Here’s Paul Mason’s 21 point plan for, well, summat. The harbinger of the revolution or some such:
THREAD: Here's my checklist for judging the Labour leadership candidates. 1/ They have to be from the left – there can be no going back to free market authoritarian politics… (full list below) pic.twitter.com/rjUXRe6RNk
— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) December 17, 2019
There’s a certain problem in here. 11 is in direct contradiction to 9 and 10. And that idea of “there can be no going back to free market” is equally in direct contradiction to 11.
Because the moment you start talking to professionals about the economy you end up being told that the only effective and efficient way of doing anything is that market.
Well, OK, not anything. But there is indeed a general agreement that there are parts of the world around us that cannot be handled in any other manner.
Take, for example, that Green New Deal thing. Absolutely every professional economist who has studied the problem comes back with OK, either a carbon tax or cap and trade. William Nordhaus got the Nobel for saying so. The Stern Review is quite specific – do not try and do this by central planning. For that is the inefficient manner and people do less of things that are more expensive. Precisely because climate change is so important it must be done in the most efficient manner possible – the one intervention into market prices then leave markets to process through matters – so that we do as much as is necessary to deal with the problem.
Even the IPCC says, in its scenarios for emissions, that markets and capitalism are the way to deal with it. The non-market models give distinctly worse results than those which do things sensibly.
That is, you can listen to professionals, experts, people who have a fucking clue, or you can have the Green New Deal and radical economic and fiscal policy. What you can’t have is both, professional advice guiding your actions and policies of counterproductive stupidity.
But then, you know, Paul Mason and economics…..
If he’s serious about No.16 then it’s time I bought me a baseball bat.
Hmm, “has to mobilise to stop fascists attacking minority communities”? Then Paul will be #Antifa? Yes, do buy one, your neighbors will have theirs.
& a kimono
With my legs?!
No, it’s still not clear that “climate change is so important” despite economists and Nobelists. The fact that we can finally detect human effects in the atmosphere, and the fact we can’t explain why the weather is so unusual, does not give any degree of causation, and won’t until we find a human-free Earth for comparison. So higher taxes has the EXACT same problem as greater regulation. And, like advocating “fair” taxes on “the rich,” it is an opening for much more of the same, and for greater regulation.
Oooh! “3/ Accepts Brexit will happen and we have to move on…we can’t become the ‘rejoin’ party.” So the next Labour leader must concede to Boris his single biggest campaign issue, and be satisfied nipping at his ankles with a Green New Deal, re-creating locally the annoyances over which Britain voted to leave the EU.
By the way, what exactly is authoritarian about the free market?
When my younger son was born, I took half my annual leave, having briefed my colleagues in advance of the estimated dates. When Personnel did the sums I had nearly all of it owing to me from previous years.
Don’t generalise!
I’d have thought that 1) and 4) together a bit of a stretch, as well as 2) and 3).
‘Free market authoritarian politics’. Hahahhahhaaahhhhhaaa!
@Tim W
FTFY
EU: Long on lofty rhetoric and short on economic principles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxIg4QA_J5s
But then, you know, Tim Worstall and AGW / AClimate Change….. :facepalm
There’s a bit of No True Scotsman going on there, Tim. Believe it or not, there are plenty of economists who think that Climate Change is utter codswallop and would never back any proposal that strangles trade.