Some thoughts I posted on Twitter last night, best read from the bottom up:
My point is simple, and given I have another agenda for the day, is short. It is that the economy we had - which was based on a pretence that the private sector could answer all questions, generate all employment and supposedly generate all wealth - was always fictional in the sense that this was not what actually happened. But, more than that, whatever anyone believed about that era, it has no answers to the questions that we face now.
Our government, which is outsourcing without tendering processes and without penalty clauses for contractual non-performance as the crisis progresses, clearly realises that. They are not even pretending that there is a market in operation any more. But they are replacing the market with cronyism. There is a need to replace the market with new, genuine, public-private partnerships, with a bias to the public. Only that can work now.
Will the government deliver this new partnership? I doubt it.
And that is the essence of the economic problem that we face. This crisis cannot be solved competitively in the sense that market dogma has suggested. A new philosophy is required. And we are ill-equipped to address that need.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
I do agree that we are facing a free for all regarding “cronyism”. It has however always been there ,just we are seeing it now more in tooth and claw.
This Tory government has arrived at a time when we are seeing the end of the way things have been done in the past, which was that the state more or less just sat back and allowed the private sector to do its worst. Only being around to make sure that some basic rules were imposed, but only in extreme cases of abuse. Now that system has fallen on its arse, we are entering a new phase, where the incumbents are intent on filling their boots before the ship totally sinks.
We have gone from a private sector that was quietly fleecing us all to a bunch of pirates who are now appear to be grabbing everything they can get their hands on. It is only going to get worse. This reminds me of what happened after the old Soviet system broke down and there had widespread theft of public services and property.
The comparison is all too easy to make
The rate of Covid-19 infections are doubling every 8 days in the UK. At the moment 10 million out of a population of approx. 65 million have any form of effective preventive measures in place. Unless more drastic suppression of the virus is taken very soon we are in deep trouble. True, Serco, G4S et al are laughing all the way to the banks and Cummings is plotting and threatening in the background but economic breakdown is very real unless drastic action is taken now. … don’t mention climate change…………
The obsession with market fundamentalism in it’s form of giving “the market” precedent at all costs even human lives is clearly illustrated in this article which clarifies that Trump believed his chances of getting re-elected relied heavily on keeping “the market” in operation:-
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/usps-plan-5-face-masks-to-every-american-white-house_n_5f6389cbc5b6ba9eb6eb1214
Of course David Graeber had a lot to say about “the market” one of which surprisingly was that governments brought the market into existence as a consequence of wanting the private sector to supply its large armies and even navies.
You only have to look at ‘Dodo’ Harding to work out how it works.
When you make mistakes in the private sector its called ‘learning’.
When you make mistakes in the public sector it’s called ‘incompetence’ and wasteful.
To me, its as though we are living in a cartoon created by William Hogarth who has returned and learnt how to do animation.
This set of Tories have long shouted that throwing money at problems such as health, education, poverty or crime is not the answer.
Unless of course that money ends up in the hands of outsourcing companies or their mates in which case it is totally fine