It looks like we're coming out on the other side of a turbulent period. In a little over a week or so confidence was gutted, property was trashed, hope seemed to evaporate, despair prevailed and then almost as quickly as it began a recovery was underway, things went quiet, a modest clean up occurred and people dared to believe that the worst was over.
I'm talking about the stock markets of course. But is it chance that I could have also been talking about the absolutely coincidental (in a literal sense) rioting in London? Why was it that mayhem prevailed in both financial markets and on the streets of London at the same time? No one will, of course, ever know for sure, but the coincidence of the resulting dialogues that have emerged from these parallel crises is worthy of note.
There is a crisis of confidence about jobs.
Extraordinarily looters were filmed saying they resented paying tax on their incomes, when they had one. The markets fear governments cannot balance their budgets with tax revenues.
Looters, it's fairly widely agreed, wanted to consume. Markets feared no one will be.
Again the coincidences seem to be more than just chance. And some of the tentative explanations now being put forward for market crisis and looting also seem to have a ring of more than just happenstance.
It's agreed that looters were criminal. It's agreed that the banking may not have been, literally, but were in an ethical sense.
There appears to be consensus that greed motivated both, but something a little more than that: there was on both parts a desire to acquire without accepting the responsibilities associated with either acquisition or ownership.
So what? Is it that we've just discovered two ‘feral' communities, both out of touch with reality just as, not long ago, we discovered MPs and the news media in that same boat, or is there more to this? Are these communities not ‘feral' but mainstream in their desires and just aberrant in their capacity to fulfill them; one with an excess of resources and the other (given that the vast majority of those now prosecuted for looting were unemployed) without the means to fulfill their desires?
Surely the truth has to be something more than that? Is it that these communities actually reflect mainstream culture? The culture of shopping? The culture of excess? The culture of the quick fix to secure all our dreams (which it doesn't, but then there's always next Saturday to try again)? And if so, aren't we all, more than a little, responsible for the change that is needed because we all (well, almost all) recognise something has gone wrong?
I think that's true, but of course a lead is needed. And since no one is going to follow the lead of looters (I hope) there is no doubt that the lead has to come from the top. That means reform in particular of business thinking, for in a world dominated, as it is at present, by the market it is business that sets the tone for society at large. So we need a culture of responsibility from our business leaders now, indicated by an acceptance that they and their companies must like the rest of us pay their taxes, accept pay restraint, be responsible in what they say and how they say it, especially in their advertising and in the media messages so many of them sell. There should be an acceptance too that they are truly accountable for what they do — and that they tell us what it is. None of which sounds unreasonable except that they have strongly resisted all these things and more over the last few years, saying any such measures would be ‘anti-business'.
I disagree. Being pro-business does not mean you have to be irresponsible. Being pro-business does not mean you have to be anti-tax or anti-regulation. Nor does it mean we should allow a free for all for some on pay, whilst constraining that of others. And being pro-business does not mean that anything goes, especially when it comes to the messaging it delivers about the society we live in and the values that hold it together.
No, being pro-business means being pro-business in the community. It means making money responsibly. It means being concerned about the impact of business on others — who might all too possibly also be its customers. It means accepting that having the right to trade means that there's a matching obligation to pay back what is demanded in tax and other fees in return.
And being pro-business means accepting accountability as a part of responsibility, for business works best when there is as much information as possible available about the risks undertaking any business entails.
This real pro-business agenda has been forgotten. It's been lost in a narrative of greed. The responsibility of running a company has been forgotten in the drive for unaccountable power. The obligation that comes with that power has been laid aside; the accumulation of personal wealth in the narrow window of opportunity that most senior managers have to exploit their positions for this purpose has replaced the culture of duty which is the foremost responsibility of any company director.
Of course business should reward success, and well. I have no objection to that. But success is more something much more than the bottom line, or the realisation of the goals attached to the executive share bonus scheme. Success is about co-existing sustainably in communities in the long term. We all recognise that this was forgotten by those who were looting. But far too many have forgotten it in business too. And both were wrong to do so.
It will be hard to demand change of the looters as yet because they are powerless. Business leaders are not: theirs is the power. That's why we must turn to them to demand change now. And to our politicians as well, who ape them too often. Without change on their part then change elsewhere in society is unlikely.
That's our challenge.
That's our goal.
Can they deliver? That's the question that needs an answer.
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I thought it was interesting that the looters concentrated on big chain like Footlocker and JD Sports, and everyone stood by, whereas in communities (and I use that word deliberately) of Sikhs and Turks, for example, where the retail sector still contains small, family owned businesses, the whole community went out to protect their businesses. Obviously there is some generalisation (and thus a degree of inaccuracy) in the above comment, but there is much truth. In most parts of Britain business has become distant from community rather than integral to it, something imposed by distant boardrooms rather than built up by neighbours.
We need huge tax measures to favour small business over large business, reflecting the act that a dozen food shops in a town buying off local farmers do immeasurably more for the local economy and sense of community than the simple economies of scale that are generated by a single Tesco.
And the irony: this should be a conservative policy. It is the conserative heartland that has not totally succumbed to the ravages of high street globalisation. It is conservative to want to preserve the character of towns and to support the entrepreneur and small businessman. There is no profession more conservative than farming. As time goes by, laissez-faire looks more and more like simply not caring. Well, if not caring is your guiding principle, why go into politics in the first place?
Well I am a big supporter of smaller businesses, but some proprietors just refuse to pay their tax, even though the profit have been artificially reduced. Usually these people have a very hard attitude towards crime, benefits and the poor. How do I know this? Well, Richard isn’t the only qualified accountant that wants social justice. (Note that it isn’t me that has reduced the profits!).
@ Martin
Even more reason to increase staffing at HM Revenue and Customs – one of Richard’s favourite topics!
Some (business) people (after fiddling their books to show artificially low profits) want their dust bins emptying, a health service, the firebrigade and police without contributing towards them: and then make hypocritical and derogatory comments about the performance of these services.
Stop this by making their accountants “shop” them which in turn will help the HMRC to fine them.
Regularly and heavily.
The fundamental way that trade liberalisation is justified (and the trade liberalisation agenda is the big international policy framework whether people, including you Richard, know it or not) is that it makes consumption cheaper. And it has.
The effects on workers, and the inherent loss of democracy as transnational corporations gain rights and elected governments lose their rights to control them, are kept off the screen – only benefits for consumers are emphasised in conventional economic theory.
People are told that they are, and are treated as, only consumers. The negative effects of trade liberalisations on people as workers and indeed as citizens are ignored; labour and democratic control are certainly not mentioned in the same breath as trade liberalisation.
So when people are told they are just zombie consumers, only active in choosing which brand to consume, what do we get? Consumers. And eventually going for it the absolute cheapest way – nicking.
‘Promoting trade’, e.g. by Prince Andrew or Vince Cable, is always accepted by the media as necessarily a good thing – but with no understanding of what it now entails.