I posted this thread on Twitter this morning:
We know we have a government that lies. We know it is corrupt. And its big new idea is bringing back pounds and ounces, which few in the UK now understand. But the biggest failure is to pretend low-tax, small-state government is still possible. It isn't. A thread….
Until methods to measure national income were created, largely as a consequence of central planning during World War 2, growth was not an issue in politics. And then, when the war was over it became everything: the one thing every politician had to deliver.
Tories delivered with indifference as to how the resulting wealth was distributed (by and large). Labour did so whilst worrying about inequality and access to services. But growth was the common goal.
There was also a common blind-spot in this strategy. That was the planet. Economics taught politicians that there were ‘free gifts of nature' for us humans to exploit, and we went in for that exploitation in a big way.
We dug up the planet, built on it, dumped on it and poisoned it. As a result we warmed it. And all this in the name of finance. And when the planet could not, despite all that abuse, deliver fast enough, finance just turned inward and used the same techniques on itself.
Then came the warnings. I read about the dangers to the planet created by growth in the 1970s. The warnings were not heeded.
In 2008 the world's financial system tottered as it was discovered that finance could not, after all, pollute its own systems with hierarchies of false lending and still make money.
And then came Covid, the worst pandemic for centuries, whose impact is a very long way from being over as yet, not least because the next, and potentially more serious wave, is now emerging.
The reality is that the planet is finite, money cannot ultimately be made by financial exploitation, and if we abuse the planet it has the potential to harm our health. None should be very surprising, but for over 75 years we have been in denial about all three.
No one has been in greater denial on this issue than the Tories. Their ‘small state, low tax, the markets know best' approach to politics is built on three assumptions.
They are that the planet remains infinite, finance can solve everything by simply pursuing profit and that problems are individual, and not at the level of society, meaning government cannot and should not address them.
These core assumptions that underpin the modern Conservative's thinking are all wrong, and they know that. They have committed to tackling climate change. They had to use government-created money via QE to solve the problems in finance post-2008. And they spent a fortune on Covid.
But, and this is the paradox, although all their actions say that they know that an active state is required, that's not what they are saying. So whilst taxes reach highs, QE funds are still there, and climate change goes on many Tories still demand small state solutions.
It's hardly surprising that Tory messaging is a mess in that case. What they say and what they do are totally inconsistent. They don't have the conviction to deliver policies they are forced to adopt. And their claims as to what they believe in clearly don't stack.
Of course they are a mess. And of course they are lying. They are literally living a lie every day they are in office, always fighting what they know they have to do, and pretending otherwise. No wonder they all look so worn out.
It does not help that Labour shares the lie, as does the SNP, and the LibDems. All are committed to growth that cannot be delivered. None has yet to appreciate, or talk about, that. Instead they still offer prospects like green growth, which is still based on despoiling our earth.
What do we need? The lies have to end. The planet has to be respected. Finance has to be constrained. The common solution to the common problem has to be sought, and delivered. The needs of all have to be met, and markets have never known how to do that.
This is possible. We can feed everyone, house everyone, keep everyone warm, educate everyone, and keep them healthy. People could have leisure, holidays, pleasure and more too. All of this could be done and respect the planet.
But this can only be done communally. I am not suggesting that means differences need be suppressed. They are part of what it is to be human. But the key problem we all face is the one the Tories are now face-to-face with, which is that their core assumptions are false.
We have to assume the planet must be respected, that finance can help us but can never solve our problems, and that we must act for the common good in the face of common threats. Adopt those three assumptions and we have a chance.
Stick to the existing scenario and it's not just the Tories living a lie; we all are.
We have a choice, but I suggest that only one is viable.
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We live in a post-irony state where the party of the rentiers tells us we should bow down before the free market, ignorant of the fact that the ‘freedom’ in this context is, in actuality, to be rid of the very rentiers they are and whose interests they represent.
Every pound (or other currency for that matter) that is not being used for a transaction, that sits dormant in a bank account is a debt to the planet. Each day the sun (as the primary source of energy to our planet) provides us with orders of magnitude more energy than humanity can use. We can live within our means. We need to switch the conversation from growth and productivity (words I detest) to efficiency.
We now have the technological means to have a currency based on kWh. An energy currency can solve multiple issues we have at this moment.
1) Transactions based on energy content. Using kWh as a unit of currency could bring in an inflationary effect to the pound as transactions are based on quantifiable metrics not a floating fiat currency. The value of goods would equilibrate by the wisdom of the crowds. Tories still get their precious free market forces.
2) Redistribution of wealth. Storing of energy is very difficult. Storing of pounds is conversely very easy. Having a currency anchored to the physics which govern our planets would stop the stockpiling of wealth (at least to the extent of having billionaires) and spread the value more evenly.
3) Efficiency and sustainability. Energy cannot be destroyed but useful energy dissipates due to entropy. Collecting free solar kWh through PV seems much better value than extracting oil from ever more remote locations.
4. Reduce or even eradicate the power of multinational conglomerates. Big business has a stranglehold on politics which then impacts monetary and economic policy. Having the means to trade freely between each other would reduce the power said companies have on our life’s.
We used to live within our ecosystem for centuries before the industrial revolution ramped up the destruction of our planet but we can reverse the situation.
I feel despair that after the COP26 event last year, it has been business as usual from all political parties. The question is, would any sovereign nation decentralise its currency?
Sorry – but money is debt
To claim it is energy is to wholly misunderstand economics and helps no one
We can do without a new gold standard
Money is debt – but debt to who?
The planet is not factored into any of our transactions.
Using energy as a currency would not be a gold standard. Whilst gold is a physical commodity, its value is only determined by what people are willing to pay for it and its scarcity.
Debt from the person to whom the money is issued
It takes two to tango
The government owes when it issues money – because it buys in exchange for its promise to pay – most of which are then cancelled by its statutory right to tax. But there is still debt
What is so hard about that?
And it’s even easier with the only other form of money we have – which is commercial bank created by lending
James, there have been attempts to model the economy as a biophysical system of production and consumption. These inevitably use energy (or strictly exergy) as the fundamental force, which we know to be true from basic physics. And in this view, money is just one of the means by which we collectively decide how to use the available exergy. The conventional study of economics is then the study of this decision-making, rather than of the real biophysical economy. Steve Keen has attempted to unify the two with a macroeconomics that factors in energy. But in my experience it’s impossible to get an economist to accept that exergy is what drives the real economy, despite physics. And since we have a lot more control of the decision-making than of the physics, probably the focus on that is correct.
Thanks Nigel,
I’ll look up Steve Keen.
The still bigger lie, one in which the current Tory ‘party’ perhaps believes most passionately of all, is that only and especially the one larger body than the ‘individual’ about which politics must care is their fantasy ‘Britain/UK’ – aka Brexitania with its cloudy penumbra of sub-Sellers&Yeatman ‘history’.
To say this is not knockabout railery. Just check out that deranged Greenwich speech by Johnson when he fantasised about his Brexitania standing ready to go forth, world-beating trading when others were too constrained by unreasonble fears of a so-called pandemic. It is all there. The selfishness, the arrogance, the ignorance and the isolationism. Never mind not knowing what ‘society’ is/might be; f### science, environment – indeed the world.
Whatever my profession has being doing teaching history – the Tories have proved ineducable.
There is only one truth and that is that the market has lied to us for years.
It lied to us about smoking which they knew caused cancer.
It lied to us about asbestos when it knew it killed people.
It lied to us about lead.
It lied to us – and still lies to us – about sugar – the biggest cause of obesity – not fat.
It lied to us about Teflon.
It lied about Thalidomide.
It lied to us about the motor car and still does, and helped us to destroy public transport.
It lied about the addictiveness of Oxycontin.
And now it calls global warming ‘climate change’.
I’m sure that others could add to the list.
Governments should act to combat these lies and rebalance the narrative. They have not acted enough (Canada banned asbestos domestically but exports it abroad where it is still allowed to be used).
The markets shot their bolt a long time ago.
Sorry but you’re simply not trustworthy enough to be left to get on with things are you? Game over.
As for the Tories – they will continue to vomit all over themselves because of the mess they have caused through austerity, BREXIT and Covid. This is because they think short term like the marketeers who fund them.
In the future, we need firewalls between markets and government so that Government can do its job of protecting consumers, workers and the planet and not the over-permeable membranes that have existed between public and private for too long.
Good list
Calibration…
A very boring subject but the cost of changeover from MKS (metres, kilogrammes and seconds) to FPS (feet pounds and seconds) as a basis for commerce or science is very likely to be both an astronomical and unnecessary cost as well as having the potential to introduce another barrier to trade.
In cultural terms the constituents who understand these units properly are at least my age (born in the early sixties or thereabouts) or older suggesting that this is another distraction that might appeal to many core Tory voters (ie retired) and not be understood by others.
We’re not going to do it
But 450g might be called 15.9 ounces in future
Britain was actively talking about metrication from the early 1960s – well before and independently of joining the EU, and for good economic reasons. Ditto decimalisation, but perhaps the muppets in Downing Street would prefer to reintroduce farthings and sixpences and half crowns. Most of the Commonwealth has done decimalisation and metrication properly, and not looked back. The US does its own thing. But the English have an obsession with our lost Imperial past. It is so sad. It is over. Just let it go.
Apart from those with an insane desire to bamboozle and torture generations of schoolchildren with pointless mental arithmetic – not to mention confuse two generations of shoppers who’ve never used Imperial measurements, and confuse those in their 60s and older who might just remember them – who wants to have to recall 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet (36 inches) in a yard, 22 yards (66 feet) in a chain, 10 chains (660 feet) in a furlong, 8 furlongs (80 chains, 1760 yards, 5280 feet in a mile). Or 16 ounces in a pound, 14 pounds (224 ounces) in a stone, eight stone (112 pounds) in a hundredweight, 20 hundredweight (160 stone, 2240 pounds) in a ton. Just throw out some more random numbers while you are at it. The idea that this is any way a “natural” measurement system is for the birds. Every nation had its own historic measurements – often several inconsistent systems – and there was a reason to standardise.
A pound is already 454g (so half a kilo is 1.1 lb, or 17.6 ounces). A pint is already 568 ml (so a litre is 1.76 pints). Just what is the point?
This is all populist distraction and Brexit theatre, like the “restoration” of blue passports (which the EU never prevented, as other countries within the EU using their own colours demonstrates) or the return of “crown” marks on glasses (which again, the EU never prevented).
I entirely agree
I agree, and I don’t think this sort of law can conceivably make it through any consultation stage. It would be wildly unpopular with most people, and even it’s advocates are likely to be lukewarm about it.
It’s just a bone thrown to the brexiter crowd to try to boost Johnson’s rapidly waning popularity and buy him some short term support. It’s aimed to win positive headlines in the express and mail for a day, and that’s likely it’s resting place forever more.
Perhaps they will create a deliberate culture war later, by trying to force fractions of an inch onto an “engineering liberal elite”, or make “left wing scientists” measure in farenheit, just to try to annoy them, but I doubt there will be much conviction behind it.
“But the English have an obsession with our lost Imperial past. It is so sad. It is over. Just let it go.”
Well, certainly some of us have. The stupid ones, that is. The depths of stupidity and mendacity of Johnson’s government is breathtaking. Who knows how far they’ll take this nonsense? Let’s hope it is just a piece of quickly forgotten drivel for the moron press and its readers to salivate over on Queenie’s 70th, and then dropped.
Like the insane proposal to cut 20% of civil servants to pre-Brexit levels which completely ignores all the extra CS staff required now that the UK has to do stuff the EU did, and the thousands of extra staff required to make trader with the EU much more difficult.
Metric v Imperial.
I was born in the mid 50’s. I had a Saturday job in a shop when we shifted from Lsd to £.p. I can remember telling an older lady that her washing up cloth cost sixpence. She gave me a tanner (2.5p/6d). I had to explain it was 1 and tuppence ha’penny…..
I never had more than 5 minutes confusion between Lsd and £.p primarily, I would argue, because it changed completely. There was a short period of ‘duality’ but metric money was absolute within a couple of years of being introduced. No-one struggles with it.
Yet I cannot remmber how metrically tall I am (5’1″) or how much I weigh metrically (not saying). I have a rough idea how much a kilo of apples is compared with a pound of apples. I use metric weights when cooking.
I firmly believe that if we had the sense to use metric only for everything in the 70’s I would know that the speed limit is xKPH not 70MPH. I cannot grasp it because we have used tandem measurements for the last 40 odd years.
WHY does anyone think we should continue that stupidity?
Agreed
For what it is worth, I am a child of the 70s, so never really needed, used or learned Imperial measures, but still buy milk and beer in pints, expect to hear the weight of babies in pounds and ounces, and measure distances by miles (and speeds in mpg, except when it is m/s, or knots, or fractions of the speed of light: the speed of light is almost exactly one foot per nanosecond). I’m comfortable with a 30 cm ruler being 12 inches long, multiplying by 2.5 to get from inches to cm or by 1.6 for km to miles, and by 2.2 for kilos to pounds. I ought to remember that a pint is a bit more than half a litre, and 2 pints of milk is about 1.1 litres. I really don’t care if greengrocers sell a pound (454g) of apples or sweetshops sell sweets by the quarter pound (113g) as long as it is clear to everyone what the price is, in a way that everyone can understand.
70 mpg is about 112 kph. Since Australia metricated in 1974, speed limits tend to be 50, 100, 110 kph – that is, 31, 62 or 68 mph. Life goes on, and nobody thinks about it.
This is the same sort of backward-looking “sun never sets” golden age “never had it so good” faux-nostalgic nonsense that leads to the proclamation of Port Stanley – a village with fewer than 3000 residents – as a city. WTactualF.
On the main point – of course, we are social animals, not isolated individuals or families. The reason we are so successful as a species is that we cooperate so extensively. There is so much we can achieve, if only we put our minds to it and ignore distractions from false prophets.
Agreed – especially the last
Wow, thanks Richard, an uplifting and vital blog. Yes, there can only be one way out of this, as you say “…that we must act for the common good in the face of common threats”.
I am certain, though, you will be trolled as a ‘communist’ or a supporter of Xi Jinping/Hu Jintao (‘Community of Common Destiny’) and I believe that’s not where your heart is or what you meant.
This blog is fabulous – keeps me sane. Thank you.
Thank you
It helps keep me sane too
This imperial vs metric issue is another of those ludicrous issues thrown out by this useless Tory government to stoke up the culture wars in terms that please it’s natural electorate, which is generally over 60 years of age.
It certainly astonishes me when I hear some of the things they believe and expect the future to bring if “we” are not vigilant.
This is an affliction that can make otherwise intelligent people subscribe to the most outlandish ideas in all the spheres that one could care to name. It’s an unhealthy breeding ground for thinking that can be persuaded to grasp plainly and clearly unacceptable ideas such as fascism and worse. Who in mainstream politics is sounding out warnings on this? I personally find this silence deafening.
And Johnson continues on his merry way consolidating his ill-gotten political gains.
I very much regret that despite the irrefutable and burgeoning scientific evidence regarding the climate and ecological emergency, the utterly corrupt Tory government in Westminster (among many others, especially in the global north) has already ensured the demise of life on this planet. It very much fear, is too late.
Thanks for this. I’ve just read Jason Hickel’s “Less is More” which provides a very thorough case as to why continued capitalism is incompatible with sustaining any kind of civilised life on our planet beyond the next few decades. We are in desperate need of a politics that gets this, but to challenge capitalism is still considered heresy. It’s madness.
Cf. Lacan’s Discourse of the Capitalist, Seminar 18, 1969/1970.
Link?