The values that unite us

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Those ‘great British values’ which apparently unite all of us who live on this island and distinguish us from the rest of the world have been on display again in recent days.

Yesterday, the PM praised ‘greed’ as a motivating factor before realising that he might have gone a bit too far and desperately asking people to allow him to unsay it. It was a rare moment of honesty from an inveterate liar (the saying of it, that is, not the attempt to unsay it) and an insight into the way the Tory mind works. It isn’t actually true, of course – not everyone, and not even every capitalist, is motivated solely by personal greed; if it were true, then capitalism would have collapsed a long time ago. And in the specific context of the vaccination programme, whilst Johnson may see their role as secondary to that of the pharmaceutical companies developing the vaccines, the role of volunteers and underpaid and dedicated NHS staff has been crucial. If greed were their only motive, there wouldn’t have been much of a programme. It is, though, part of the mindset of people like Johnson that the ‘little people’ don’t really count and contribute little – ‘success’ is measured by the ability of the ‘winners’ to extract great personal wealth from the economy at the expense of the rest of us, who are seen as ‘losers’.

Also yesterday, the Home Secretary made further announcements on the proposed new regime for handling asylum-seekers. Fresh from the news that she was planning to ship them elsewhere (it doesn’t matter where and neither does it matter whether the places to which they are to be shipped are happy to take them or not), she is proposing that even some of those granted asylum will remain liable to deportation indefinitely. This is the same Home Secretary who is behind the plans to outlaw many expressions of dissent.

Meanwhile, a few days ago, we had a Tory MP suggesting that anyone who does not love the hereditary monarch and the union flag should be encouraged to go and live elsewhere, and another Tory MP decided to use a parliamentary examination of the BBC to complain about the lack of union flags in the BBC’s annual report and demand that there should be more next year.

Veneration of greed, contempt for any display of altruism, inhumane treatment of refugees, outlawing dissent, unconditional support for heredity as a means of choosing the head of state, and a demand that a cloth symbol hanging from a pole be the object of love and admiration if we want to stay in the country of our birth – these are the ‘great British values’ on display this week. These are the values which they claim as unifying factors. They really are their own worst enemies.

The problem with distrust

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A lot of people are condemning those who have been stripping supermarket shelves for being greedy and selfish.  There’s obviously an element of truth in that, but it isn’t the whole story, and it overlooks the vital question of trust – or rather distrust.

Many years ago, I was on a management training course where the attendees were split into three groups to play a game which was a variation on the well-known ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’.  In three separate rooms, and able to communicate only via an intermediary, the three teams had the choice in each round to decide whether to try and co-operate or compete; if all teams co-operated every round then the total number of points gained would be maximised.  My team (and I claim some credit for influencing things in this direction) opted to play the co-operative route every round, but the other teams went for competition.  My team ended up with ‘nul points’, whilst both the other teams scored well.  But the total number of points gained by both the other teams was less than could have been achieved by a more collaborative approach which shared rather than accumulated the points.  I suspect that different people learned different lessons from the exercise – some learned that co-operation benefits all, whilst others learned only that people seeking to co-operate are displaying a weakness which can be exploited.  I’m not sure that the game really contributed much to the objective of the course.

The parallel with panic-buying is this: after the first round, those who chose to believe that there was plenty of food and that they should think of others have been left with very little, whilst those who bought everything in sight have more than they can eat.  So, what card should we play in the second round?  It’s important to note that whilst greed and selfishness might be motivating some, the more important motivation is the belief that ‘others’ will be so motivated; even those whose instinct is to act for the collective good can find themselves doing the opposite because they cannot depend on everyone else to think the same way.  And when ‘nul points’ = no food, it’s not easy to condemn that.  Distrust is a pervasive and corrosive thought process.

An appeal to people to behave differently coming from politicians who’ve been telling us for decades that there’s nothing wrong with greed, that everyone should look after themselves, and that the state has no, or only a limited, role in ensuring fairness cannot resonate.  It’s at odds with everything that they’ve said before.  Some politicians have been trying to evoke the so-called blitz spirit by way of precedent for the way we should act in a crisis.  It’s a very poor comparison based on a rose-tinted view of events, which overlooks the fact that an approximation to food equality came about not because of an outbreak of collectivism, but because rationing was imposed by central government.  And alongside that, there were widespread black markets where those with the wherewithal could still get more than their share. 

I instinctively want to play the co-operative game, and I have long believed that humanity can achieve more overall by working together than by competing, but the idea that collectivism can be born suddenly because a bumbling congenital liar expresses a vague hope that people will ‘do the right thing’ is very much one for the birds.  Dissembling optimism from someone who’s never been short of anything in his life, coupled with government inaction – or, at best, ineffective action – which ignores the ground truth of empty shelves is only going to push more people into the ‘get as much as we can when it’s available’ way of thinking.  And, much as I’d like to, I can’t really argue that that is an irrational reaction – forcing the whole population to play prisoner’s dilemma won’t end well.

MPs, peanuts, and monkeys

Tweet A common reaction amongst the very few who were willing to defend a pay rise for MPs last week was that if we want to attract the ablest into politics, we need to pay them more.  One or two even trotted out the old chestnut about ‘getting monkeys if you pay peanuts’.

Leaving aside the not entirely inconsequential fact that anyone who considers a salary of £60,000 a year to be ‘peanuts’ isn’t inhabiting the same world as most of us, there are at least two major fallacies with the argument.

The first is that ‘attracting the best’ is not at all the same thing as ‘deterring the worst’.  In the political world, what determines who gets elected has more to do with the popularity of a particular party in a constituency than with the ability of the candidates.  In the absence of any mechanism for assessment of ability in the election process, any increase in salary could end up, to over-work an already tired cliché, simply increasing the peanut ration for the monkeys.

And the second is that, even if we could agree on the definition of the word ‘ability’ (and that’s a big question in itself), where is the evidence that paying higher salaries attracts more of it?  There’s plenty of empirical evidence that higher salaries attract the greedy and the reckless (just look at the banking sector), but I’ve not seen any that justifies the claim that ‘ability’ follows money.  Indeed, some of the most ‘able’ people I’ve ever met have been academics and researchers; not amongst the highest paid in society very often, but then it isn’t money which motivates them to apply their ability in the way that they do.

In any event, do we want laws made by people who have only been attracted into the legislature by the high salaries paid?  Doesn’t that put a premium on those who are there for their own self-interest rather than the interests of society as a whole?

I agree with Boris...

Tweet …well, up to a point, anyway.  London’s mayor was recently castigated by some for saying that we need greedy people.  But he’s right of course – in context.  Given that a capitalist economy is based on competition, greed and inequality, saying that such an economy needs greedy people in order to operate effectively is simply a truism.

It what he didn’t say that is more important.

In the first place, greed isn’t the acquisition of excess wealth in itself – it’s the desire to require that excess wealth.  Most people – whether they desire to acquire excess wealth or not – will fail to do so.  Those who succeed will do so at the expense of others.  Under such an economic regime, most people – including most of those greedy people whom Boris says we need – will be losers in the wealth acquisition stakes.

More importantly, however, whatever the capitalists and their apologists never tell us is that competition, greed and inequality are not the only basis on which to build an economy.  One of the tragedies of modern politics is that the assumption that they are is so rarely challenged.

Don't tell the banks

Tweet It often seems that, as fast as I get my various spam filters set up to avoid the stuff, so the spammers find some way of getting around the controls, and their missives get through. I've never really understood why they think someone is more likely to buy replica watches or Viagra just because the title indicates that the e-mail content will be something completely different.

Anyway, one of the successful ones to get through today offers me a way of beating the credit crunch and getting a 215% return on my investment. It's obviously too good to be true, of course. But I do hope that they haven't succeeded in getting through the spam filters at any of the banks – based on recent performance, they might just fall for it.

The People's Flag

Tweet The first elections of which I have any memory are those of 1964 and 1966, when Harold Wilson ended 'thirteen years of Tory misrule'. That wasn't his only good line - I particularly liked the one about the 'white heat of the technological revolution'. I would have voted for him, if I hadn't been too young - although I knew better by 1970, when I was no longer so young.

One of the other big issues of the time was the re-nationalisation of the steel industry, an election promise which was implemented by Wilson. Nationalisation then was about taking state control of 'the commanding heights of the economy' - and it was intended to benefit the taxpayer. All very different from the 2008 version of nationalisation.

In my mind, the shift happened under the Heath government between 1970 and 1974, when the failing aero engine company, Rolls Royce was temporarily taken into public ownership. I still remember the little ditty of the day:

The People's flag is deepest blue
We're buying up Rolls Royce for you
But if it makes a profit then
We'll flog the b****** back again

This year we've seen probably the largest nationalisations in history as both the UK and US governments bail out large financial institutions at the taxpayers' expense. These are not nationalisations aimed at long-term benefits for the taxpayers; they are short term expedients, forced on governments because they simply cannot allow some institutions to fail.

I agree that the governments were left with little choice; they simply could not allow these companies to fail. We need to recognise, however, that these bail-outs must mark a very significant turning point in the way the economy is run. The argument for light or non-existent regulation, and for high rewards for successful companies and individuals, has long been based on the assumption that those who take risks should reap the rewards.

But what has now become clear is that, in some sectors of the economy at least, the risk is ultimately borne by us as taxpayers, not by the people making, or benefiting from, the bad decisions. I cannot think of a more graphic illustration of that than the news that the people in America who ran Lehman Brothers into the ground have had their bonuses protected as part of the takeover by Barclays.

Risk and reward is one long-standing principle – but there's another we should bear in mind; the one about paying the piper. If we as taxpayers are going to end up shouldering the risk, then I think we have every right to expect that governments will exert much more control over the activities which create the risk. For too long, governments have turned a blind eye to the insane way in which the financial markets have been turned into little more than casinos, where even the gamblers have often not understood the bets they've been placing.

And there's another thing that governments need to look at as well. Recent events have been driven in large measure by corporate and individual greed, and often highly short term greed at that. Would the temptation to take silly, excessive risks be as great if the rewards available for so doing were not themselves silly and excessive?