Why is “idealist” a term of abuse?

When I was younger I became accustomed to being dismissed as an “idealist” for some times daring to suggest that people could try and build a fairer system to live in. God knows how many times I found my arguments countered with the retort that I wasn’t “living in the real world”. The corruption of socialism and communism when both systems were adopted in different parts of the world in the last century provided a perfect riposte to anyone who dared to suggest either provided a path to a potentially better world than the capitalist orthodoxy which had governed the affairs and commerce of people since the 1700s.

Of course, in many instances, the so-called communist and socialist societies were nothing of the kind. Be that as it may, if there is one thing I have never been able to accuse anyone on the capitalist side of the argument of being it is an idealist, purely because there are no ideals, that I can see, in capitalism. What is an ideal capitalist society? I don’t know. I begin to wonder if there is such a thing.

How can you have an ideal society based on the premise that people will act from purely selfish motives in pursuit of material reward? How can a society that entrenches the division between wealth and poverty be ideal? People say capitalism works because it is based on human nature, but what does that say about human nature? And is it really so wrong to try and change how people think and react?

For something which is portrayed as such a dynamic economic force, capitalism is a remarkably passive phenomenon. The market sets the rates and the rules and humans bow down in obeisance to it. The market decides whether something is viable or not – it is not up to us to decide what can and cannot be done or how the world can be made a better place. Really? How exactly does the market make these decisions? What are its ideals? Don’t know? Join the club.

So if you want to know why idealist is a term of abuse for so many believers in capitalism and the free market the answer is really quite simple: it’s something they can never be accused of themselves.

And the winners in the recession are…

Ordinary people may be losing their jobs, pensions and houses, but there are two groups who are seeing a big rise in the current economic climate: investment bankers who stand to share record bonuses this year of as much as £6bn…and criminals. Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised given that both groups are united in their inability to relate to the plight of normal people and enjoy a blind sense of entitlement to their own ill-gotten gains.

As surely as night follows day (or day follows night, depending on where you’re standing), crime increases as employment decreases. In a country like Ireland, which has introduced a recruitment freeze on the police force, we are faced with the idiotic situation of experiencing a reduction in police numbers as crime surges.

I sincerely hope the government’s plans for dealing with the huge debts in our banks through NAMA are better thought out, but I have my doubts. And I wonder if the UK’s announcement of an extra £30bn investment of tax payers’ money into Lloyds and RSB will be any better. Still, anything to avoid a proper nationalisation where the people have a say over the investment of their money into failed banks. Much better to nationalise the debt and leave the banks free to carry on regardless.

What do you own?

Looking back on the golden age of consumerism, it’s not hard to see why so many people were so easily suckered. The gray spectre of communism which had overshadowed the world for the second half of the century had been vanquished, socialism was on the wane and global capitalism was on the march.

Suddenly, ordinary people were able to buy houses, cars, TVs, stereos, computers, furnishings, pretty much anything they wanted. And they didn’t have to wait until they’d saved up to do the buying because whatever they wanted, they could walk into a shop and get today. They didn’t need money because everyone was willing to give them credit to buy all the things they saw advertised on TV and in the newspapers. Nearly anyone could walk into a car showroom, sign some papers and drive away with a brand new car.

Not surprisingly, everybody laboured under the delusion that they owned lots and lots of stuff but then the credit crunch came, the banks turned off the credit taps and it became all too apparent that the only thing people owned was debt. Lots and lots of it.

All of those things which consumerism had taught us were visible confirmation of wealth and prosperity suddenly became a way to measure our level of indebtedness. Property developers went overnight from owning banks of land worth millions or billions to people saddled with barren plots of wasteland worth a tenth of their value. Ordinary people who had been encouraged to turn the dream of owning their own home into investing in the property market saw their primary “asset” plunge in value and turn, overnight, into a liability.

We were fooled into helping to fuel and grow the ‘boom’ of the first part of the 21st century with rising levels of debt. Here we are in 2009, not so proud owners of massive amounts of personal debt. But if you thought things couldn’t get any worse, ask yourself this: Given those record levels of personal debt, how come the people have been hit with the sucker punch of taking on the banks’ debts as well?

Why are the people fighting among themselves?

Here’s a question: If someone was bashing your neighbour around the head with a stick would you

a) join in

b) help him to fight off the attacker?

I ask because it appears that in many Western economies large numbers of people are opting to join in. Here we all are mired in a desperate economic situation wrought for the most part by the banks and investment houses (and paid for by the general populace), and yet the main gripe most people seem to have is with what workers in the public sector are getting. In Ireland, for example, there appears to be a particular relish in people working in the private sector who have taken pay cuts or lost their jobs in calling for their counterparts in the public sector to pay up for the misdeeds of the banks and property developers. In the UK George Osborne has proposed a pay freeze for the vast majority of public sector workers.

There’s something patently ludicrous about people who have suffered so much during the current economic disaster doing their utmost to drag their public sector colleagues into the hole they find themselves in when what they should be doing is joining forces and holding the politicians and bankers to account for the reckless behaviour which put them there in the first place. It’s almost as if they would get more satisfaction from seeing ordinary people like themselves suffer than do anything to hold the people at the top to account.

It really is something when the debate is framed in terms of public sector employees giving up the good things they have – better terms and conditions, pensions, holidays and union protection – in favour of the same rubbish conditions, worthless pensions and job insecurity that people in the private sector have found themselves foisted with. Surely the two groups should be making common cause to improve the terms and conditions, job security and pensions of all workers?

New approach to motherhood could stop rise in Down’s syndrome

I was disturbed to read earlier this week that the incidence of diagnoses of Down’s syndrome in foetuses scanned in the womb and children born with the condition in England and Wales had increased by 71 per cent from 1989/90 to 2007/08. The two main causes were improved diagnostic techniques and the fact many women were choosing to have babies later in life.

While there are many reasons why women find themselves in the position of delaying motherhood until much later in life than they did in the past and they are, in and of themselves, no cause for condemnation, the fact is there is an effect which is the substantial increase in the likelihood of a baby being born with Down’s syndrome.

Except for the fact that despite the increase in diagnosis of Down’s syndrome, fewer babies are being born with the condition because more pregnant women in this situation are choosing to abort their foetuses – 92 per cent in fact. Without those terminations, there would have been a 48 per cent in the numbers of births of children with Down’s syndrome.

What are we to make of a situation where foetuses are being aborted because they are diagnosed with Down’s syndrome but they would be far less likely to have the condition if their mothers were younger? For my part, I feel sadness at the hardship, pain and distress women in this position suffer (as well as sorrow at the ending of potential lives) as a result of what might be described as an accident of timing.

The far from startling fact is that, in many cases, women aren’t choosing to have children later in life but being forced to do so by outside pressures, be they economic or social. It’s only right that we should be doing something to help women have children at an age that is better suited to developing a foetus that will grow into a healthy baby.

For example, we might try to make it easier to balance motherhood with work so women don’t feel they have to hold on to their careers for as long as possible before trying to have children. Or we might seek to attach an economic value to motherhood which essentially rewards women for having children earlier in life rather than viewing it as an economic cost.

But I don’t think we should be wasting time and effort on trying to buck nature by devoting research to help women achieve motherhood later in life. That would only serve to entrench a situation that surely we would be better placed reforming instead. Whatever the solution, I feel certain that if the positions were reversed and it was men that gave birth, we would have already arrived at it.

A World Without Vision

Why are the two great utopian creeds of religion and socialism in retreat in the western world? Is it because they offer visions of utopia at a time when capitalism rules because it reflects the short-term, fragmented consciousness of an age where distraction and entertainment are used to divert people away from any deeper thought on the bigger issues that might result in a more equal society and world?

 

Could it be that the more capitalist the society, the greater disconnection from long term conviction, belief and faith in the ability to effect significant change? Does capitalism lead to a feeling of powerlessness against the onslaught of consumerism and diversion where marketing, advertising and PR pave the way for another short term craze, obsession or must-have?

 

If you want to see what capitalism has done to the western world look at all the parents anxiously scouring the shops and the internet in the run-up to this Christmas for the year’s have-to-get toy. The message of Christmas is consumerism on an epic scale, as over-the-top as the lunch most people sit down to eat on the day itself and, ultimately, as disappointing. The toys that cause such joy on Christmas morning are often discarded and abandoned within days or weeks, some times they don’t even merit a second glance after the wrapping paper is ripped away. It’s a sad reflection of the times we live in that the most important day in the Christian calendar has been transformed into Consumerfest.

 

Is it any wonder so many of us feel a gnawing emptiness in our lives when we live in a world where disappointment is such an integral part of the package? Desire and anticipation fire through our veins as we hunger for ownership of an item, be it the latest electronic gadget, pair of shoes, CD, DVD, iPhone, but so often, like our children, we begin to feel a tiny trickle of dissatisfaction even as we take them out of their boxes or wrappers.

 

No wonder we seek to counter these feelings of dissatisfaction over the value of our purchases by seeking validation of their desirability and approbation from our friends and colleagues. But isn’t that what everybody does in the adverts?

 

Is consumerism also what drives people in the western world who have given up on the arduous requirements of adhering to traditional Christian religions to seek out alternative faiths which place far less burdens on their devotees – be it the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, his purple clothes and tolerance of sexual freedom in the 70s to Madonna’s embrace of Kabbalah – and to drop them almost as quickly once they have ceased to be this year’s ‘must-have’ spiritual accessory?

 

And is it really any wonder politics too has become so meaningless and powerless in a world ruled by consumerism and short-term gratification? How effective can any politician be when he or she must contend with a populace unwilling or unable to recognise that nothing happens overnight, to understand grand plans and visions are subject to set-backs and disappointments before they can reach any type of realisation?

 

How can anything significant and lasting be achieved when most people in the western world have been conditioned through rampant consumerism to have such a short attention span? Take a look at the current attempt to address climate change. Is it really possible to get people to recognise the scale of the problem and commit to the huge structural changes required to halt it?

 

Can a generation reared on consumerism really grasp the magnitude of such a challenge when they have spent all their lives being sold the promise of quick and painless solutions to every problem they have ever faced? Furthermore, do politicians have the will to push through the required changes when they rely for their re-election on those very same people – when they actually may be those very same people themselves?

 

Could it be that without the countervailing forces of religion and socialism to balance consumerism and emphasise sacrifice in the here and now for the greater good, capitalism will prove itself unable to effect any genuine transformation in human behaviour that will stem the tide? The truth is life is a struggle and great things cannot be achieved overnight, even if there are miracles along the way. But without a vision to inspire that involves all of us and recognises the rights of everyone to an equal measure of the wealth and beauty of this planet, we may have no hope of reversing the climate of atrophy and passivity which consumerism has delivered.

Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

It’s getting very tiring listening to politicians continually upbraiding the bankers and telling them to modify their behaviour when it comes to awarding themselves huge bonuses because there has been a change in the public mood. Seems like there isn’t a day goes by without someone telling them they need to be more sensitive to the public mood, or that they need to be grateful and somehow humble because without the support of billions of pounds/dollars of taxpayers money they wouldn’t be making the profits they are today.

Lord Myners, who happens to be one of the most vocal when it comes to talking about bankers’ pay, was at it again last night, warning bankers that taxpayers would not tolerate huge bonuses.

“Contemplation of big bonuses in these conditions is nothing short of a market failure,” he said.

He didn’t want to bash banks but thought they ought to take heed of the prevailing public mood and reform the bonus system themselves. There was a vague warning that the government might take action if they didn’t do anything, but I doubt many bankers will take any notice. Over the past 12 months or so, the US and UK governments have done SFA to provide a corrective to the reckless behaviour of the banks and their mad bonus systems, so you can understand why the bankers are hardly quaking in their boots at the prospect of any legislative measures in the future.

The maddening thing is that politicians are in a position to do something about it if they wanted because the will is there. At least it is from the voting public. Sadly, our political representatives are too much in thrall to the city and big finance to act on our behalf. It seems that the justified anger of millions and millions of ordinary people counts for nothing against a few voices in the boardrooms of the world’s largest banks.

Capitalism is an evolutionary dead-end

There are times when I wonder if the ascendency of capitalism has trapped the human race in an evolutionary cul-de-sac, at least in terms of the development of political and economic ideas and practice. I look at how our systems have developed over the past 100 years or so and can’t help but wonder whether we are going back in time, rather than forwards.

Could anyone looking into the future in the aftermath of world war two have believed that hunger and poverty would still stalk the globe 60 years later? Would they have anticipated that fighting and conquering the forces of fascism would result in a society that was more unequal in terms of wealth distribution and opportunity? Who would seriously have predicted a situation where obvious benefits to the overall populace such as universal healthcare would be attacked as “communist” and “anti-american” on the other side of Atlantic and besieged by market forces here?

Who would have believed we would be subject to several recessions of increasing severity that would condemn millions of people to unemployment and poverty while the wealthiest individuals remained unscathed? Who, for that matter, would have been able to imagine a situation where the actions of a few reckless and incredibly wealthy individuals would effectively gut the Anglo-Saxon banking system and result in many of the (steadily increasing) poor having to pay for the sins of the few?

Economic madness, yes, but political insanity too. It appears, on current evidence, that the same scenario is likely to play out again further down the line because of the reluctance of the political class to do their job and impose sufficient regulations and standards on those who take huge financial risks in the pursuit of ever-escalating bonuses. People talk of the market being “self-regulating” when what they really mean is “inherently unstable” because the only way in which it regulates itself is through crashes and recessions.

Often when I try to advance the suggestion that the global free-market capitalist orthodoxy that rules most of the planet is a symptom of evolutionary retrenchment, people reply that capitalism rules “because it’s human nature”. Which is my point exactly. If we were evolving, I believe we would have produced a different method of conducting our daily political and economic life by now which would have progressed well beyond a system that is hundreds of years old.

Social democracy and socialism represented differing approaches to political and economic conduct that at least tried to take capitalism beyond the law of the jungle. The fact that both appear to have fallen by the wayside shows, to me at least, that we are in danger of slumping into a state of helpless atrophy that will lead to the eventual collapse of humanity. We need to wake up and develop a higher state of human collaboration and political and economic interaction if we are to have any chance of survival.

The productivity myth

There’s nothing politicians and business people like better than to extol the virtues of greater productivity and reduced costs as a way to help pave the way to a brighter future and a better world. And there’s no doubt productivity can be improved, especially if you bring advanced systems or machinery to bear on an existing business or manufacturing process.

However, as the chorus concerning productivity builds in volume and scale I’m becoming more and more convinced that in all areas of human industry from business and the private sector to financial institutions, the public sector and government, there is a base level of inefficiency which cannot be improved upon unless you remove the human element entirely. This is, I think, because we, as people, have an inbuilt level of unproductivity that is there to keep us sane and human. Without it, we’d become machines.

The same goes for the public sector and government. Theoretically, you could make many parts of them more efficient but you would soon reach a point beyond which they would cease to function as providers of services for the greater good of the public and become, instead, servants of productivity. Health systems, for example, have a natural limit on productivity because they need to balance the need for better cost management and efficiency against the requirement to try and keep patients alive and return them to health.

Often productivity is merely used as a euphemism for cuts but if that’s the case, let’s be honest about it and say so. Even here, we might wonder whether cuts are ultimately beneficial. If you reduce the numbers of people employed by the state, you may well reduce the cost of government but those people still need to find work elsewhere if they are to continue to be productive tax-paying members of society. Otherwise, if they are no longer gainfully employed, they become a burden on the state and the people left in employment end up paying more taxes to support them.

Instead of allowing business to use the current economic crisis as cover to bring public sector pay down, we should be ensuring that private sector employees are brought up, where appropriate, to the same level. Pension provision, for example, is not a consequence of public sector employees being favoured above private sector counterparts but of the decision by voters in most Anglo-Saxon capitalist systems to elect governments that used cuts in taxation regimes as a trade off with people to opt out of state provisioned pensions in favour of less secure and less favourable private schemes.

If we are to talk about the myth of productivity, let’s look at how so many people have been forced into a situation where they are individually purchasing pension plans and healthcare at a cost far above what they would pay on a collective basis through taxation for a much better standard of provision. You see, we really aren’t that productive after all.

Who is worth the most?

In a world that deems what people earn to be the most appropriate measurement of their achievement and importance, it’s easy for us to say which of our fellow human beings are worth the most. Fund managers, city grandees, big bankers, footballers, pop stars, royalty, the landed gentry, retired politicians all fall into the bracket of “the great and good” when measured in terms of personal wealth. And they don’t neglect to let us know it when we might have the temerity to question their value, threatening to up sticks and desert us for fairer climes at the merest mention of redistributive policies that might help bring the masses even the slightest bit closer to their level.

Still, while the rest of us in the western world may fail to make the cut, at least we are worth more than the millions of poor souls in the third world who live a subsistence existence. Which may be a comfort to people who like the security of knowing their place in the world.

But let’s just pause a moment and ask the question again: who is worth the most? And let’s imagine that instead of using a value system based on personal wealth we choose instead to focus on our value to the planet we live on. So, now, let’s look at those jet-setting bankers, property developers, footballers, pop stars, retired politicians and fund managers with their second, third and probably fourth homes, luxury cars, yachts, gadgets and widgets and ask “just how valuable are you to the planet”?

And let’s use their carbon footprint as a measurement – given that it has a direct impact on the planet – and ask again, who is the most valuable: the people at the top of the wealth chain or subsistence farmers and workers in the third world? Who is helping the planet most and who is causing it the most damage? I know what answer the earth would give, if it had a voice. Just as well it doesn’t, isn’t it?