I am not a fan of summer heat. I went to the Mediterranean a few times on holiday in the early 80s. Since then if given a choice I would rather head north to avoid summer sun, or at least summer heat.
This weekend is not, as a result, my choice of perfect weather. Today will most definitely be too hot and humid to do much. With luck, getting reading done will fill much of my time.
Well, that and thinking. And there is, to be honest, much to think about.
I could muse on why the populists are falling from power, with Putin the latest to look as though he is on decidedly thin ice.
There is also the very obvious failure of neoliberalism to muse upon. Little else explains the very apparent desire of much of the political establishment (Tory, Labour and the Bank of England) to impose a wholly unnecessary recession on the UK.
Less often noted, but even more worrying, is the lack of progress on any almost any aspect of climate change, where inaction is now going to be very costly indeed.
But most of all, there is that concern that always nags me, which is why are people putting up with this? Is it the debt slavery that does it? Could it just be the desire to have a quiet life, get on and not fret? Or is it the fact that there are so few alternative plausible narratives to the ones that the media presents us with incessantly?
I recognise all of these issues. I suspect the last very important though. In the absence of an alternative, people keep on keeping on because there is no choice.
That has made me think about a theme I last addressed some time ago, which is how to shatter the myths that maintain the status quo. I tried to address some of these issues during Covid, hoping that might be a period that precipitated real change. I was wrong about that. I also have to admit that I don't think my efforts were good enough. The approach I used did not work.
But it is, I think, worth revisiting this issue. What are the myths that need to be shattered now? And what is the best way to shatter them? Those are questions needing good answers. Thoughts welcome.
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Good Morning. It was 25C in the shade at 8.30 pm at home yesterday. I tend to think that climate change is the biggest existential threat to life as we know. The evidence is overwhelming supported by data and anecdote. It is a myth that we can’t do much about it and it’s too late.
The whole deeply and widely embedded myth that a national economy is like a domestic budget needs a massive campaign to explode it. People can get their heads around a domestic budget. Political economy is more difficult.
And finally people including me default to “what can I do today to make the most of today and avoid becoming downhearted “.
The household analogy is high on my list
What are the myths that need to be shattered now?
1. That wage rises cause inflation (as opposed to – in most cases – following inflation).
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/24/union-fury-at-reports-sunak-might-overrule-some-public-sector-pay-rises
2. That gov “can’t afford it” (public sector wage rises) – ignoring the reality that there is an economic multiplier with respect to wages & in any case gov claws back in tax most of the wages paid (thus wages paid to gov worker are +/- fiscally neutral)
3. That a move to a country that is low carbon means lower living standards – when the reverse is the case (lower energy bills & warm comfortable homes)
4. We can’t afford to move to a low-carbon economy: ignoring the reality that most projects have a business case, mostly positive.
5. More (green) legislation is bad – ref France – all car parks with +80 spaces MUST be covered by PV – by 2028. What’s not to like? (car parks usually corespond to buildings/elec demand ta-da – business case).
6: It’s all too difficult. Nope, it is mostly fairly easy – it needs gov will/can-do and some arse-kicking.
7. Too many problems. Nope, lots of business opportunities.
8. How to shatter the myths?: be prepared to ride rough-shod over them
Thanks
I think the greatest myth that needs shattering is what I call the “pot of gold at the end of the rainbow” theory of money.
By this I don’t mean that anyone thinks there is such a mythical pot, but that there is a common belief that there must be something that naturally limits the amount of money that exists. I.e. that the amount of money is essentially fixed.
But if you believe that the amount of money is fixed it follows that a government can only spend if it first gets hold of some of this money either by taxation or borrowing.
So such a theory of money mandates that taxation must always come before spending. On this theory the idea that you could spend and then tax back just seems absurd.
Noted
On which subject https://web.archive.org/web/20170716172422/https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/lee-carnihan/tax-and-spend_b_17452090.html
Perhaps with the idea that economics is a “science”. If that myth were to be exploded then much of the mystique around what goes on unchallenged in the mysterious edifice known as the “city” might clear. Not least amongst the political classes who may then be prepared to regain some control over economic policy.
Good one
Added to my list
https://profstevekeen.substack.com/p/farewell-vicky-chick
A relevant post from Professor Keen about the non-scientific nature of the discipline of economics:
“The fact that Neoclassical economics is still dominant today, when it has been empirically and logically contradicted for over a century, proves that Max Planck’s adage that “Science advances one funeral at a time” does not apply to economics.
If funerals alone could have killed it, it would have died in the decades after the Great Depression—the economic event which, more than any other, showed that there was something seriously wrong with the mainstream vision of capitalism as a self-adjusting system that, left to its own devices, will achieve a state of welfare-maximizing equilibrium.”
Steve might be right
Thanks for the link – a good post. The neocons & their dodgy theories would never have got anywhere were it not for the meeja – which has unthinkingly propagated the errors and lies of Hayek, Friedman et al. In turn this his given space to political imbecilies to weaponise the nonsense for their own ends. We can see the end result with Lisa Nasty of Liebore – wittering on about how she supported the BoE rate rise:
https://skwawkbox.org/2023/06/25/video-nandy-says-labour-supports-bofes-interest-rate-assault-on-ordinary-people/
She is little more than a glove puppet – saying what liar-Starmer has decided needs to be said to avoid vile-Liebore being outflanked by the viler-Tories. Liebore being intellectually incapable of generating a different narrative. The BTL is interesting – Reeves has a majority of 1K. Anybody fancy standing against this numpty?
Maxwells equations underpin much of modern radio comms. They are useful as far as they go, but incomplete – that completeness being delivered by Planck.
Proponents of the “It’s a science” theory get round that by suggesting economics is a social science, and go on to say that’s why it’s ok, indeed perfectly sensible, to invent a so-called (ie Memorial) Nobel Prize for it. Calling it a Fauxbel Prize works for me.
“What are the myths that need to be shattered now?”
Here’s a possible one. I’m three-quarters of the way through reading Perry Mehrling’s book on the American economist Charles Kindleberger called “Money and Empire”. Kindleberger thought there’d always be a need for a powerful key country to act as a policer of global economy and politics. He recognised that the policer has changed over time but currently needed to be the United States. As part of his belief whilst he recognised that finance capitalism would always find different ways through the market to provide capital for economic development both nationally and globally it did need the state dealer/lender of last resort to prop up this process for a variety of reasons when the market failed through avarice, stupidity or sheer out-of-the-blue events.
Is Kindleberger’s belief really true though? Is it more the case that having an economic and political ideology that incorporates labour and the well-being of planet spread through out the majority of nations would work better than having a dominate policer who exercises power through a world reserve currency and military supremacy? The United States has hardly been at the forefront ideology-wise for incorporating the needs of labour and the planet.
The question could be put another way is using money as a transactions easer or smoother the source of disfunctional ideology therefore a hierarchy of strong ideologically sympathetic states as we have now can be the only way forward? Kindleberger himself thought it a difficult path. He said you can have leadership but not followership and leadership tends to atrophy over time becoming unstable.
The austerity myth for one. The UK should try it.
For two, the myth that price controls can work. If it’s not meaningful there’s no point having it. If it is to be meaningful then at some point the true price of the desired product will be greater than the price the law allows you to sell it at.
I am intrigued by the notion of something having a true price.
Different companies price things differently. This is perhaps most noticable in the software industry. Microsoft and Apple rent out their software for a fee and take legal action against those who copy it. Canonical, Mozilla and Red Hat give their software away and encourage you to copy it, and the make money from consultancy work. Finally Oracle does a bit of both.
So what is the true price of an operating system? There doesn’t seem to be an answer to that.
I am afraid I don’t underdstand either comment.
The first sounds as if you mean the UK has not been through austerity and the second is just meaningless.
I think Sarky’s days are numbered here
Are you suggesting the UK hasn’t tried austerity?
Tell that to the families going to foodbanks.
3 in 10 children in the north east eligible for free school meals. Is that not because of austerity?
51,000 more children in poverty in the north east since 2015. Not austerity?
https://www.nechildpoverty.org.uk/news/51-000-more-north-east-children-pulled-into-poverty-since-2015
Here in Scotland some communities have decided enough is enough.They’ve had their fill of incompetence and dogma.
https://www.isp.scot/june-17th-june-23rd-2023
Only when enough people/communities forsake being keyboard warriors on social media and actually DO something (even if it does result in ‘The Peoples Front of Judea’ sketch from Monty Python), only then will the rolling stone begin to gather moss.
Richard, I suspect you may be underestimating just how resiliently people hang on determinedly to contradictory cherished beliefs, even in the face of decisive evidence of the contradiction. Human beings are not rational. Hume understood this, but you can ‘rationalise’ anything. Rationalism is, of course enduringly persuasive.
I know you are right
And I have to work in the assumption you may be wrong
“I suspect you may be underestimating just how resiliently people hang on determinedly to contradictory cherished beliefs” – @John S Warren
As Mark Twain said: “Is it easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled”.
Putin and Western neo-liberalism have one thing in common and that is greed about money.
Unfortunately, money makes things stick together – whether it be investment in infrastructure (making roads and bridges stick together and not fall apart) or equality (keeping communities and areas together and not being at each other’s throats).
As soon as money (investment) is taken out through greed, things begin to fall apart.
But greed is rampant and deaf, so once things start to fall apart, greed’s self-preservation kicks in and then becomes authoritarian and fascist in order to control the consequences of its own short termism and stabilise the income generation – looking to divert people’s attention away from greed and to others whose fault it is – as well as clamping down violently on any real dissent, creating fear (read Mattei’s account of fascist interwar Italy for example).
And the other problem is the simple human capacity to absorb hardship – to keep going – the spark of life no matter what – our resilience and adaptability as a species which when it comes to dealing with austerity, war or poverty – trying to get on with it.
Finally, another attribute that works against us and which is exploited by greed is human decency and relatability – whether by the formation of food banks or how the people I saw alongside me in NHS waiting rooms who could see that the NHS was understaffed and busy despite waiting for hours on end to be seen and whose patience was exemplary – all because they were putting themselves in the staffs’ shoes.
I offer this only to help you think about these matters. It is odd that our strengths as a species – the ability to stick together, to endure, to see common purpose – all have been turned against us in some way by modern capitalism, and now seem like weaknesses. It is perverse.
The cunning of unreason eh?
That there is no alternative?
Richard
just keep on doing what you are already doing — more people are listening to you
its a slow process
but truth will eventually come through
I find the difficulty in discussing economics with friends & colleagues is :-
1 persuading others that the orthodox economics views are plain wrong
2 — how money actually is created
3 — convincing others that the definition of economics is to do with using our resources to provide us citizens with well-being & NOT to do with the private sector producing goods & services which we dont actually need for our happiness i. e, we require old folks homes & not fancy derivatives
Noted
Myth 1: the point of debate is that one side wins and the other loses. Disagreement is not an opportunity for mutual learning. (though it should be).
Myth 2: a good leader cannot afford to have his/her beliefs challenged. Counter example: in the Great Depression FDR had to concede that his beliefs were mistaken.
Good points
It’s much more insidious than a simple failure of logic. ‘Sponsorship’ of sport, advertising and gambling use every means they can to promote *individual* greed.
They use notions like ‘freedom of speech’ to justify selfishness.
You write, Richard, of favoring a ‘mixed economy’ but the air-waves are not mixed.
The banks make huge profits – in no way justified by managerial skill, intelligence or effort – because they can.
George Osbourne is clever but he has been schooled to seek to be the best, to win, to be exceptional. Always, individual advantage trumps group benefit.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, an East German woman observed: ‘Yes, there is more wealth now – but before ‘there was a togetherness’.
“Until you start focusing on what needs to be done rather than what is politically possible, there is no hope. We can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis. […] And if solutions within the system are so impossible to find, maybe we should change the system itself.” Greta Thunberg, COP 24, Katowice, Poland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q0xUXo2zEY
“After the fall of the Berlin Wall, an East German woman observed: ‘Yes, there is more wealth now – but before ‘there was a togetherness’.”
Which goes back to the point I was trying to make earlier that a country may have leadership but not necessarily followership. The Berlin Wall fell because because most East Germans wanted a better standard of living and greater freedom to express their views. In Britain 80% of voters are unhappy with Rishi Sunak’s government for an even wider variety of reasons and will continue to be so I suspect after a Starmer term of government.
https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/eight-ten-britons-are-dissatisfied-how-government-running-country
It’s very hard to shake off an authoritarian cult be it Communism or Neoliberalism with a voting system that doesn’t genuinely seek to maximise followership so FPTP is very much akin to the one party system of Lenin’s so called “dictatorship of the proletariat”!
Confusing Osborne with his advisor and, I suspect, minder, Rupert Harrison, is like confusing the monkey for the organ grinder, a mistake they seem to have made at the Covid Inquiry.
For me there are two critical myths that need to be shattered; the myth that there is only a limited supply of money and the myth that wealth can only be created by the private sector. These two myths are preventing us from making any real progress in tackling the existential threats of climate change and bio diversity loss /ecosystem destruction and from addressing poverty and social inequality
Thanks
A mind map is developing
I think neoliberalism has endured because it makes promises that succeed for only a tiny minority:
1. Work hard and you will become wealthy (not if you are a public sector worker)
2. Property is a good investment (not for us after the world financial crash)
The next question is why has neoliberalism failed?
1. Greed.
2. Failure is due to the fault of the individual. Nurses don’t work hard enough.
3. Everyone should pay their way (no-one accidentally falls on hard times).
4. There is only tax-payers money nonsense.
The problem is not busting the myths per se, but busting them with enough people. You, Stephanie, Warren et al are doing great work but still it is unlikely that you are reaching even 1% of the population.
Perhaps, like Poo, you might as well give up sitting and thinking and just sit. (Although it isn’t clear that really idea comes from AA Milne).
That’s what this summer is about
A small point to demonstrate the inconsistency of the narrative of a government as a household.
If government is a household how come it can still leave debts to its grandchildren?
When the household dies – its debts, paid or unpaid, die with the estate. No grandchild can help.
If you’re going to follow a bull**** narrative it ought, at least, to be consistent…
🙂
We need to think in terms of money being our servant or facilitator, rather than at present, money and those who control it being our masters or dictators. This of course is pure idealism and requires a holistic approach to to tacking the problems we face rather than as at the moment the dominant theme is that the ‘market’ is the arbiter of economic and social planning and progress. Past utopian alternatives such as socialism anarchism etc have proved so far to have been gods that have failed. We need to see the world in terms of what natural resources exist and harness human ingenuity in providing the essentiails of life, and a fulfilling life that does not destroy the natural world and condemn billions to wage slavery, debt and misery. The role of economics should b modified so that ‘externalities’ such as the limit to resources, pollution, stress etc are fully taken into consideration and that money, rather than being this somewhat holy abstraction that the media portrays is really just the means of enabling transactions and is not a power in itself. When looking at climate change, it may be already too late to save ourselves but we can only hope that a sufficient number of people become aware of the urgency that things can change dramatically in a positive way.
Is that not socialism?
First and foremost there has to be a complete rethink of the UK’s education system. The indoctrinated belief in the vast majority of the population that the current acceptance of a political ideology based on the maintenance of inequality has to be demolished at every level in society
A job that at least one political party should be championing.
How about addressing the myth of perpetual economic growth? Mathematically it isn’t possible – continued exponential growth combined with finite resources will always end up in a “bust”. Capitalism as we know it depends on growth and the accumulation of capital, and we constantly hear from politicians that we must improve growth rates. However, on a decade – by – decade basis for at least the last 5 or 6 decades, global growth has been shrinking. The direction of travel is a downwards trajectory. I have read that even Adam Smith imagined a 200-year phase of economic growth followed by a steady state economy (although I haven’t personally delved into Smith’s books to verify this statement). I do not have a comfortable feeling in terms of what comes post – growth (and I am typically an optimist).
Noted
Myths? That economics is a science; point made already, but worth repeating again and again (the excuse is that it is a ‘social science’, but it spuriously mimics physics, not the methods of the social sciences). The lack of a rigorous experimental or observational methodology; and the profound inadequacy of its understanding of human psychology, behaviour or cognition.
Equilibrium.
Rational Choice theory.
Utility maximistation.
I shall stop there; the list is endless. It is scarcely a credible ‘discipline’ at all.
On my list…
Your breakdown of the components that comprise the national debt is very useful in countering the household analogy, as is your suggestion that it should be called something other than “debt” with all the baggage that accompanies the word.
In particular the ££billions of Premium Bonds and savings belonging to you and me, and the investment by foreign governments who need sterling.
That is definitely in the list
I believe the way to cut through the government bullshit is to base the narrative on peoples own experience.
1. We need to destroy the idea that the government has no money when it can print as much as required in the Royal Mint.
2. The government can borrow money from it’s own bank, the Bank of England, and there is no limit to how much it can borrow. The borrowing is paid off by the taxes the government collects. Just like paying off a credit card.
I would not put it quite the way you do, but both are on the list
The myth that we can only have public services if we make and sell widgets, that it is somehow impossible to directly provide services without recourse to a private sector.
That private businesses make money. No one makes money, they swap others’ money for things or services. The idea of the private sector making money that can then be taxed underpins, I think, the first myth. It implies the private sector creates money.
All of those are in my list
Poverty is the fault of the poor
– The reason poverty exists is because capitalism requires it. Poverty is the coercion. Poverty is what makes poor people play along in this system, which does not benefit them. Without the coercion of poverty, there’d be no capitalism. It creates poverty where it need not exist.
A thought about the household analogy
– It persists because the household is the perfect example of capitalist hierarchy – master over servant, Lord over slave, husband over wife, father over children. This cements a distinction between a public sphere, in which some men might participate as free and equal citizens, and a private sphere, in which slavery, patriarchy and the legal representation of a wife by her husband could prevail. These beliefs are still very prevalent.
We can put a price on “nature” and it is cheap and plentiful
– For capitalism, Nature is “cheap” in the double sense: in price; and also to cheapen, to degrade or to render inferior in an ethics-political sense, the better to make Nature cheap in price. (Jason W Moore 2015). This is fundamental but probably not an immediately obvious myth.
Thanks
Richard, one you won’t like.
The myth that money can only be removed by a specific process (taxation).
I suggest there is overwhelming evidence that fiat money can disappear into thin air as easily as it is created from thin air.
However, it is harder and messier to suggest a plausible mechanism (I have tried, and have offered a Bullingdon Club member burning a £50 note as a simple example https://sussexbylines.co.uk/the-mysterious-case-of-the-burnt-banknote/ )
After the 2008 crash, QE created large amounts of new money. But if the money that the banks lost no longer existed, austerity was pointless.
During COVID lockdown, where was the money that was not paying wages or supporting businesses? Does it still exist? A little may still be somewhere, but I suspect most of it is gone.
And you are wrong
Burning the government’s note does not eliminate its debt as it is unaware you have done so
Really important topic Richard. Right wing Political philosophy clings to the myths you have exposed for years. You could spend many posts on Nobel Laueate William Vickrey’s remarkable essay Fifteen fatal fallacies of financial fundamentalism
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.95.3.1340
Downloaded
Thanks
Mr Polito,
Hats off to providing a brilliant source! I was aware of Vickery in the context of game-theory and econometrics, but must confess I had never really engaged with his work. He was, incidentally a Georgist. We should revisit it. This work is an exceptional, prescient critique of most of our problems, and the reasons for it. Written in the 1990s, it is a devastating deconstruction of the disaster that is nealiberalism; fifteen forensically dismantled fallacies; effectively of the Chicago School and their minions. He gives us a word that we should all use, endlessly (repetition is the key to persuasion), to describe the orthodox neoliberal community: anarcholibertarians. That is what they are, creaters of anarchy.
There is so much I would like to discuss, but there is much still to absorb, thus I have chosen here simply to offer a one paragraph summary from the Conclusions. My advice for anyone interested? READ IT!
“(To) start on the road to real prosperity it is necessary to relinquish our unreasoned ideological obsession with reducing government deficits, recognize that it is the economy and not the government budget that needs balancing in terms of the demand for and supply of assets, and proceed to recycle attempted savings into the income stream at an adequate rate, so that they will not simply vanish in reduced income, sales, output, and employment. There is too a free lunch out there, indeed a very substantial one. But it will require getting free from the dogmas of the apostles of austerity, most of whom would not share in the sacrifices they recommend for others. Failing this we will all be skating on very thin ice.”
“creators”! Another typto to rack up. I must be in the lead now, even over you Richard.
No
You have along way to go
excellent choice John! I particularly liked Fallacy 14 – which begins … Government debt is thought of as a burden handed on from one generation to its children and grandchildren.
Reality: Quite the contrary, in generational terms (as distinct from time slices), the debt is the means whereby the present working cohorts are enabled to earn more by fuller employment and invest in the increased supply of assets, of which the debt is a part, so as to provide for their own old age. In this way the children and grandchildren are relieved of the burden of providing for the retirement of the preceding generations, whether on a personal basis or through government programs.
The great Marriner Eccles also worked this logical response into his amazing 1939 radio broadcast responding to the ‘debt ceiling’ types of his day:
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/historical/eccles/Eccles_19390123.pdf :
Why not worry also about the burden of all of the private debts on our
children and their children, because these debts will also be passed along
to future generations who will have to pay the cost of servicing or paying
these debts just as in the case of the government debt. We should know
that all debts, both public and private, are passed along from one generation
to the next, just as all assets, both public and private, are h&nded down from
one generation to the next* It may be that Senator 3yrd would be less worried
if there were no debts, but in that case, there would be no banks, insurance
companies, or other financial institutions.
Marriner Eccles, from which this prescient observation came in ‘Beckoning Frontiers’, (1951): “As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth … to provide men with buying power. … Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pump had by 1929–1930 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth. … The other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped.”
The suction pump is now digitised. It takes everything, and leaves nothing. If I may transpose Calgacus, they make a desert and call it stability.
So well noted and written
Myth: that “competition” (and the terms derived from it: competitiveness, for example) is simply an implementation of what is described in the typical Econ 101 textbook.
Now in my list
Excellent quote from Eccles, John. The interesting thing is that he said the same things when he rocketed on the scene in his 1932 speech to The Utah Bankers Association, and his background submission for his 1933 testimony to the senate: The unfair distribution of income creates an unsustainable economy. He was Fed Chair a year later!!
1932 – https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/historical/eccles/074_02_0003.pdf?utm_source=direct_download
1933 – submission to Senate https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/historical/eccles/074_03_0001.pdf?utm_source=direct_download
1933 senate hearings, (Senator Gore was not Al’s father).
https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/historical/eccles/sen_testimony_19330224.pdf
Billionaire Nick Hanauer has done some great videos which repeat Eccles’ messages, repeat his plainspeaking communication with the general public.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBx2Y5HhplI
https://www.ted.com/speakers/nick_hanauer
Thanks
Mr Polito,
You are providing an education. In Britain we are somewhat insular and the historical narrative over-focuses on Keynes.
Here is my question. Eccles, Ruml, Minsky, Vickery et al. How on earth did the Chicago School ever triumph? Was it Hayek’s pot-stirrers selecting the US Ivy League Law Schools for brain-washing the influential youth; over the academic economists, who merely provided the economic cover story? Or have I missed the point somewhere?
Money
Read Democracy in Chains, Nancy MacLean
Adding to my earlier comment, you may already have some of this from Joe Polito and others … and what I have written is probably less focused than you would like, on what this blog can accomplish.
Myth 1: It’s not happening – or if it is, it’s not serious. Rupert Murdoch’s view is something like – ‘It will only be three degrees hotter by 2100 and only one of those degrees will be due to humans’ … with the clear implication that the scientists are wrong and, in any case, he thinks it doesn’t matter (Source: Led by Donkeys).
To shatter: Reiterate peer-reviewed information by practising climate scientists. ‘Turning delusion into climate action’ – Prof Kevin Anderson https://www.sgr.org.uk/resources/turning-delusion-climate-action-prof-kevin-anderson-interview
Myth 2: It’s too late or there’s nothing effective we can do.
To shatter:
a) It’s desperately late but acting boldly can – or at least might – be effective. Advantages might not be imaginable at present.
b) Optimism is easier to live with.
c) Accentuate the positive:
i. Your challenge, Richard, is excellent.
ii. Some of the younger generation are on to it (Greta for one)
iii. Awareness is there (along with fear) – at least among educated people – and there is no escape to another planet.
iv. That James Murdoch, Rupert’s younger son, has broken from his father’s enterprise is an indicator of things to come.
v. When we give ourselves the time, all of us *can* imagine a better world.
vi. Michael Gove now recommends listening to experts.
Myth 3: Most, including, readers of this blog – believe that vigorous action is critically urgent.
No! If we did, we would never advocate ‘economic growth’ – for itself. There is little outrage. Greta Thunberg was right at Davos: ‘Either we choose to go on as a civilisation or we don’t’. ‘I don’t want you to be hopeful, I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day and then I want you to act.’ 25 Jan 2019 https://www.theguardian.com/environme…]
A further example: every coastal community on the globe is threatened by a combination of rising sea-levels from the melting of land-based ice and the thermal expansion of the ocean combined with more powerful storms, but causes, like unnecessary flights and motoring, are indulged, widely advertised and encouraged.
Myth 4: We know what is going on.
No! The media use ‘items of news’ to sell media and attract /distract to a) sell advertising b) promote neo-liberal and other myths. They do not seek to inform us comprehensively or even adequately.
There is very little attention given to future generations that will need to operate with very little fossil fuel (we have used all that is easy-to-get-at). We’re leaving the CO2 to be coped with, plastic and other pollution including multi-millions of useless vehicles, aircraft and ships. Last year there were 33 million cars in the UK (SMMT)
Other easy-to-get-at precious resources are now dispersed.
How to shatter myths 3 & 4: Ideally, a) No foreign ownership of media. b) License to operate c) Content controlled by sortition-selected board, perhaps.
Myth 5: ‘The public would never accept the necessary measures’ type of argument.
How to shatter:
(i) Use some of the lessons from the UK in May 1940 when Britain was losing the war; coalition government – no party-political game-playing; some control of the press; public service announcements.
Churchill created:
– an absolute commitment to success (‘We will never surrender’) and,
– if necessary, we will fight on alone – no need to wait for other countries.
The danger is not so obvious now but plenty of people – I think of parents – are on the edge of desperation.
(ii) Deliberate measures to accurately inform – and, perhaps, inspire.
(iii) Learn from, copy and cooperate with good practice in other countries.
Myth 6. Nothing is happening in other countries.
Monbiot has written: ‘When it comes to rich countries taking the environment seriously, I say: vive la France. Emmanuel Macron’s government is at least doing the bare minimum to avert the planetary crisis – and putting the UK to shame’
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/24/environment-france-emmanuel-macron-crisis-uk
Other countries are banning adverts for fossil fuels.
https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/08/24/france-becomes-first-european-country-to-ban-fossil-fuel-ads-but-does-the-new-law-go-far-e
There is more if we look.
Myth 7: Nothing can be done to address …
A. … Media domination of the minds of half the world’s people for *personal* aspirations for jackpots, individual winning and wealth at the expense of others obtained by gambling which is heavily promoted.
B. … Suppression of the imagination of what it must be like to be poor, hungry, bombed out your home or away from your land, deprived of a means of growing food —– by millions of others using cars, aircraft, jet skis … whatever … for amusement.
How to shatter?
*Address the negative aspects of advertising, gambling and the focus on the individual*.
Higher standards, and some bans, for advertising. Calling out deception and part-truths; focusing on integrity, honesty and sharing – as we do in our families. Limits on, or taxation of, wealth, income, ownership.
Re-examine Ivan Illich’s compelling Energy and Equity 1973. https://blogs.ubc.ca/landscapesofenergy/files/2010/11/ivan-illich-energy_and_equity.pdf
Prince William’s housing initiative is a deception. Zoe Williams describes the myth: ‘individuals can solve all their own problems, and if they can’t, Prince William can help’ (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/27/prince-william-homewards-homelessness-3m
Illich recommended enforcible ‘consumption maxima’, perhaps a number of square metres of floor space ownership per person. There are more bedrooms per person in the UK now than there have ever been. How is it permissible to assert that ‘there is a housing crisis that will take decades to solve’? [Also, building homes is energy intensive. This generation in the UK has far more than its share of properties.]
There must be repeated challenges to notions of ‘the free market’, ‘free speech’ and ‘freedom’ which are used to obsess audiences with personal, team and national ‘winning’, being the best, richest, individually acclaimed.
They also aim to obliterate serious consideration of communal prosperity and well-being. Few Brits can imagine a Freddie-Mac-Fannie-Mae type of society – on terms that do not change. A fair practice.
British banks by contrast, might use any excuse to extract higher payments from their customers. An absence of integrity.
*Creating community awareness using imagination*.
Communal well-being, cooperation, provision of public services need to be properly promoted.
Much more emphasis in schools on whole class, or whole school aspiration rather than individual ‘winning’.
To inform and inspire action, with dozens of audiences, I have used a carefully constructed programme to examine the facts about world hunger. This included a shut-your-eyes-and-imagine-what-it-might-be-like to be poor and hungry. The results were astonishing. Imagination can be used to awaken each of us to what we really want – rather than what advertisers or pundits tell us that we want.
Joe – many thanks for this
Copied and saved so I can be sure to come back to this
Tony Myatt’s book also cover mainstream economics, and how it compares to real-world economics.
The Microeconomics Anti-Textbook: A Critical Thinker’s Guide – second edition (2020)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Microeconomics-Anti-Textbook-Critical-Thinkers-Guide/dp/1783607297
The Macroeconomics Anti-Textbook: A Critical Thinker’s Guide (2022)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Macroeconomics-Anti-Textbook-Critical-Thinkers-Guide/dp/1350323713/
“The typical introductory economics textbook teaches that economics is a value-free science; that economists have an agreed-upon methodology; and they know which models are best to apply to any given problem. [..] The Microeconomics Anti-Textbook points out that all this is a myth.”
Mr. Burlington, thanks for demonstrating that people of goodwill can promote the values and quest for knowledge that can put the essentials first! And make things better!!
John you raise a very troubling question. It reminds of the a popular anecdote :After hearing Adlai Stevenson speak during his presidential campaign, an enthusiastic supporter called out, “Governor, you have the vote of every thinking person!” Stevenson replied, “That’s not enough, madam; we need a majority!” 🙂
It also reminds me of Mr. Burlington’s call for “integrity, honesty and sharing.” Too many rich and powerful people have too much influence on politicians and the media to as Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz says – rigs the system —
https://www.scientificamerican.com/video/a-nobel-laureate-explains-the-rigged-american-economy/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-american-economy-is-rigged/
Most amused