I have, I think, mentioned the book "The trouble with billionaires" by Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks before. I've just finished it and strongly recommend it to those who want a good primer on many issues addressed on this blog.
One lovely quote from page 210:
When business interests insist that the path to freedom is through the limitation of social security - or that lower tax rates on investors will lead to economic growth for all - they don't take these positions because they are misguided , uninformed, or even because they believe them to be true. They take them because - to put it in philosophical terms - they are greedy, manipulative, bullshitters who are only concerned about maximising their own wealth and power, or those whose interests they serve.
Now I would not have written it quite like that. But I think it passes all the tests of plain English. And is correct.
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Richard
Fwiw I don’t think that’s true. If you ask a lot of business people they will, quite genuinely, hold those opinions &, I honestly think, would do so even if it were contrary to their own financial interests.
That doesn’t, of course, mean they’re right, or even rational.
In making comments like this I think you’ve strayed away from one of your greatest insights, namely, to a lot of people there is NOTHING ELSE BUT THE FREE MARKET.
There never can be any alternative.
The young people taught economics are, without exception, taught that there is nothing else.
Listen to, say, Stephanie Flanders or Robert Peston & you will soon realise that they may, actually, try to be politically neutral &, in some respects, they are naturally left-leaning (think multi-culturalism & gay rights are positive, welcome immigration, welcome the EU) but they literally CAN’T conceive of a world that doesn’t run on the basis of free market economics any more than a C13th citizen of the UK could conceive of a world without God.
I disagree
If they knew there was nothing else they would not fight so hard
They fight because they know there is something else and it very clearly worked
Read the story of the Right – neatly summarised in the book – to appreciate that
Richard, I have to agree with you, using the exception that proves the rule – namely, Warren Buffet.
He is the billionaire that does not conform to the description “greedy, manipulative bulls****er”, and who has told his class that they are winning the class war, and that they need to mend their ways.
And true to his word, he’s always refused to help his children,beyond a parent’s basic level of support,expecting them to make their own way in the world. After all, there are few things more nauseous than the pontifications of offspring of the rich criticizing the poor, and talking about “hard work and the spirit of enterprise, and puuling oneself up by your bootstraps” when they were born with a silver spoon in their mouths, In the form of a substantial inheritance – a la Dave and Gideon! Some effort, some display of skill!
William – it is a mistake to see these ‘bullshitting billionaires’ as representing free market ideology. Smith, Ricardo and Mill would certainly have regarded them as monstrous creations and aberrations of nature! These people operate a rigged market based around arbitrage, wash-trading, short-selling. long selling, all of which controls prices and the flow of capital in directions that are inimical to any notion of social justice including held by the left and avid free marketers. They don’t want a real free market because it would be harder for them to vacuum up the wealth on the scale they can at present.
Sorry, William, I wrote the above just before your addendum!
But – and this is the important point – this is a construct that has been deliberately created – and they do know that
and, yes, before you say it, I know its nonsense & that, in fact, the number of goods or services for which there genuinely is a free market is ridiculously small.
Yes, I know that free market economists essentially spend their time creating on white-boards models of ‘real life’ which all of us with even the slightest experience know don’t correspond to real life in any way, even tangentially &
Finally, yes I know that Hedge Funds etc have taken to funding Universities to encourage them to pursue a form of economics that bears little, if any, approximation to real life.
Funding of Universities to indoctrinate , perpetuate and further the aims of the NWO has been going on for around a 100 years in the U.S.
Look at the Oxford PPE course which is essentially an entrance exam to the corridors of power and therefore self-perpetuating . The Don’s of that faculty must exert a huge influence over the way our future leaders think .
The people who anoint future Prime Ministers and Presidents must get a shortlist from somewhere and I wager it is these specific faculties in elite universities .
On the Isle of Man the establishment and their lackies fawn after billionaires like crazy. These HNWIs (High Net Worth Individuals) may well be all that plain English you quote. On the Isle of Man the establishment has a not dissimilar set of attributable plain English words. They all make fine bedfellows.
On a spiritual level – it seems clear that these highly manipulative characters have lost something essential to being human. In short, we are dominated by something deeply pathological. During the rule of one of the Khans of the Mongol empire, according to Marco Polo, agents of the Government were on the move constantly to check for famine and need in the different regions and commodities would be immediately transferred to a needy province – progress?
Perhaps, or perhaps they’re completely out of touch with the rest of humanity.
I find it fascinating that people of the neo-liberal ilk or billionaire set carry on about the benefits of a ‘free-market’; that if only the government got out of the way, it would unleash the entrepreneurial spirit. Thing is, how many of these entrepreneurs really want other entrepreneurs ‘unleashed’? I suspect very few. And how many of this elite would really appreciate competition? They say they do, but if we go back to an old dictum from the 80s (very much embraced by neo-liberals) that “greed is good”, then there is no way the billionaires and entrepreneurs really can appreciate a true free market. In essence, when they talk about freedom – they mean freedom just for themselves – and when things go wrong, they expect, they demand that the State bail them out. Privatize the profits, socialize the losses.
Anthony – indeed, the idea that we have a free market is, of course, utter nonsense. Thatcher who ushered in the ‘greed is good age’ was married to an oil industry man with inherited wealth working for an inherently oligarchic price controlling industry. people seem to want this slaver and here in britain there is not yet any powerful dissent. I think the influence of Evolutionary Psychology has affected our culture in this regard which leads many to see vicious greed and irresponsible wealth as a reflection of some dodgy theory of human nature. Thatcher fed us lies about trickle down wealth which never happened as corporate capture made sure the playing field would always by grotesquely unlevel. It seems to me that this oligarchic world is psychotic and utterly without any compunction and would be willing to let the rest of humanity be annihilated to serve their needs , fascism, in short!
Recent lecture by Chomsky – very relevant to this blog:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uuYjUxf6Uk