Like many, I suspect, I spent yesterday evening in a state of fevered anger with a government and Prime Minister so incompetent that they could not organise the time of a press conference, let alone a coherent announcement on what to do about the crisis that we face. I wrote a great deal on Twitter as a result, almost all of which was decidedly ephemeral and so not worth repeating here. Instead I want to stand back from the events of yesterday, when nothing was resolved as no real plan emerged, and instead think about the bigger issues that this crisis demands that we look at.
There are many of these. Ample enough, no doubt, to fill many a book. But let me pick four. The first is our relationship with nature. The second is our relationship with consumption. The third is our relationship with each other. And the fourth is our relationship with government. I will try to be brief, deliberately, as it is the consequences that really interest me.
What Covid 19 reminds us of is the fact that we do not live an existence independent of nature. Our desire to treat ourselves as entities apart from the world in which we live has been supported by advances in various fields of science, most especially since WW2. But Covid is an abrupt reminder that ultimately any such claim is futile. We live within a larger ecosystem, and like it or not there is literally nothing we can do about that. We respect the world around us, or as it is now doing, it bites back. Covid 19 is, quite literally, a force of nature.
If we appreciate the fact that nature constrains us we then have to reappraise our consumption of the natural world. The way we live is unsustainable. Someone once said that only the insane and economists think we can sustain exponential growth in a finite world. They were right. But the trouble is that economists have persuaded the world that insanity is acceptable. It isn't. It is unsustainable. We cannot keep living the way we do.
In that context it is particularly poignant that it is Christmas that now seems to be the focus of concern for many. This is now the great secular festival of consumption. I have seen news reports of those who have already got their Christmas decorations up as if this will provide a dose of something equivalent to soma in Huxley's ‘Brave New World' - a holiday from the world around us. It won't. What we need to do instead is embrace that world. After all, the global climate and biodiversity crises to come are vastly bigger than this Covid crisis. We need to take what is happening as the warning sign we need and begin the consumption lockdown required to tackle them, now.
Third, I am pleased that lockdown is such an issue. What it highlights is that what really matters are our relationships with others. The normal social interactions that make life possible on a daily basis matter more than almost anything else to us - and for the vast majority these are not focussed solely on family, but extend far beyond that. If we can reconsider how we live in community, and put much more effort into considering how to do this better than maybe we will eventually learn something from this crisis. The reorientation from consumption to community is the great change that Covid demands.
Last, of those issues selected, is our relationship with government. It is appropriately last because the first three frame what that response should be.
Only government has the ability to manage a nation's response to its environment. And only governments can, by cooperating, do that for the world. There is no chance of us achieving the changed relationship that we must have with the world around us unless government takes the lead. Far too few of them - our own included - are willing to play any effective part in this process. Far too many want to outsource that response to the private sector, believing that a few tweaks to regulation will deliver salvation through a very slightly modified profit motive. There is not a shred of evidence to support that idea. The insanity of the economists is still corrupting the behaviour of governments. We have to demand that it change.
In the process we have to also reappraise the relationship between the state and private sectors. If we have a problem it is because an intensely selfish attitude to life - implicit in all that the neoliberal creed defines to be of value - has resulted in our abuse of nature, the planet, community and each other, come to that.
Over consumption that has divorced us from nature and many of those around us did not happen by chance. It was created. And it was deliberately designed to be divisive. Materialism did not just exploit a difference between the haves and the have nots: its whole purpose was to exacerbate it. What we have, and not what we are, was intended to define who we are conceived to be. Never was anything so destructive.
The state has to address this if the problem of over-consumption is to be addressed. And it now has the opportunity to do so. Never has so much that has been conspicuously consumed been of such little relevance when we do not have the opportunities to flaunt it. We should be seeing much if it for what it is in that case: pretty worthless cumber might be my best description of it.
And the state has the chance to reinforce this message right now: it could, for me ample, change the laws on advertising to disallow some of it, most especially when aimed at children. And it could increase its cost by denying the right of a business to reclaim on it. These are small changes: they indicate a direction of travel and a desire to tackle the advertising industry, which is the only human activity solely dedicated to the creation of unhappiness with our current state of wellbeing.
But the issue goes much further than that. Reduce advertising and we have a media problem: quite literally much of what we call the media cannot survive without advertising, so hooked on excess consumption are we. But nor can we survive without media now. And we need not do so. It is entirely possible for the state to support the media - with funding - but the condition must be access and a broad base of views, something rarely available at present.
Once this is appreciated the very obvious lesson learned from this crisis - that the state can do vastly more than has been claimed by neoliberal politicians whose sole aim it has been to diminish its role in their own pursuit of personal enrichment - can be applied more widely.
We, as a society, can decide what we value. We can decide to have more healthcare, social care, education, equality, and fairer criminal justice if we wish for it. We can support those who work in such fields. We will have to consume less at full employment if we do so, but as noted, that is in any case necessary. And yes, we would at full employment pay more tax than now. That would be the price of constraining inflation, but we might willingly pay it.
We can also direct the type of business we want too. If we did not know that before, we do now. And we have found that cafes matter more than banks, cinema more than hedge funds, and dare I say it, ultimately that public spaces matter more than cars. We can decide to prioritise shared experience and the simple pleasures that Covid has taught us matter most. We can redirect resources. We can deliver what is good, even when nature demands we consume less, and be better off.
Of course the financial edifice designed to extract the value of our work from us - whether by rent or interest payment - will have to be curtailed if this is to be achieved. These two curses literally enslave us. We actually have to see them in that light, for that is what they set out to achieve, aided and abetted once more by the advertising industry whose goal it is to ensnare us within the demands of these oppressors. This is where the revolution (not physical, but of culture and deed) is required.
And we have to appreciate that a government dedicated to delivering well being can fund this so long as natural limits are respected. There is nothing that finance will not let us do if it is possible. Our problem has been that we have sought to bend finance to the delivery of the impossible. Now we must change that.
And I believe we can do all these things. Covid is simply the warning that this is what we must do. We should take heed of that warning. The desire to go back must be resisted. The Christmas we once had should not be the post-coronavirus Christmas that we desire. We can do so much better than that. Achieving that goal is the real challenge for our age.
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These sorts of wishes can be achieved only after a complete disaster has forced them on us. The words are good but achieve nothing.
Without the words nothing happens, at all
Words always come first
“In the beginning was the word.”
There is nothing wrong with dreaming and sometimes they become reality. However, all of modern psychological research is identifying weaknesses in our brain structures – created by our evolutionary past and are explained in “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman – which leave us open to persuasion by malign forces, who prize money above all else. I wish I could see past this but at the moment those with the serious money seem to be able to bend destiny to their wills.
Ideas are more powerful
Can’t disagree at all with any of this.
Must try harder!
Nothing to disagree with there. But, what will be the catalyst that will get us to governments who will take those decisions, explain why they are doing and get enough of the people to accept and embrace them?
I see individuals/families/groups wanting to make the changes but it needs change at government level for that change to have the impact required and too many governments are enslaved by those whose interests are in maintaining the status quo.
Craig
Excellent summary. Well said. I feel as if the government and the opposition are clinging to a piece of driftwood from the ship that hit the iceberg yet wishing they could be back on board like the good old days. None have realised the ship has gone down and isn’t coming back up. A group of us have spent the summer writing a manifesto for a new Party and when my contract ends in a few weeks time we shall launch it somehow.
I would love you to succeed with a new party, assuming it’s intentions were along the lines that Richard expresses, but you won’t have a cat in hell’s chance before “first past the post” is ditched.
I expect to vote for you if spared.
Come and visit The Green New Deal Party group on Facebook.
This past year of encounter with this zoonotic disease makes me think we are seeing Dicken’s ‘Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come’, and the time for deep reflection and life-changing political vision is both urgent and essential.
So THANK YOU for this reflection on these three – ecological, economic and social – dimensions of our political economy.
The climate catastrophe heading our way has been 500 years in the making.
Or perhaps 10,000 ?
Well said. We’re listening – will the government?
Another good food-for-thought piece Richard. Too many things to think about in one go, and comment on in one go. But one thing that strikes me is our acceptance of a government as being ‘them’. There is a disconnect between ‘them’ and ‘us’ – and I don’t believe there should be. It’s the people that make a country, not the land or the borders, and the people choose their representatives – the government.
That is, the government should only ever represent the people, not rule over us and not give us a choice in any matter.
Yeah yeah, dream on. But, there should, in theory, never be the situation where they don’t act in our best interests. The opposite seems to be true, and has been for a while (always?), with the interests of private business always overshadowing our needs. Where is our representation?
They make themselves them
I can imagine a government with us
But not with them in it
😀
True. Very true.
So Richard Murphy (or the government of which Richard Murphy approves) seeks to dictate what is acceptable levels of an individual’s consumption ?
And the media should be funded by government with that funding being dictated according to activities and viewpoints of which that government approves ?
And one of the most irascible, censorious and politically biased individuals in the blogosphere, with a demonstrable history of falling out with others, insists that we as a society should embrace a broad base of views ?
You are truly beyond parody.
You really don’t know much about how change happens, do you?
Have you heard the one about omelettes and broken eggs? I’d put you in the role of the chicken
Omelette and broken eggs ?
So the mask once again slips. The starting point of every other nasty little fascist dictator-in-waiting throughout our history.
‘This might hurt, but comrade leader Murphy knows what is best for you’.
I’m sure your sycophants will point out that I am simply misinterpreting your true benevolence.
I am interested to note that a proposal for reform that I was suggesting be pout forward in a democratic process is thought by you to be fascist.
How might that be?
Please explain.
Or are you simply expressing a truly Trumpian distaste for the right of people to make a choice through the ballot box?
“I am interested to note that a proposal for reform that I was suggesting be pout forward in a democratic process is thought by you to be fascist.
How might that be?
Please explain.”
Because curtailing people’s choices and freedoms is a hallmark of fascism. Imposing the will of 51% of the population by restricting the rights of the other 49% is not democracy. The majority of the German population supported taking away the rights of Jews. The fascists used similar arguments to yours. It was better for the German people, they said, creating a fairer society by removing the exploitation of the ‘rentier’ Jews. You seek to restrict people’s freedoms, reshape the economy to your views, rather than allowing people to determine how their own lives should be lead.
If the Tories inserted a promise to shut down your website if they won re-election and having duly stood and won an election which included that promise, they could claim that their plans had been supported by a democratic process. Would you agree with their claim? If not, why not?
There are many world-wide examples of extreme parties winning elections and taking away people’s rights. You are saying that as long as a party wins an election, anything it then does is OK by you. It’s never clear whether you are stupid, or dangerous, or both.
Soi let me summarise
We can be taken oiut oif Europe by a decided minority
And the NHS can be privatised by a decided minority
And millions can be left in poverty to suit a dec died minority
But action to save the planet and all human life on it is not democratic?
You realise quite how stupid – and fascist – you are being, don’t you?
Tony woodcock.
Gary Birtles.
Sean Michelson.
I think you are all missing the point.
Humanity is consuming itself into oblivion.
The freedom you will be leaving to your children and grandchildren, is the freedom to starve in a society where law and order implodes and chaos rules.
Zoonotic diseases have been with us since we started herding animals. Plague was helped on its way by fleas as well as person to person contact. Nature, of which we are a part must be treated with respect and nurtured. But today, as you note, we seem to do neither.
Two of Walter Scheidel’s levelling 4 horsemen are pandemics and State Collapse. On our current trajectory, already in the grip of a pandemic and others probably waiting their turn, and global warming continuing with little determination among politicians to deal with the threat seriously, State collapse could be around the corner.
People need to wake up to the reality and find forms of government that will tackle these threats and although a third horseman, “transformative revolution” has probably dismounted, a fourth, “mass mobilisation warfare” is always mounted in readiness.
More power to your “words.”
I find J D Alt’s vision of New Year’s Day 2031, in “Paying ourselves to save the Planet”, inspiring but the thought that we allow a human construct called “money” to prevent us from even trying to get there hugely dispiriting. There must be a way . . .
“We, as a society, can decide what we value.”
Unfortunately for you Richard, society seems to decide they don’t much care for hard left pontificating from an ivory tower.
Really?
Wait and see….neoliberalism is dying
Of course, the fear is it us trying to kill us all in the process
But it’s dead
You don’t seem to be aware of what is going on with our government do you?
David Greenfield.
You say,
“Unfortunately for you Richard, society seems to decide they don’t much care for hard left pontificating from an ivory tower.”
I presume that you think 42% of the vote on a turnout of 66% represents the majority of society?
It does not.
We, the wealthy 10% of the world’s people including, let’s say, about half the British population, WILL NOT CHANGE (MUCH) UNLESS WE ARE COMPELLED TO.
In general:
– We know there are climate problems but WE DO NOT WANT TO KNOW how bad they are — and neither the politicians nor the press barons want us to know.
– We are not willing to live – only as comfortably – as people did in 1960.
– We insist on the right of rich people to fly no matter what the consequences.
– We want one or more big houses but, provided we are subsidised, we will insulate and add PV panels (just don’t expect us to release any housing space for young or homeless families.
– We are willing to make minor changes to our cars. ‘If diesel is better we’ll have a (bigger) diesel.’ ‘No? OK we’ll buy an electric, provided we are subsidised by the installation of charging points – and just so long as we can drive as far or further … and preferably faster (and so long as we don’t have to alter our lives in a serious way.)’.
– We have heard that there is pollution … but we believe, for instance, that it is impossible to manage without plastic (apart from straws and cotton buds)’.
– We realise that there are extinctions but we don’t really know how that is significant … ‘Does it matter?’
– We will eat a bit less meat.
– We will do a bit of recycling (if it is not too much trouble) but we are not willing to make the distinction between necessities and luxuries (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/101994/).
The fact is THERE IS TOO MUCH CO2 IN THE ATMOSPHERE NOW.
[Was 280 parts per million for 800,000 years. Is now 413. https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gl_trend.html%5D
The 2050 goal is an excuse for inaction, paltry measures — or stupid policies like nuclear power stations.
Winning slowly is the same as losing (Will Steffen https://thenearlynow.com/the-real-politics-of-the-planetary-crisis-216229324deb)
We need to STOP BURNING FOSSIL FUELS NOW.
Because we love our kids, we need a system of economics that can deal with introducing:
* A maximum speed limit of 50mph as Ted Heath did during the OPEC crisis of 1973.
* Petrol rationing as in both world wars and following the Suez crisis of 1956.
* ‘Utility’ standards of furniture and clothing — with ‘coupons’ to limit consumption as in WW2.
* Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs) [http://flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/] will (a) cause some redistribution of wealth and (b) get everyone thinking about how to reduce energy consumption … but Murdoch and co. would (will) resist any level of ‘same for everyone’ rationing that would be more than a token gesture.
Crucially, we do not need to wait for international consensus. The peoples of every nation are vulnerable. A few of us will be aware that this morning (1 Sept 2020) “Super Typhoon Goni explodes into 2020’s strongest storm on Earth, and is slamming into Philippines” [https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?next_url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.washingtonpost.com%2fweather%2f2020%2f10%2f30%2fsuper-typhoon-goni-philippines-rolly%2f%3ffbclid%3dIwAR1ByFXWgshYqjxTAQ4Ft7ngoNeSx0u0_1d8Ff-tILnpldpaJzzFyTcqy0Y&fbclid=IwAR1ByFXWgshYqjxTAQ4Ft7ngoNeSx0u0_1d8Ff-tILnpldpaJzzFyTcqy0Y]. We now know that countries with coastal communities are certain to be flooded by sea water … maybe not for a few decades (Venice? The Netherlands?) … but most children will live to see it … and many will worry about coastal nuclear power stations (like Fukushima).
Yet “despite population growth, 2050 global energy use could be reduced to 1960 levels [and what’s more] ‘sufficiency’ is far more materially generous than many opponents often assume.” [Joel Millward-Hopkins, Julia Steinberger et al https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378020307512?via%3Dihub%5D
Thanks
Like – and Richards reply
” Someone once said that only the insane and economists think we can sustain exponential growth in a finite world.”
I am surprised you embrace this statement. Do you value what you do so poorly? The “growth ” here is presumably an increase in wealth. Are not the readers of your blog not made wealthier by the value of your insights? Have you contributed to the depletion of the world’s resources by publishing it? How? If you haven’t, then it’s clear that there can be any level of growth in wealth in a finite world, depending on what is created being valued by someone. And using less resources. Before the internet your wisdom would have had to be promulgated via physical words on paper. To distribute all of the wisdom of all bloggers to those who might want to read them would have required cutting down every tree on the planet. Yet it can all be done by rearranging some pixels on a screen. Are we not immensely wealthier at trivial cost?
I am a political economist
I agree with the thinking and the opportunity in this article but with Parliament of such obviously self serving politicians so devoid of integrity and yet also liberally gifted with incompetence the chances of seizing a better future from the lessons of this pandemic are somewhat less than none…. and I always thought of myself as optimist……
Kenneth Boulding
https://geniusquotes.org/quotes/anyone-who-believes-that-exponential-economic-kenneth-boulding-quote/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_E._Boulding
We need to redefine growth in terms of human well being and the environment. The destruction of the environment becomes degrowth.
Thank Charles
That may hit Twitter
And I agree with your conclusion
Something along the lines of the Popsicle Index ?
https://home.solari.com/the-popsicle-index/
[…] Cross-posted from Tax Research UK […]
Joe Burlington, I am sure your post reflects the despair and indeed anger of many readers of Richard’s blog – but in the end any solution needs to come from consent not authoritarianism.
(My opinion, not necessarily shared by our government).
Jonathan
I agree. ‘Consent’ not ‘authoritarianism’ … but consent based on accurate and timely information.
The public continues to be misled by advertising and other commercially sponsored policies.
Richard commented recently that the last UK election was fair. I don’t think it was.
In a remarkable TED talk in Canada, Observer journalist, Carole Cadwalladr, presents the evidence. (Facebook’s role in Brexit – and the threat to democracy) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSMr-3GGvQ]
“This entire [Brexit] referendum took place in darkness, … on Facebook. And what happens on Facebook stays on Facebook because only you see your newsfeed then it vanishes … multiple crimes took place during the referendum.
I suspect that the same methods – secret posting to people profiled by Facebook … of things that will be slanted and paid for by … who knows? This is how Trump won. I surpose it was how Johnson obtained his 80-seat majority.
Free and fair elections? I don’t think so.
I think that true of Brexit
Of the election result? I am not so sure
Richard,
I thought you might like this video – maybe not before breakfast though:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=qunIJD45qz8
A couple of independence supporters have created it off their own bats, this is their first production and it is so well done, called ‘Bombing is the London Way’ (‘London’ is shorthand for the UK seat of power in this one) – it’s short; song/images format. It also points out how little say Scotland really has in this Union.
I add a sensitivity comment: some of the images in this video will be troubling to some readers
Thanks Richard – I should have mentioned that. You Tube made me log in because of sensitive content and I thought that enough, but others might have a permanent log-in so may not get a warning. No, it’s not easy watching.
On the optimistic side, the world’s population is approaching its peak at around 10 billion, most are living longer and healthier lives, and we are getting to understand that we have to live cooperatively and sustainably.
The WWI generation are essentially gone and the WWII generation are going. We have that bulge of people from the 1940s to 1960s, but anyone born in the 1960s or earlier is now 50+. I have high hopes for the next generations.
Your thoughts on this are valuable Richard but haven’t such ideas been hi jacked by the WEF oligarchs as part of their Great Reset programme which effectively channels yet more wealth, control and power to the super rich?
So we have to reclaim them
Why have you given in?
So lovely to read something sane and rational. If we want lives worth living I cannot see any real alternative. It is going to be a great challenge to overcome the lies and ideology that are in the way.
Keep up the good work.
Kate Soper’s new book on an alternative to consumerist hedonism is probably worth a look.
Much to say on this, when I have time…but meanwhile, here is a quote by Thomas Carlyle, Scottish essayist, writer, philospher etc. Though weirdly claimed as ‘British’. Hmm, unusual?
‘When we can drain the ocean into mill ponds, and bottle up the force of gravity, to be sold by retail, in gas jars, then may we hope to comprehend the infinitudes of man’s soul under formulas of profit and loss, and rule over this too, as over a patent engine, by checks, and valves, and balances’. Thomas Carlyle.
One thing I will never ever understand is how anyone can have 100’s of £/$billions in the bank yet pass a homeless person in the street, who has nothing, or see children starve, literally.
That is one heck of a perplexing trait in some humans, what is it that they want? Bizarre.
Hetty.
Same reason the slave owners of old could do what they did.
Vinnie,
I agree, humanity is consuming itself to oblivion.
Sadly, I think it is built into the “survival of the fittest” in our genes. Individuals seem to be programmed to better themselves without consideration for the deleterious effects on others (or perhaps on other tribes).
The likes of Tony Wood, Gary Birtles and Sean Michelson are examples of a self-serving belief. Evidently the education that they have obviously received has not enabled them to understand that “freedom” CANNOT be unlimited when it directly impinges on other people’s “freedom”.
In the situation that the world finds itself in, we will, to survive, have to accept severe necessary restrictions decided upon by the wisest people reviewing evidence.
Our difficulty is in finding these altruistic wise men and ensuring that the likes of the 3 above are not able to contaminate them!
Norman Wilcox.
One glimmer of hope is that we humans can change our behaviour at will, if we chose to do so.
As Yuval Noah Harrari writes in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.
Humans have been able to change how we collectively organise ourselves, to adapt to different and changing environments. It’s called CULTURE and it’s what has made us so “successful” as a species.
Animals can only change behaviours through changes in genes over many generations. We can do it overnight.
Our present problem, is that our culture/political system is constructed to prevent change and maintain the status quo.
Unless we can overcome this culture, our future looks bleak.
Vinnie,
I think that there are two optimistic thoughts about the impending mass extinction.
The first is that I expect that there will be some form of microbe, insect, animal and plant life that does survive the massively changed climatic conditions, so nature will win, at least for another aeon.
The second is that, should some small vestige of human life survive, it will be peopled with those who understand that the only way to survive is by cooperating with each other practically and socially. Survival of the fittest wins again.
Norman Wilcox.
I’m not sure humanity can wipe out all life on earth through climate change. Earth has had 5 mass extinctions but life bounces back.
(Having said that, Mars shows signs of having running surface water in the past. Something major has gone wrong climatically, for it to be the dust bowl it is now!?)
(I’ve often wondered if it’s not the first time that an intelligent species has got to our level of development on Earth and then over extended itself to collapse. No record would show in the fossil records.
Our time on Earth in geological time is tiny. (70,000 years. 10,000 since civilizations began) No evidence of our existance would appear in the geological records in say, 50,000,000 years time.)
It’s the bit where humanity exits the scene that I worry about.
Cormac McCarthy’s, The Road springs to mind!!!!!!
But we can still change our culture to adapt to changes in climate (up to a point).