise for the length of this post, and will continue with the concept of utility next time.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Friday 20 January 2017
Welcome to dystopia, you voted for it
Well its now official, according to the British Prime Minister we are leaving the European Union for two reasons, to control immigration and to cease being subject to European legislation and legal decision-making. Thus, as Kommirat told you many times before, our Brexit has nothing to do with economic matters and everything to do with pure unadulterated racism and the determination to remove all of our human rights. May has openly admitted that Brexit is an opportunity for Britain to remodel its economy to produce a low wage, low tax, minimal employment rights capitalist haven for billionaires. This may seem an exaggeration, but if you actually read what she said you can reach no other conclusion. Brexit threatens to be a catastrophe. Already two major banks have announced that they are going to move 2,500 jobs out of Britain and two others are warning they will probably follow suit. Both Nissan and Toyota are reconsidering their position in Britain and their future investment plans.
We are constantly being told by Brexiteers that in the name of democracy we must accept the result of the referendum and get on with the job of making Brexit work. That is garbage. I have no intention of meekly accepting the result of a referendum that was built on a farrago of lies, mendacity and disinformation. An acceptable democratic decision would need to be one that was reached honestly and fairly. At the risk of hearing you all grit your teeth and shout 'not again' I quote Adam Smith who told us that
Society, however, cannot subsist among those who are at all times ready to hurt and injure one another. The moment that injury begins, the moment that mutual resentment and animosity take place, all the bands of it are broke asunder, and the different members of which it consisted are, as it were, dissipated and scattered abroad by the violence and opposition of their discordant affections. If there is any society amongst robbers and murderers, they must at least, according to the trite observation, abstain from robbing and murdering one another. Beneficence, therefore, is less essential to the existence of society than justice. Society may subsist, though not in the most comfortable state, without beneficence, but the prevalence of injustice must utterly destroy it. Justice is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice. If it is removed, the great, the immense fabric of human society, that fabric which to raise and support seems in this world, if I may say so, to have been the peculiar and darling care of nature, must in a moment crumble into atoms.
There is no justice in the EU Referendum as it was conducted in the most unjust manner imaginable. To make matters worse, we are now gleefully told that most of the claims made by the Leave campaign were not meant to be taken seriously. Therefore we must accept that lying and deception were acceptable and we should honour such behaviour with a craven acceptance of its outcome. Those of you from outside this midden of a nation state should also contemplate why Scotland will not accept the outcome of their 2014 referendum. Well it is for the same reasons. The Scots were shamefully lied to by all of the principal leaders of the pigsty, including the Prime Minister, the leader of the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats. Don't forget we were persistently bombarded by the propagandist lie that we could only secure our membership of the EU by voting No. Well we are coming out now and we refuse to honour the decision of a bunch of lying racist gangsters. We have a Prime Minister who, when she was Home Secretary just one year ago, told the House of Commons, that she could not deport a foreign gentleman because he had a pet cat. This was immediately shown to be a barefaced lie, but all the racist British cared about was the lie, and it is that lie that has persisted as the British did not want to know the truth, and simply ignored it. What is important is that this odious cretin who knowingly lied to the entire country to further her racist agenda is now Prime Minister.
British society is breaking apart and if you want to know the cause, consult Adam Smith. We are governed by a set of immoral cretins who 'are at all times ready to hurt and injure one another.' We are a society riven by 'mutual resentment and animosity' we are 'as it were, dissipated and scattered abroad by the violence and opposition of discordant affections.' We had the spectacle yesterday of Boris the Spider, who is descending into complete imbecility with every day that passes, comparing the French Prime Minister to a Nazi prison guard, and being blithely assured by all his mates that it was meant to be a joke. This is the type of politician who leads this sorry nation into negotiations and is responsible for our foreign relations. It genuinely beggars belief. There is no longer any pretence that we will remain in the EU single market, so that claim that we were assured would be the reality after Brexit is another lie. It would be easy to despair but my hope is that Britain's descent into an authoritarian state with slave like conditions for its workforce will be Scotland's opportunity to gain its independence. You have been warned. I will get back to my series of posts on the fundamentals of free market economics but had to get that rant off my chest.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
We are constantly being told by Brexiteers that in the name of democracy we must accept the result of the referendum and get on with the job of making Brexit work. That is garbage. I have no intention of meekly accepting the result of a referendum that was built on a farrago of lies, mendacity and disinformation. An acceptable democratic decision would need to be one that was reached honestly and fairly. At the risk of hearing you all grit your teeth and shout 'not again' I quote Adam Smith who told us that
Society, however, cannot subsist among those who are at all times ready to hurt and injure one another. The moment that injury begins, the moment that mutual resentment and animosity take place, all the bands of it are broke asunder, and the different members of which it consisted are, as it were, dissipated and scattered abroad by the violence and opposition of their discordant affections. If there is any society amongst robbers and murderers, they must at least, according to the trite observation, abstain from robbing and murdering one another. Beneficence, therefore, is less essential to the existence of society than justice. Society may subsist, though not in the most comfortable state, without beneficence, but the prevalence of injustice must utterly destroy it. Justice is the main pillar that upholds the whole edifice. If it is removed, the great, the immense fabric of human society, that fabric which to raise and support seems in this world, if I may say so, to have been the peculiar and darling care of nature, must in a moment crumble into atoms.
There is no justice in the EU Referendum as it was conducted in the most unjust manner imaginable. To make matters worse, we are now gleefully told that most of the claims made by the Leave campaign were not meant to be taken seriously. Therefore we must accept that lying and deception were acceptable and we should honour such behaviour with a craven acceptance of its outcome. Those of you from outside this midden of a nation state should also contemplate why Scotland will not accept the outcome of their 2014 referendum. Well it is for the same reasons. The Scots were shamefully lied to by all of the principal leaders of the pigsty, including the Prime Minister, the leader of the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats. Don't forget we were persistently bombarded by the propagandist lie that we could only secure our membership of the EU by voting No. Well we are coming out now and we refuse to honour the decision of a bunch of lying racist gangsters. We have a Prime Minister who, when she was Home Secretary just one year ago, told the House of Commons, that she could not deport a foreign gentleman because he had a pet cat. This was immediately shown to be a barefaced lie, but all the racist British cared about was the lie, and it is that lie that has persisted as the British did not want to know the truth, and simply ignored it. What is important is that this odious cretin who knowingly lied to the entire country to further her racist agenda is now Prime Minister.
British society is breaking apart and if you want to know the cause, consult Adam Smith. We are governed by a set of immoral cretins who 'are at all times ready to hurt and injure one another.' We are a society riven by 'mutual resentment and animosity' we are 'as it were, dissipated and scattered abroad by the violence and opposition of discordant affections.' We had the spectacle yesterday of Boris the Spider, who is descending into complete imbecility with every day that passes, comparing the French Prime Minister to a Nazi prison guard, and being blithely assured by all his mates that it was meant to be a joke. This is the type of politician who leads this sorry nation into negotiations and is responsible for our foreign relations. It genuinely beggars belief. There is no longer any pretence that we will remain in the EU single market, so that claim that we were assured would be the reality after Brexit is another lie. It would be easy to despair but my hope is that Britain's descent into an authoritarian state with slave like conditions for its workforce will be Scotland's opportunity to gain its independence. You have been warned. I will get back to my series of posts on the fundamentals of free market economics but had to get that rant off my chest.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Tuesday 17 January 2017
Money has ceased to make the world go around
In The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith tells us that "The sole use of money is to circulate consumable goods". I raise this because of the revelation, as I noted yesterday, that eight men (notice they are all men) own as much wealth as fifty percent of the poorest people on earth. I have been contemplating the type of society we have become where a dominant ideology that promotes selfishness and greed has overcome all natural human compassion in our ruling classes, destroying the sympathy that Adam Smith said was the essence of the human being. It is said that scum always rises to the top, and the people who occupy the top positions in today's world, but particularly in Britain and America, must surely give us pause for thought. Money is functional and, as Smith tells us, is purposeful as a medium of exchange. It has no other function or purpose, but to those who have risen to the top of our respective societies it has assumed an importance in its own right in that they have an insatiable desire to accumulate money to the extent that it ceases to have a purpose for such people as they have more than they could ever possibly spend. What I mean is that they have completely lost sight of the purpose of money in the first place. What of course such wealth brings is power, and the wealthy utilise their wealth to ensure that what they have and how they got it is never challenged nor threatened, and that is the only purpose that motivates both the American Congress and the Westminster pigsty, to act as the guardians of the elite's wealth and position by ensuring that it is never threatened by the people such politicians purportedly serve. That is why any talk of Britain and America being democracies is such a sick joke. That is the only real function that half of the worlds money supply serves in today's world, because it most certainly does not serve the economy. However such power is not absolute and could be rendered impotent by politicians who had the courage to curb it. If Kommirat was Prime Minister it would most certainly be curbed.
The real problem with the wealthy is that they have gained their wealth from a system that is destroying the world and they use their money to perpetuate that system. There is no excuse left for people who deny climate change. Like Holocaust deniers, the evidence is so overwhelming that such people are exposed as either being genuinely insane and detached from reality, or pathological and dangerous liars. When Donald Trump proclaims climate change to be a hoax, it is he who is quite deliberately promoting a hoax in order to protect a system that has given him his wealth. However he must be fully aware that this system is also threatening the future, not only of the planet, but his own offspring. Thus, the pursuit of his own wealth and power has rendered him completely indifferent, not only to the future of the human race, but the future of his own family. He has quite deliberately abandoned one of the fundamental characteristics that defines our humanity, the security and safety of our families and those whom we profess to love. One can only conclude that he in fact does not love them in the manner that a normal human being loves their own. He is not alone in this. The Bible does not tell us that money is the root of all evil, but that the love of money is the root of all evil. People obsessed with the accumulation of money for its own sake, and in Britain we are ruled by them as well, have voluntarily divested themselves of their humanity in the pursuit of money. From Smith's observation that the sole use of money is to circulate consumable goods comes the saying that money makes the world go around. However, what the wealthy are doing is taking that money out of circulation for their own selfish gratification and stopping the world from going around, and our craven politicians, debasing themselves before the wealthy, are doing nothing about it because they have been hoodwinked by a fraudulent ideology that tells them that this is the 'right thing to do'. Their behaviour is not the behaviour of educated people.
People always tell me that even if we distributed the wealth of the elite it would only amount to a few pounds for each person on earth, but that is a completely stupid argument. It is not a question of distributing such wealth, but of putting it to use, making it work for the benefit of all. Such wealth could irrigate deserts, construct homes, hospitals, schools, fertilise soil, provide seed, fund medical research etc. It could raise standards of living throughout the globe, and still leave the elite with more money than they could ever spend. With the election of Trump and the outcome of Brexit, this poisonous system will only intensify and hasten a new Dark Ages, because, as Abraham Lincoln told us, you can fool some of the people all of the time, and our masters have fooled enough of the people to keep them in office and support their own downfall. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
The real problem with the wealthy is that they have gained their wealth from a system that is destroying the world and they use their money to perpetuate that system. There is no excuse left for people who deny climate change. Like Holocaust deniers, the evidence is so overwhelming that such people are exposed as either being genuinely insane and detached from reality, or pathological and dangerous liars. When Donald Trump proclaims climate change to be a hoax, it is he who is quite deliberately promoting a hoax in order to protect a system that has given him his wealth. However he must be fully aware that this system is also threatening the future, not only of the planet, but his own offspring. Thus, the pursuit of his own wealth and power has rendered him completely indifferent, not only to the future of the human race, but the future of his own family. He has quite deliberately abandoned one of the fundamental characteristics that defines our humanity, the security and safety of our families and those whom we profess to love. One can only conclude that he in fact does not love them in the manner that a normal human being loves their own. He is not alone in this. The Bible does not tell us that money is the root of all evil, but that the love of money is the root of all evil. People obsessed with the accumulation of money for its own sake, and in Britain we are ruled by them as well, have voluntarily divested themselves of their humanity in the pursuit of money. From Smith's observation that the sole use of money is to circulate consumable goods comes the saying that money makes the world go around. However, what the wealthy are doing is taking that money out of circulation for their own selfish gratification and stopping the world from going around, and our craven politicians, debasing themselves before the wealthy, are doing nothing about it because they have been hoodwinked by a fraudulent ideology that tells them that this is the 'right thing to do'. Their behaviour is not the behaviour of educated people.
People always tell me that even if we distributed the wealth of the elite it would only amount to a few pounds for each person on earth, but that is a completely stupid argument. It is not a question of distributing such wealth, but of putting it to use, making it work for the benefit of all. Such wealth could irrigate deserts, construct homes, hospitals, schools, fertilise soil, provide seed, fund medical research etc. It could raise standards of living throughout the globe, and still leave the elite with more money than they could ever spend. With the election of Trump and the outcome of Brexit, this poisonous system will only intensify and hasten a new Dark Ages, because, as Abraham Lincoln told us, you can fool some of the people all of the time, and our masters have fooled enough of the people to keep them in office and support their own downfall. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Monday 16 January 2017
Why free market theory is wrong and a fraud - 3 - Objectivism
We have been treated this morning to the news in all of our press that eight people now own the same wealth as the poorest fifty percent of people on earth. How did this happen? In this blog, I have expressed repeated concern about the dominant economic theory of the last 37 years, the free market neoliberal model and its attendant political ideology of a very right wing libertarian and deregulated minimal state protecting the neoliberal economic elite. This ideology is normally called conservative, but, as I hope I’ve made clear earlier, that description is very misleading as it is a revolutionary ideology that seeks to destroy, rather than conserve, a society’s institutions and culture, and remodel them in its own image. It is also quite explicitly undemocratic. Again, I have told you that contrary to popular opinion, the modern free market model of neoliberalism does not spring from the writings of Adam Smith and other classical economists, though its supporters have attempted to legitimise their activities by corrupting and bastardising Smith’s writings in order to establish some form of credibility, and indeed, I must credit them with having succeeded. However, neoliberalism has its genesis, not in classical economic theory, but in a philosophy known as Objectivism, the origin of Thatcher’s claim that there is no such thing as society.
Political and economic structures develop in a society from ideas and theories about how a political and economic system should work and what it should look like. They are developed and structured by human beings who have political and economic goals and are therefore social artefacts that reflect the ideas and theories of the people who have the power and ability to erect, maintain, and promote such structures. It was therefore correct for Marx to tell us that the dominant ideas within any society are a reflection of the ideas of the dominant opinion formers and of the people who hold power within that society and that the existing political and economic systems are a reflection of the dominant ideas. I would describe that as self-evident
Objectivism comes from the writings of the Russian-American writer Ayn Rand and is a belief system that argues that the only right and proper behaviour for people is naked self-interest; that describes the poor and disadvantaged as ‘parasites’ and ‘refuse’ and is remarkably similar to the language used by the Nazis who referred to sections of society that they considered of no value as ‘useless eaters’. Objectivism argues that people must be completely selfish, and that this is both right and good, but more importantly it is moral. Rand tells us that altruism is evil, that is the term she uses, and that any concern for anyone else, including members of your own family, is both evil and stupid. Already this description should be familiar to anyone living in modern Britain who reads the right-wing press and the tabloids, and listens to the spokespeople for government who regularly refer to the poor and disadvantaged as ‘scroungers’ and ‘skivers’. Such abusive terms for people spring from the Objectivist approach that argues that we cannot be held responsible, either for or to, anyone else, even our own family, and that the weak of society do not deserve any love. Objectivism also argues that there should be no role for government in the economy; for example, there should be no taxation and government should not provide social security, health, education, even roads. All such services must be provided privately and paid for at point of use as they cannot be provided by a government who has no income as it is unable to levy any form of tax. As a result, if you have no money, or not enough, then you will be unable to access such facilities, and anyway, if you have no money because you are weak, then you don’t deserve such facilities.
It is impossible in a blog that must be brief enough to hold your attention to adequately describe this odious and quite insane ideology but I trust you will trust me enough to accept this brief outline of the philosophy that holds our ruling elites in thrall. It is also difficult for intelligent people to believe that there is a belief system that actually advocates such things, or that it can become popular and influential and I will happily expand on it for anyone who asks me to, but will leave you with a real example of what happens to the mindset of those who adopt this filth. Remember, free market thinking only values things that have a price attached and they only think in these terms. On 12th May 1996 on the American television show 60 Minutes, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright, was asked by the presenter Lesley Stahl how she responded to the fact that, as a result of United Nations sanctions against the state of Iraq half a million Iraqi children had died. Stahl asked her “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” To which Albright responded: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.” There is no intelligent comment to be made about such a statement; it is completely self-explanatory to anyone with a scintilla of decency and humanity. It sums up Objectivism and the neoliberal free market mindset. This is the philosophy of Thatcher, the Tories, the Republicans and Donald Trump and all of the great and good assembling at Davos this week. This is the philosophy behind all of the policy-making in the pigsty and Congress, the philosophy that will kill Obamacare. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Political and economic structures develop in a society from ideas and theories about how a political and economic system should work and what it should look like. They are developed and structured by human beings who have political and economic goals and are therefore social artefacts that reflect the ideas and theories of the people who have the power and ability to erect, maintain, and promote such structures. It was therefore correct for Marx to tell us that the dominant ideas within any society are a reflection of the ideas of the dominant opinion formers and of the people who hold power within that society and that the existing political and economic systems are a reflection of the dominant ideas. I would describe that as self-evident
Objectivism comes from the writings of the Russian-American writer Ayn Rand and is a belief system that argues that the only right and proper behaviour for people is naked self-interest; that describes the poor and disadvantaged as ‘parasites’ and ‘refuse’ and is remarkably similar to the language used by the Nazis who referred to sections of society that they considered of no value as ‘useless eaters’. Objectivism argues that people must be completely selfish, and that this is both right and good, but more importantly it is moral. Rand tells us that altruism is evil, that is the term she uses, and that any concern for anyone else, including members of your own family, is both evil and stupid. Already this description should be familiar to anyone living in modern Britain who reads the right-wing press and the tabloids, and listens to the spokespeople for government who regularly refer to the poor and disadvantaged as ‘scroungers’ and ‘skivers’. Such abusive terms for people spring from the Objectivist approach that argues that we cannot be held responsible, either for or to, anyone else, even our own family, and that the weak of society do not deserve any love. Objectivism also argues that there should be no role for government in the economy; for example, there should be no taxation and government should not provide social security, health, education, even roads. All such services must be provided privately and paid for at point of use as they cannot be provided by a government who has no income as it is unable to levy any form of tax. As a result, if you have no money, or not enough, then you will be unable to access such facilities, and anyway, if you have no money because you are weak, then you don’t deserve such facilities.
It is impossible in a blog that must be brief enough to hold your attention to adequately describe this odious and quite insane ideology but I trust you will trust me enough to accept this brief outline of the philosophy that holds our ruling elites in thrall. It is also difficult for intelligent people to believe that there is a belief system that actually advocates such things, or that it can become popular and influential and I will happily expand on it for anyone who asks me to, but will leave you with a real example of what happens to the mindset of those who adopt this filth. Remember, free market thinking only values things that have a price attached and they only think in these terms. On 12th May 1996 on the American television show 60 Minutes, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright, was asked by the presenter Lesley Stahl how she responded to the fact that, as a result of United Nations sanctions against the state of Iraq half a million Iraqi children had died. Stahl asked her “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” To which Albright responded: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.” There is no intelligent comment to be made about such a statement; it is completely self-explanatory to anyone with a scintilla of decency and humanity. It sums up Objectivism and the neoliberal free market mindset. This is the philosophy of Thatcher, the Tories, the Republicans and Donald Trump and all of the great and good assembling at Davos this week. This is the philosophy behind all of the policy-making in the pigsty and Congress, the philosophy that will kill Obamacare. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Thursday 12 January 2017
Why free market theory is wrong and a fraud - 2 - The Individual
I have written before that the free market explanation of the individual and individualism is wrong, and is one of the causes of why our social and economic policy is flawed and in many cases unworkable. It is targeted at a being that does not exists and completely misses the real human essence. It is self-evident and hardly worth stating that each human being is a unique individual, but what does that actually mean? In order to understand the theories of modern economics it is crucial that we establish the significance of the terms of reference that motivate economic theory and policy-making in order that we can have a clear understanding of why they have failed so spectacularly and caused so much social damage. It is therefore necessary to clarify what I mean when I discuss the individual and the relationship of the individual with society. Let me be clear from the start, each person born is an individual human being; however, that individual human being is born into a social situation (the family) and a defined social structure (society). Regardless of whether the individual is born into a conventional family with a parent of each gender, a single parent family, a family with two carers of the same gender, or into a situation where the principal carer(s) is (are) not the parent(s) of the individual, the individual must be fed, nurtured and cared for or it will die. It is not self-sufficient. It is not an atomised individual. It is said that each human being is born an egoistic being motivated solely by egoistic sensations such as hunger and thirst. I would question that and argue that whilst each human being may be conceived egoistic, the socialisation of that egoistic individual begins within the womb. However, even if the individual is born a completely egoistic being, as that individual grows and develops, he/she grows and develops within a social situation and learns from other human beings. Thus, the life and development of each individual is externally provided for and a social consciousness develops within each human being in addition to their egoistic consciousness. As a result, the concept of an individual human being, self-reliant, independent of society and independent of a wider social framework of human intercourse, an asocial human being, is a ridiculous concept. It is not only ridiculous, it is impossible; such an individual would not survive a few days nor develop as a truly human being.
Now, from the perspective of examining the false assumptions of free market neoliberalism, it is interesting to note how Adam Smith viewed the individual. Smith was an empiricist whose writings were founded on empirical and historical facts and not on speculative reasoning. Thus if we contemplate the historical development of the human species and employ an empirical perspective as Smith did, it becomes self-evident that the human being is a social being and that the modern free market concept of individualism cannot claim reference from Adam Smith. Smith demonstrates how it is the social nature of the human being within commercial society that establishes their individual independence. It is only in commercial society, founded on economic and social interdependence through the mechanisms of production, trade, exchange and the division of labour that each individual is free from dependence on particular masters, free to move and sell their labour, to change jobs and location and control their own affairs in a way that was previously extremely difficult if not impossible. Thus, it is the interdependence of the market social system, an interlocking system of production, trade and exchange that demonstrates both the social nature of the individual and their genuine independence as a human being. Thus, individuality, as Marx states, is only possible within a social setting, and Adam Smith is in complete agreement. Indeed it is the existence of such freedoms, the freedom to change occupation, location, to dispose of your own affairs etc. that Smith defines as true freedom and that characterises commercial society as so distinct from previous as such freedoms were not universally existent in earlier societies. Thus, for Adam Smith individuality is social and necessarily interdependent and interactive, but the crux of Smith’s argument is that in commercial activity the independent individual freely commits to the interdependent nature of commerce thus retaining his/her independent nature and social status.
Before there is an individual human being, there is a collective society of human beings and the very act of human procreation is itself an interactive social experience. In addition we are all born into a society in whatever form it may take. There is a society of human beings in existence before each of us and we are born into that society, are nurtured within it and learn from it. If I am born a male I am not born with the knowledge that I am a male, I become aware that I am a male through interaction with other people. I am told I am a male by other human beings and learn what it is to be a male as distinct from a female. In other words, my consciousness of myself is socially developed; it is not innate but is an empirical process, that is, I learn from my experience as a male and become aware of my identity as a male from a recognition of other males. Thus, my consciousness of myself as an individual male is neither speculative nor psychological, it is practical and empirical. In addition, not only am I an individual in a social sense, but my consciousness is a social construct as well. Whilst society cannot exist apart from the individuals who compose it, the individual cannot exist apart from society. The individual may take a decision to remove him/herself from society, but by the time they take that decision they are a fully developed social being and the decision itself is a social decision, it is a response to particular social situations taken (if I may quote Marx) 'by a civilised person in whom the social forces are already dynamically present'. In addition, their survival will be dependent on ideas and concepts they learned within society and carry from it. I have already noted how each individual human being can only be called truly human in a social situation, and how our individuality is shaped and developed by the nature and character of the society we were socialised in. As a result, the concept of the egoistic atomised individual posited by neoliberal and free market ideology is essentially anti-social, but more importantly is non-sensical, such people do not exist. This becomes evident when we actually examine the basic human biological drives such as eating, drinking, sexual activity, clothing and securing accommodation to protect us from the elements. All such basic motivations become transformed within society and develop their own social norms, customs and practices. For example, in Western society we eat with utensils and not with our hands, clothing is transformed into fashion, we devise many norms and values concerning sexual activities and practices, homes are transformed from being shelters to expressions of our own individuality etc. All of these activities are expressions of social and interactive living, as Marx writes,
"Our desires and pleasures spring from society; we measure them, therefore, by society and not by the objects which serve for their satisfaction. Because they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature" - Wage Labour and Capital
We therefore have the situation where social, economic, and national policy is founded on a completely unrealistic and distorted view of the human being and his/her place within society; based on the philosophical notion of a human being who does not exist in reality. Such policy is anti-social and motivated by a desire to cater for particular interests, as opposed to the interests of real empirical human beings. What is important to remember is that whilst we are all indeed individual human beings, our individuality is an expression of our social experience as we grow and develop, and that our individuality is dynamic, it alters and changes as we develop as a conscious human being. It is expressed through our experience in our family, education, community, social class, religion and all of the other external influences that have made us the individual person we are. People are inescapably interdependent, no man is an island. Any and every social and economic policy that fails to address this fundamental concept will also fail to address reality and real pressing human problems and needs. I repeat; the neoliberal free market form of capitalism that has held dominance within the UK for the last 30 years is profoundly anti-social. It treats people as if they were all individual working purchasing and consuming atoms with no need to consider the needs and requirements of others. It ignores the multiple interdependencies of every human being and the multiple interactions of daily existence. As a result, we have an unstable economic and social system and an unstable state, because the dominant elite, pursuing free market ideological goals, fail to understand the nature of human individuality and therefore the nature of economic and social stability itself. I apologise for the length of this post, but once again you have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Now, from the perspective of examining the false assumptions of free market neoliberalism, it is interesting to note how Adam Smith viewed the individual. Smith was an empiricist whose writings were founded on empirical and historical facts and not on speculative reasoning. Thus if we contemplate the historical development of the human species and employ an empirical perspective as Smith did, it becomes self-evident that the human being is a social being and that the modern free market concept of individualism cannot claim reference from Adam Smith. Smith demonstrates how it is the social nature of the human being within commercial society that establishes their individual independence. It is only in commercial society, founded on economic and social interdependence through the mechanisms of production, trade, exchange and the division of labour that each individual is free from dependence on particular masters, free to move and sell their labour, to change jobs and location and control their own affairs in a way that was previously extremely difficult if not impossible. Thus, it is the interdependence of the market social system, an interlocking system of production, trade and exchange that demonstrates both the social nature of the individual and their genuine independence as a human being. Thus, individuality, as Marx states, is only possible within a social setting, and Adam Smith is in complete agreement. Indeed it is the existence of such freedoms, the freedom to change occupation, location, to dispose of your own affairs etc. that Smith defines as true freedom and that characterises commercial society as so distinct from previous as such freedoms were not universally existent in earlier societies. Thus, for Adam Smith individuality is social and necessarily interdependent and interactive, but the crux of Smith’s argument is that in commercial activity the independent individual freely commits to the interdependent nature of commerce thus retaining his/her independent nature and social status.
Before there is an individual human being, there is a collective society of human beings and the very act of human procreation is itself an interactive social experience. In addition we are all born into a society in whatever form it may take. There is a society of human beings in existence before each of us and we are born into that society, are nurtured within it and learn from it. If I am born a male I am not born with the knowledge that I am a male, I become aware that I am a male through interaction with other people. I am told I am a male by other human beings and learn what it is to be a male as distinct from a female. In other words, my consciousness of myself is socially developed; it is not innate but is an empirical process, that is, I learn from my experience as a male and become aware of my identity as a male from a recognition of other males. Thus, my consciousness of myself as an individual male is neither speculative nor psychological, it is practical and empirical. In addition, not only am I an individual in a social sense, but my consciousness is a social construct as well. Whilst society cannot exist apart from the individuals who compose it, the individual cannot exist apart from society. The individual may take a decision to remove him/herself from society, but by the time they take that decision they are a fully developed social being and the decision itself is a social decision, it is a response to particular social situations taken (if I may quote Marx) 'by a civilised person in whom the social forces are already dynamically present'. In addition, their survival will be dependent on ideas and concepts they learned within society and carry from it. I have already noted how each individual human being can only be called truly human in a social situation, and how our individuality is shaped and developed by the nature and character of the society we were socialised in. As a result, the concept of the egoistic atomised individual posited by neoliberal and free market ideology is essentially anti-social, but more importantly is non-sensical, such people do not exist. This becomes evident when we actually examine the basic human biological drives such as eating, drinking, sexual activity, clothing and securing accommodation to protect us from the elements. All such basic motivations become transformed within society and develop their own social norms, customs and practices. For example, in Western society we eat with utensils and not with our hands, clothing is transformed into fashion, we devise many norms and values concerning sexual activities and practices, homes are transformed from being shelters to expressions of our own individuality etc. All of these activities are expressions of social and interactive living, as Marx writes,
"Our desires and pleasures spring from society; we measure them, therefore, by society and not by the objects which serve for their satisfaction. Because they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature" - Wage Labour and Capital
We therefore have the situation where social, economic, and national policy is founded on a completely unrealistic and distorted view of the human being and his/her place within society; based on the philosophical notion of a human being who does not exist in reality. Such policy is anti-social and motivated by a desire to cater for particular interests, as opposed to the interests of real empirical human beings. What is important to remember is that whilst we are all indeed individual human beings, our individuality is an expression of our social experience as we grow and develop, and that our individuality is dynamic, it alters and changes as we develop as a conscious human being. It is expressed through our experience in our family, education, community, social class, religion and all of the other external influences that have made us the individual person we are. People are inescapably interdependent, no man is an island. Any and every social and economic policy that fails to address this fundamental concept will also fail to address reality and real pressing human problems and needs. I repeat; the neoliberal free market form of capitalism that has held dominance within the UK for the last 30 years is profoundly anti-social. It treats people as if they were all individual working purchasing and consuming atoms with no need to consider the needs and requirements of others. It ignores the multiple interdependencies of every human being and the multiple interactions of daily existence. As a result, we have an unstable economic and social system and an unstable state, because the dominant elite, pursuing free market ideological goals, fail to understand the nature of human individuality and therefore the nature of economic and social stability itself. I apologise for the length of this post, but once again you have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Wednesday 11 January 2017
Why free market theory is wrong and a fraud - 1
I hope that my posts are never tedious or boring and I sincerely hope that if any of you find them so you will not hesitate to tell me. I say this because I have concluded that I should explain what I mean when I say that the fundamentals that underpin free market economic theory are wrong and fraudulent, and I will seek to explain what I mean in a series of posts. As a post cannot be too big they will necessarily be summaries of my thoughts on free market concepts. I trust they will not be tedious, but if you feel they are please tell me and I will cease. I will necessarily be selective but I hope to explain my objections to the concepts that underpin the free market fraud by looking at
a) Thatcher's claim that there is no such thing as society
b) the free market concept of the individual
c) the philosophical thrust of free market theory that arises from the philosophy known as Objectivism
d) the perverted free market concept of morality
e) the false concepts of utility and rationality
f) the perversion of Adam Smith's concept of an invisible hand
I have touched on such topics before in my posts, but will seek to explain them as succinctly and as efficiently as possible in the limited space available. Please be patient if I repeat some things I have said earlier as that may be unavoidable.
That Thatcher's claim that there is no such thing as society is so evidently wrong and indeed stupid, I still marvel that I have to explain this to people. But it is important to understand not only why it is self-evident nonsense, but why she said it in the first place. Her statement was the opening shot in a war she intended to wage against a society she hated and was determined to destroy, a society that, however imperfectly, tried to cater for all its members and took issues such as poverty and inequality seriously. Thatcher was the consummate class warrior who only served the class sector of society she approved of, she was completely disinterested in those people she herself described as 'not one of us' and was consumed with hatred for working people in general, but particularly those who were employed in the public sector. Her statement that there is no such thing as society, was made in an interview with the Woman’s Own journalist Douglas Keay on 23rd September 1987 in 10 Downing Street. In that interview, and in subsequent statements, she claimed that there was no such thing as society, only individuals, families, neighbours and voluntary associations.
Coming from a professional politician whose entire working life was spent in a public sector whose entire income and existence is dependent on the wider society within which it exists and whose income and life conditions were dependent on that same public sector, such sentiments are quite astonishing, but coming from a Prime Minister they are alarming, as they have had profound consequences that have resonated throughout the United Kingdom and have formed the foundation of the crisis that the nation finds itself in when this is being written some 30 years later. Thatcher’s philosophical approach has been translated into public policy for over 30 years and is the ideology that produced the alienation of its people from its politicians and the financial crisis that the UK is still suffering from. It is the source of the poverty the obscene inequalities and the numerous crises I posted about yesterday.The Thatcher thesis is based on three fundamental denials of social reality; a denial that the human being is essentially a social being; a denial that the institutions and structures that operate throughout our society and regulate our interactive relationships are a meaningful part of that society; and a denial that the general population accept them as such. Thatcher is arguing that people are essentially atomised individuals whose only social reality is within a family structure and who do not relate to social institutions and structures which they see as something rather abstract and distanced from their real everyday experience. She is arguing that people’s social experience does not extend beyond the families and neighbourly relationships that create types of voluntary associations. This is necessary if you propose attacking and discrediting our social structures and institutions and convincing people that they are dispensable and can be substituted by other arrangements that will perform their functions better and more efficiently. If they can be portrayed as somehow sitting outside of society and unrelated to everybody’s daily life, then they are indeed dispensable. The whole of the Thatcher project was based on destroying Britain’s public sector, promoting the neoliberal agenda of privatisation and contracting out the services and functions of the major institutions that compose society such as health, education and welfare. By attacking, discrediting them, and denying their integral social centrality you can then justify their removal as a public service and utilise their necessary functions for profit. Her project involved a transfer of wealth and power upwards to a voracious and immoral elite and reducing the standard of living of working people as far as possible in order to enhance that same elite with levels of wealth that could never be justified or spent. It was however, a total denial of social reality.
I ask you to think, if there is no such thing as society, in what category does the government she was head of fit, is it a family, a voluntary association or what? What is the Conservative Party? What are the police, the armed forces etc. if they are not definable social institutions that characterise the nature of the society they emanate from? This is a massive topic and I have only given you a flavour of it, but trust it is enough to see that Thatcher was not only wrong, she was a thorough scoundrel and a truly dangerous politician. Importantly however, as a foundation for economic and social policy-making it is sinister and disastrous. I will look at the concept of the individual next as it is intimately related to this imbecilic ideology. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
a) Thatcher's claim that there is no such thing as society
b) the free market concept of the individual
c) the philosophical thrust of free market theory that arises from the philosophy known as Objectivism
d) the perverted free market concept of morality
e) the false concepts of utility and rationality
f) the perversion of Adam Smith's concept of an invisible hand
I have touched on such topics before in my posts, but will seek to explain them as succinctly and as efficiently as possible in the limited space available. Please be patient if I repeat some things I have said earlier as that may be unavoidable.
That Thatcher's claim that there is no such thing as society is so evidently wrong and indeed stupid, I still marvel that I have to explain this to people. But it is important to understand not only why it is self-evident nonsense, but why she said it in the first place. Her statement was the opening shot in a war she intended to wage against a society she hated and was determined to destroy, a society that, however imperfectly, tried to cater for all its members and took issues such as poverty and inequality seriously. Thatcher was the consummate class warrior who only served the class sector of society she approved of, she was completely disinterested in those people she herself described as 'not one of us' and was consumed with hatred for working people in general, but particularly those who were employed in the public sector. Her statement that there is no such thing as society, was made in an interview with the Woman’s Own journalist Douglas Keay on 23rd September 1987 in 10 Downing Street. In that interview, and in subsequent statements, she claimed that there was no such thing as society, only individuals, families, neighbours and voluntary associations.
Coming from a professional politician whose entire working life was spent in a public sector whose entire income and existence is dependent on the wider society within which it exists and whose income and life conditions were dependent on that same public sector, such sentiments are quite astonishing, but coming from a Prime Minister they are alarming, as they have had profound consequences that have resonated throughout the United Kingdom and have formed the foundation of the crisis that the nation finds itself in when this is being written some 30 years later. Thatcher’s philosophical approach has been translated into public policy for over 30 years and is the ideology that produced the alienation of its people from its politicians and the financial crisis that the UK is still suffering from. It is the source of the poverty the obscene inequalities and the numerous crises I posted about yesterday.The Thatcher thesis is based on three fundamental denials of social reality; a denial that the human being is essentially a social being; a denial that the institutions and structures that operate throughout our society and regulate our interactive relationships are a meaningful part of that society; and a denial that the general population accept them as such. Thatcher is arguing that people are essentially atomised individuals whose only social reality is within a family structure and who do not relate to social institutions and structures which they see as something rather abstract and distanced from their real everyday experience. She is arguing that people’s social experience does not extend beyond the families and neighbourly relationships that create types of voluntary associations. This is necessary if you propose attacking and discrediting our social structures and institutions and convincing people that they are dispensable and can be substituted by other arrangements that will perform their functions better and more efficiently. If they can be portrayed as somehow sitting outside of society and unrelated to everybody’s daily life, then they are indeed dispensable. The whole of the Thatcher project was based on destroying Britain’s public sector, promoting the neoliberal agenda of privatisation and contracting out the services and functions of the major institutions that compose society such as health, education and welfare. By attacking, discrediting them, and denying their integral social centrality you can then justify their removal as a public service and utilise their necessary functions for profit. Her project involved a transfer of wealth and power upwards to a voracious and immoral elite and reducing the standard of living of working people as far as possible in order to enhance that same elite with levels of wealth that could never be justified or spent. It was however, a total denial of social reality.
I ask you to think, if there is no such thing as society, in what category does the government she was head of fit, is it a family, a voluntary association or what? What is the Conservative Party? What are the police, the armed forces etc. if they are not definable social institutions that characterise the nature of the society they emanate from? This is a massive topic and I have only given you a flavour of it, but trust it is enough to see that Thatcher was not only wrong, she was a thorough scoundrel and a truly dangerous politician. Importantly however, as a foundation for economic and social policy-making it is sinister and disastrous. I will look at the concept of the individual next as it is intimately related to this imbecilic ideology. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Tuesday 10 January 2017
Divided we stand. I hope Maggie would be proud
Every day now we are reading an increasing number of commentators telling us how the dominant free market economic model is unsatisfactory, not working, a failure etc. They are now beginning to admit that it is this dominant model that is the real source of our social and economic woes. I have been telling people that for many years now and for over four and a half years on this blog. Indeed, in my very first post on this blog I told you that it was my intention to persistently highlight the fraud that poses as an economic system and the gangsters who operate it. I am very hopeful that our commentators are at last beginning to write with a modicum of honesty and that they, and by extension, myself, are correct in this observation because although it sounds very sensationalist and a bit over the top, in my opinion civilisation itself is dependent on the death of this most odious of ideologies. What irritates me is how those same commentators were denying what was blindingly obvious for all the time they were witnessing the decline of civilisation in Britain and are now only admitting what I am sure they were well aware of because the situation has become so acute and is now beginning to impact on them as well. As the saying goes, there are none so blind as they who will not see.
The legacy of Thatcher is upon us, and it is crisis. That is the word that is forever on our newspaper headlines as the description of the very fabric of British society and the state. The Red Cross has a claim to be one of the most respected organisations in the world and yesterday described the situation within the British health service as a humanitarian crisis. They have been drafted in to our hospitals in numerous areas of England to assist the Health Service cope with a day to day situation that so appalled the Red Cross that they felt they had to speak in those terms, and are therefore giving us a first hand empirical report of their experience in today's modern Tory Britain, although this crisis is really only at the acute stage in England, whose electorate are so in love with the Conservative Party that they quite willingly turn a blind eye to their staggering incompetence and criminality, preferring to blame immigrants, the European Union, and foreigners in general (but of course they are not racist).
Anyone who is familiar with Britain and who follows our daily news will understand that I am not misreporting or exaggerating when I tell you that in every area of our social fabric this benighted nation is in crisis, that is their words, not mine. The areas of British life that are routinely described as in crisis are of course health, followed by social care, housing, education, the railways, the postal service, our national infrastructure such as the roads, the energy market, school buildings, indeed everything that was ever a part of the public sector but has been subjected to the tender mercies of market forces. In addition, our financial systems have still not recovered from the financial crisis that highlighted the rot and corruption of our governmental and financial sectors because absolutely nothing has been done to remedy the causes of the crisis. The dominant free market model championed by Thatcher and her disciples has been a disaster and it is now so graphic that even those self-serving wretches in the British press and media who gave the system such grovelling support for so many years are being forced to admit it. Of course their plaintive cry is always, 'it wasn't me guv'. Yesterday we had the completely nauseating spectacle of the Prime Minister, Theresa May, a Prime Minister so vacillating and incompetent that the right-wing rag The Economist has christened her Theresa Maybe, promising that her government would commit to "tackling some of the burning injustices that undermine the solidarity of our society." Three things to point out here, first she is a Tory and therefore a pathological liar, so she did not mean one word of that, and also, she is one of the principal authors of those burning injustices having been a key member of the governments who were responsible for them and for voting religiously for the implementation of all of the policies that have produced those burning injustices since she first graced the Commons with her polluting and rancid presence. Thirdly there is no solidarity in British society today, it was effectively undermined long ago, and I remind you, that was the specific intention of Thatcher, to undermine and destroy the society she took charge of in 1979, and replace it with the anarchic, corrupt and venal shambles of free market filth we are the victims of today. This nation is split asunder over EU membership, class, race, gender, and of course immigration. Britain is effectively two nations with England and Scotland increasingly finding little in common. Yesterday a section of the Scottish Labour Party re-launched the Labour for Independence movement claiming a large increase in support for independence amongst Labour members who have been disillusioned by their party's dismal performance, by the persistent lies and denigration of Scotland by their own party and by Brexit. If I can remind you, this is something I urged Labour supporters to do three years ago.
The free market model is a fraud, the fundamental concepts that underpin it are wrong and cannot work. It is founded on a series of false hypotheses and managed by a set of the most unscrupulous and odious people imaginable. What is Thatcher's legacy? Crisis, Farage, Boris the Spider, intolerance, hatred, social unrest, inequality and poverty. Remember where you read it first! You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
The legacy of Thatcher is upon us, and it is crisis. That is the word that is forever on our newspaper headlines as the description of the very fabric of British society and the state. The Red Cross has a claim to be one of the most respected organisations in the world and yesterday described the situation within the British health service as a humanitarian crisis. They have been drafted in to our hospitals in numerous areas of England to assist the Health Service cope with a day to day situation that so appalled the Red Cross that they felt they had to speak in those terms, and are therefore giving us a first hand empirical report of their experience in today's modern Tory Britain, although this crisis is really only at the acute stage in England, whose electorate are so in love with the Conservative Party that they quite willingly turn a blind eye to their staggering incompetence and criminality, preferring to blame immigrants, the European Union, and foreigners in general (but of course they are not racist).
Anyone who is familiar with Britain and who follows our daily news will understand that I am not misreporting or exaggerating when I tell you that in every area of our social fabric this benighted nation is in crisis, that is their words, not mine. The areas of British life that are routinely described as in crisis are of course health, followed by social care, housing, education, the railways, the postal service, our national infrastructure such as the roads, the energy market, school buildings, indeed everything that was ever a part of the public sector but has been subjected to the tender mercies of market forces. In addition, our financial systems have still not recovered from the financial crisis that highlighted the rot and corruption of our governmental and financial sectors because absolutely nothing has been done to remedy the causes of the crisis. The dominant free market model championed by Thatcher and her disciples has been a disaster and it is now so graphic that even those self-serving wretches in the British press and media who gave the system such grovelling support for so many years are being forced to admit it. Of course their plaintive cry is always, 'it wasn't me guv'. Yesterday we had the completely nauseating spectacle of the Prime Minister, Theresa May, a Prime Minister so vacillating and incompetent that the right-wing rag The Economist has christened her Theresa Maybe, promising that her government would commit to "tackling some of the burning injustices that undermine the solidarity of our society." Three things to point out here, first she is a Tory and therefore a pathological liar, so she did not mean one word of that, and also, she is one of the principal authors of those burning injustices having been a key member of the governments who were responsible for them and for voting religiously for the implementation of all of the policies that have produced those burning injustices since she first graced the Commons with her polluting and rancid presence. Thirdly there is no solidarity in British society today, it was effectively undermined long ago, and I remind you, that was the specific intention of Thatcher, to undermine and destroy the society she took charge of in 1979, and replace it with the anarchic, corrupt and venal shambles of free market filth we are the victims of today. This nation is split asunder over EU membership, class, race, gender, and of course immigration. Britain is effectively two nations with England and Scotland increasingly finding little in common. Yesterday a section of the Scottish Labour Party re-launched the Labour for Independence movement claiming a large increase in support for independence amongst Labour members who have been disillusioned by their party's dismal performance, by the persistent lies and denigration of Scotland by their own party and by Brexit. If I can remind you, this is something I urged Labour supporters to do three years ago.
The free market model is a fraud, the fundamental concepts that underpin it are wrong and cannot work. It is founded on a series of false hypotheses and managed by a set of the most unscrupulous and odious people imaginable. What is Thatcher's legacy? Crisis, Farage, Boris the Spider, intolerance, hatred, social unrest, inequality and poverty. Remember where you read it first! You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
Thursday 5 January 2017
Why do you have such contempt for the free market?
I was asked by a friend who kindly reads this blog why I have such contempt for free market economists and politicians. She told me she understood my dismissal of them, but I go further and genuinely despise them. There are numerous reasons for this and the principal ones are that they are a fraud, but worse than that they are self-aware frauds. They know they are fraudulent and are criminal in that they lie repeatedly and know that they are selling a lie. They are also completely lacking in self-respect and dignity and display utter contempt for their fellow human beings. We have had reports this week from historical documents how Thatcher displayed complete disinterest in the effects of her policies in the rest of the United Kingdom outside London and the Home Counties. I have told you this before, but we now have official confirmation of it. These people have purged themselves of all fellow feeling and live only to gratify their own greed and ambition. They pursue policies designed to enrich themselves and their class, it is officially sanctioned nepotism. The rest of the country can go to hell for all they care. They constantly prattle on about freedom, but their perverted vision of freedom is the freedom for financiers and bankers to bankrupt the nation for their own interests, for employers to have the freedom to literally enslave their workforce, the freedom for those they consider one of their own to commit crimes and abuses and go unpunished whilst people with disabilities are punished because they have such disabilities. Economic and political freedom for the British elite necessitates the loss of freedom for the majority of the rest of us.
If you read this blog you will know that I rarely criticise the dominant elite and their vile ideology from a Marxist or a socialist perspective. I don't have to. I use their own claims to expose them, for example, the claim that they are the intellectual successors of Adam Smith. There are others of course, notably the founder of the British school of neoclassical economics, Alfred Marshall, whom I have quoted here before. On the subject of economic freedom he tells us in his Principles of Economics (1891) that
"It has been left for our own generation to perceive all the evils which arose from the suddenness of this increase of economic freedom. Now first are we getting to understand the extent to which the capitalist employer, untrained to his new duties, was tempted to subordinate the wellbeing of his workpeople to his own desire for gain; now first are we learning the importance of insisting that the rich have duties as well as rights in their individual and in their collective capacity; now first is the
economic problem of the new age showing itself to us as it really is. This is partly due
to a wider knowledge and a growing earnestness....
In particular this increased prosperity has made us rich and strong enough to impose new restraints on free enterprise; some temporary loss being submitted to for the sake of a higher and ultimate greater gain. But these new restraints are different from the old. They are imposed not as a means of class domination; but with the purpose of defending the weak, and especially children and the mothers of children, in matters in which they are not able to use the forces of competition in their own defence. The aim is to devise, deliberately and promptly, remedies adapted to the quickly changing circumstances of modern industry, and thus to obtain the good without the evil, of the old defence of the weak that in other ages was gradually evolved by custom".
The rich have duties as well as rights? That's Marxist isn't it? Restraints on free enterprise? Defending the weak? What on earth is this man thinking of? Better lock this fool up and ban all his books. This is an example of how perverted economics has become in today's world, when Alfred Marshall, Professor of Economics at Cambridge, is saying things that even Jeremy Corbyn is afraid to say. Marshall is making the case for those who are 'not able to use the forces of competition in their own defence'. That could not be any clearer. Thus, in the words of one of the great classical economists the policies pursued with glee by Thatcher, May, Duncan-Smith, Boris the Spider, Gove, Farage etc. are 'evils' - his word, not mine. What would he say about Amazon, JD Sports, Sports Direct etc subordinating the well-being of their workforce in their desire for gain? You don't need to be a Marxist, a socialist or even mildly left-wing. The whole condemnation for the evils of modern free market economics and its political supporters is available in the writings of the genuine intellectual greats. Now you know why these people are never taught in our universities. Despise them, you bet I do, they are not human beings, they have divested themselves of their humanity and are something else. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
If you read this blog you will know that I rarely criticise the dominant elite and their vile ideology from a Marxist or a socialist perspective. I don't have to. I use their own claims to expose them, for example, the claim that they are the intellectual successors of Adam Smith. There are others of course, notably the founder of the British school of neoclassical economics, Alfred Marshall, whom I have quoted here before. On the subject of economic freedom he tells us in his Principles of Economics (1891) that
"It has been left for our own generation to perceive all the evils which arose from the suddenness of this increase of economic freedom. Now first are we getting to understand the extent to which the capitalist employer, untrained to his new duties, was tempted to subordinate the wellbeing of his workpeople to his own desire for gain; now first are we learning the importance of insisting that the rich have duties as well as rights in their individual and in their collective capacity; now first is the
economic problem of the new age showing itself to us as it really is. This is partly due
to a wider knowledge and a growing earnestness....
In particular this increased prosperity has made us rich and strong enough to impose new restraints on free enterprise; some temporary loss being submitted to for the sake of a higher and ultimate greater gain. But these new restraints are different from the old. They are imposed not as a means of class domination; but with the purpose of defending the weak, and especially children and the mothers of children, in matters in which they are not able to use the forces of competition in their own defence. The aim is to devise, deliberately and promptly, remedies adapted to the quickly changing circumstances of modern industry, and thus to obtain the good without the evil, of the old defence of the weak that in other ages was gradually evolved by custom".
The rich have duties as well as rights? That's Marxist isn't it? Restraints on free enterprise? Defending the weak? What on earth is this man thinking of? Better lock this fool up and ban all his books. This is an example of how perverted economics has become in today's world, when Alfred Marshall, Professor of Economics at Cambridge, is saying things that even Jeremy Corbyn is afraid to say. Marshall is making the case for those who are 'not able to use the forces of competition in their own defence'. That could not be any clearer. Thus, in the words of one of the great classical economists the policies pursued with glee by Thatcher, May, Duncan-Smith, Boris the Spider, Gove, Farage etc. are 'evils' - his word, not mine. What would he say about Amazon, JD Sports, Sports Direct etc subordinating the well-being of their workforce in their desire for gain? You don't need to be a Marxist, a socialist or even mildly left-wing. The whole condemnation for the evils of modern free market economics and its political supporters is available in the writings of the genuine intellectual greats. Now you know why these people are never taught in our universities. Despise them, you bet I do, they are not human beings, they have divested themselves of their humanity and are something else. You have been warned
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
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