I mentioned yesterday that I was going to a model railway show. I duly did so, and greatly enjoyed myself.
A thought, inevitably, occurred to me as I was wandering around. In economic terms, model making (and many other hobbies) must be amongst the most unproductive things we can do. Vast amounts of effort is usually put into very small quantities of material input with a result that, if it were to be sold, rarely reflects the value of that time. And yet, what is produced is of great value to those making it.
This is virtually the exact opposite of what the economist values. They want to minimise labour input into any product, always seeking to maximise the material input instead. The result is a profoundly homogenised product that they actually say has only marginal value.
And before anyone sys I am playing with words when making that last claim, of course I am. And yet when doing so I seem to find an inner truth: most of what can be bought actually appears to have little value attributed to it. That is why we live in a such a throwaway society.
Further thoughts followed, of course. One was that until we cure the world of the economists's obsession with productivity that maximises material input in proportion to labour cost we will not solve three problems.
One is sustainability. Productivity as defined by economists demands we consume ever more material resources in proportion to human effort. We know that is not possible now. It is, literally, killing us.
Second, we need find ways to create meaningful work, which seems to me to be one of the great problems of our age. David Graeber described the world of work as being full of bullshit jobs. I would simply call them shit jobs, because that is what they are.
These jobs treat people as if they are material inputs into a process. Impossible demands are made (I have never yet been able to reconcile the commonly made demand for team players who simultaneously have a high degree of individual creative flair). Worse, meaning is absent. That is what productivity demands.
Third, public services and most things of value are destroyed. I refer, of course to what is called Baumol's Law.
What this economic law says is that as the private sector improves productivity, as it has been able to do by destroying the planet and creating shit jobs, those engaged in the public sector, the arts and other creative sectors like education have not been able to match those productivity gains.
A 50 minute therapy session still takes 50 minutes. Doubling the speed of most music does not make it better. The time taken to explain algebra to a child struggling with it is pretty much a constant, I suspect.
However, wages in the private sector have risen over time because productivity has increased. As a result those in the public, creative, education and other such sectors must do so as well or people engaged in them will have to move to the private sector. Politicians miss the point when they demand increased productivity in exchange for those public sector pay rises: that supposed increase in productivity actually destroys the service the public and other such sectors supplies.
The reality is that the public sector cannot and never will match productivity gains that can be achieved in the private sector as a result of destroying the planet. But that does not mean we should abandon public sector services as unaffordable, which is the supposedly logical consequence that economists now says follows from this because those services have, apparently, become unaffordable. Instead, it means that we should now accept that a higher proportion of labour resources must go to the state to supply those essential public services that we have always enjoyed, with a resulting increase in cost that we need to now pay. It's either that, or we destroy everything of value.
Can we expect politicians to get their heads around this very obvious idea? Or should we accept that what was once entirely affordable is now not so entirely because the costs of trashing the planet are not taken into account in economists' (and accountants') estimates of productivity?
What is it to be? A sane economics that says we must stop trashing the planet so that we not only have a chance of survival but also can have the things (like the NHS) that we value, or are we to just live in a literal throwaway society where everything of worth is going to end up abandoned and destroyed?
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Can I refer you, Richard, to Whitleyism? Thatcher (who else!?) dismantled much if it but once upon a time – 100 years ago – great men understood that the public sector had to compete for ‘the best minds’ and therefore had to compete with industry on a level playing field. As a young man – 50 years ago – my pay as a junior civil servant was determined (following analysis and negotiation) by the ‘packages’, as we’d now call them, of my old mates in banking, insurance etc…my ‘analogues’ – thus their cheap mortgage and company car was translated into £££…and the pay of teachers, nurses, librarians and other ne’er-do-wells in due course reflected this …’caught up’.
Interestingly the pay of MP’s was fixed in those same tiers giving the Member for, say, Henley a unique insight into the lives of their constituents!
The implication, I guess, is that if ‘Shit Jobs UK’ paid their staff £100k a year then they could expect that pay, or their profits, to be taxed at the level necessary to pay the teachers who would produce the next generation of ‘creative blue-sky thinkers’ for Shit Jobs.
Somewhere in the last 40 years this essential link got broken/was deliberately and cynically trashed (though Whitley Councils, and ‘ism’ is still out there). It’s how we arrived at where we are today. Under every rock you’ll find a Thatcher.
Submitted for your consideration… and comment! Go well.
Good point
So true
“ A 50 minute therapy session still takes 50 minutes. Doubling the speed of most music does not make it better. The time taken to explain algebra to a child struggling with it is pretty much a constant, I suspect.”
There is already AI therapy, Eliza being the first in the 1980s. Not that it’s worth much, but I expect that will improve over time. Minimal labour involved. Consumption of music is not improved with speed, but production now involves almost no labour and is very fast, apart from live performances and recording sessions which must be a small fraction of music consumption. Intelligent tutoring is improving and involves little labour, although again, like self driving cars, not yet fit for purpose. The abundant society is at hand, we’re just crap at distribution. Oh, and it all needs energy, which is becoming harder to access – that’s the growing problem until we master fusion or similar.
You really think that therapy works like that?
Or teaching
Really?
I think you might need to walk about a bit more.
Sorry, but I doubt I will ever agree
I confess I thought Mr Goddard may be indulging a little irony here? It certainly worlks better as irony….
Maybe
I hope so
Eliza being the first in the 1980s. Not that it’s worth much, but I expect that will improve over time.
If it hasn’t improved in 40 years I don’t hold out much hope!
Spoken by someone who really isn’t into music. A lot of popular ‘music’ today is repetitive and based on monotonous bass rhythms for the braindead only. This of course doesn’t apply to Jazz and Classical. The singer/songwriter poets of the 70s’ particularly created material that is timeless as did the composers like Vivaldi, Beethoven,Mahler etc. etc.
Contrary to what you say – music consumption actually takes up a lot of time, is very relaxing and is often used as therapy.
Richard is into model making, I like a lot of others who love music either mod commercial equipment or actually make from scratch, amps, speakers, equipment racks etc. This way we not only have the enjoyment of raising the quality of playback but actually save an awful lot of money.
Big business doesn’t like this because it empowers us rather than making us passive inactive spectators – bread and circusses comes to mind.
I completely agree with the analogy of the time needed to teach algebra. As a college educationalist of young people with additional support needs I would also like to add that the increase in ASN young people coming through schools has increased since Covid, showing that the support, experience and expertise of real life teachers and support workers that was missing through covid, is essential for the social, physical and mental wellbeing of us all. I can’t remember where I read that society is judged on how we treat the most needy, and currently our government is failing badly. I see that my young people are often cast aside as not being ’employable’, which is nonsense, but in the economists view they are not productive enough, which is a failing we must all seek to address. Ask all employers you know to employ someone with ASN through supported employment, and let’s treat the most needy with the respect and compassion they deserve to create a better society, and we really can learn so much from it.
Thank you so much
I adhere with your sentiments
You are actually making the point that the neoliberal economists do not understand, and cannot handle. Economics is wholly dependent on economists measuring phenomena (and measure it badly, even using their own chosen but imprecise methodology) they think they can handle, but is not the the phenomena that matters most: human psychology.
Adam Smith understood this best because he began everything from the perspective of a philosopher developing ideas about ‘value’ as a phenmona studied as an expression of human psychology, and its extension into human interaction, culture and society.
Economists abandoned all of it for ‘rational choice’ in the 20th century, because they aspired to be the physisicsts of the social sciences (risible); and thought they could do it by measurement of whatever they though the could measure, and reduce to a simple equation (but they know precisley nothing about psychology or neuro-science, and still rely on long exploded ideas on these matters that are now, frankly laughable). Worse, it seems to me this all stems from the fact that they know little, and care less about the problem of ‘measurement’ itself as it applies to their very constricted discipline (they have wasted so long chasing moonbeams). What a mess we find in economics. Take out the politics (the economics that can be exploited by politicians to serve the gullible with propaganda); is there anything at all left?
No…..
I’m picking up some blow back against Stymied and Laboured’s below the belt attacks recently on Sunak.
The question you rightly ask is really meant for those who want to replace people like the Tories. I would not expect anyone in the present government or even Whitehall to have any new answers.
The truth seems to be however that those who want to be the ‘new boss’ don’t have anything new to say about any of this at all.
Surely Laboured and Stymied need to realise that we need more than just a slightly kinder or less corrupt version of what we’ve we’ve got now?
Surely?
You would think so
But Wes Streeting complained to Laura K this morning they he was bored at being asked howw he would deal with Tory mess. She retorted that wasn’t that exactly what he said he wanted to do and he just blustered
Richard,
Whilst there is a lot of truth in your article, can I just mention that there are quite a few of us in the private sector who do something both meaningful and creative. And as to productive, well, basically my job consists of sitting on my backside and making stuff up. I work from the comfort of my home, and beyond the comparatively small consumption of electricity that I require, don’t really contribute that much to the despoliation of the earth. Thing is, I just need to get something right once and it can be sold (for very big bucks) multiple times for as often as there is a demand. Distribution costs are so little that I doubt that we even notice them.
Team player? Well, if looking after colleagues and customers is that, then I must be. There are just two AAA credit rated companies in the world, and I sorted a show-stopper for one of them on Friday afternoon. I guess that could also be classed as productive.
But back to your point. I think that the problem is with economists comparing apples (essential public works and jobs) with oranges (like the stuff I do, and we do, BTW have many public sector clients).
I think that since the desired goals are so different, that you cannot simply apply any economic theory to them both and that anyone trying to do so is deluding themselves, not that this stops them presenting themselves as authoritative on the subject. I’m getting to the point where I think of them as useful idiots.
Your current tweet in the sidebar regarding doctor’s pay illustrates this rather nicely.
Personally, I think that anyone should benefit from work (with safety nets for those who cannot), but I’m enough of a cynic to think that the standard divide and rule tactic would fail in a contented and prosperous society, and that would really not do for those who benefit from it (the divide & rule thing), which is why we are where we are.
Long one – feel free to trash if you think I’m rambling.
I am not sure how very far apart we are
I did, of course, generalise in a short post
You highlight another key issue in the modern economy, that there is no marginal cost of production for some items sold
That also bless economic theory apart
Hobbies, perhaps like services, may not produce anything tangible, but they certainly have value.
A bit off topic, but there’s an item in the Guardian this evening suggesting Lloyds of London are considering offering the government insurance to cover the cost of a future pandemic. It seems everyone wants to get into extracting money from the NHS!
I do not see how they have anything close to the capacity to do so. This is absurd
Oh, and another thing to add. Me off work for medical reasons, private sector. I got paid full whack for 5 months, and I had private medical insurance to help me out. Had I been unable to return to work, I’d have been paid 75% of my salary until I reached retirement age.
My sister, public sector, gets “written up”, whatever that is, if she has the temerity to be off two days sick.
Perhaps a reason for the public sector (and plenty of the private sector too, for fairness – my son had the same problem) is a parasitical managerial class of what appear to me to be vindictive idiots.
I did work in the public sector, many years ago, and found that was the case back then. I lasted 8 months.
I guess, pay peanuts, get monkeys covers things.
May I suggest that people on £23,000 lording it over people on £19,500 is not a recipe for better productivity.
Anecdotal, I know, but just my $0.02.
I think you have just descended to pettiness
I very much doubt your previous story now: the two posts are evidence of BS, not credibility
Don’t call again
“As a result those in the public, creative, education and other such sectors must do so as well or people engaged in them will have to move to the private sector.”
And this precisely what is happening with the “junior” doctors and nurses. In this case they are leaving for foreign shores.
Which is why, as you pointed out, this is an existential threat to the NHS and for health care for those not wealthy enough to afford private. And, therefore, is an existential threat to our modern society in general, which cannot continue with a chronically sick workforce.
Precisely
Interesting, your blog post on model railways.
I remember Hornby models having “Made in Margate, Great Britain” on them many years ago, of course, they are now made in China, cost quite a fair bit of money.
Myself, I prefer finding older used models and doing a bit of bashing on them.
There is a wider story in there somewhere….
I run nothing ready made
Unless I have built it then basically I don’t use it
To me the system we have is insane. Money is a human system and only exists because we make it exist and it only functions in ways that we decide it does, no one else makes up the rules (unless Douglas Adams was right). It seems the whole system is geared to be as destructive and misery-inducing as possible. It is insane to create a rule that says that we can only fund services that support human and environmental wellbeing once we’ve engaged in activities that are destructive to human and environmental wellbeing (and then somehow forget that we just made it all up). There are no laws of the universe telling us how money has to work. If we decide to we can just directly create and fund whatever services and activities we like – the only thing standing in the way of this is us (and by extension govt). I’m with Chomsky on this one – we have allowed a needlessly cruel system to be created. And we’ve somehow forgotten that it’s a self-inflicted invention, a contrivance, it doesn’t exist outside of us, that it’s something we can change as we wish.
Agreed
[…] By Richard Murphy, a chartered accountant and a political economist. He has been described by the Guardian newspaper as an “anti-poverty campaigner and tax expert”. He is Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University, London and Director of Tax Research UK. He is a non-executive director of Cambridge Econometrics. He is a member of the Progressive Economy Forum. Originally published at Tax Research UK […]