Dollhouse ideology

I've been watching the television series Dollhouse recently. I had been wondering whether to watch it because the pictures from the series advertising it tend to be of eye-candy and hint at violence: I have a bit of an allergic reaction to such presentations as they often go with superficial: maxing out the exciting visual and emotional impact but having little to say (except: "give us money"). However, I think that it is actually more interesting than the eye-candy image gives me to infer. Kudos to Joss Whedon for producing something a bit more intelligent and raising some interesting issues about being human: what makes us  'us'. Its premise is a bit like an updated and reworked Joe 90.

In Episode 6 they intercut a series of vox pops from a news programme about the urban legend of the Dollhouse. One of them has an interviewee saying something like "... if they could do something like this, it's the end of the human race". I found myself being annoyed with this. Why? Because it cleverly hides the fact that in the situation being portrayed, where in the scenario projected by the interviewee (some kind of university lecturer) human beings are enslaved by being made into a sort of robots. The doomsday scenario misses the fact that in such a world there would be a whole class of people who would not be subject to such control: those rich and powerful enough to maintain the system because they would want its services. In other words, this little comment on such a world elides the humans who control it and in doing so, hides from view the real problem.

Just like real life.  This is a little mirror on the West: the haves' string pulling and circumvention and the exploitation of the rest is being covered up: attention is redirected (often very successfully) so that 'we' rarely if ever become aware of where power lies and how it is being further accumulated. This musing comes hard on the heels of reading a recent piece in the Guardian by Owen Jones making a closely related set of points. So Dollhouse, interestingly, gets close to making such a point but then ends up, apparently (at least at this point) colluding with the concealment of privilege.

PS. After having seen the whole of the 2 series ... in fact towards the end of the series we get to understand that the scenario I come to in response to the university lecturer's vox pop is precisely the case: the rich get to reap the rewards whilst preying on the rest of the population. Just thought I should mention that for the sake of letting it be known that Joss Whedon  and/or Eliza Dushku did seem to have that perspective in view in realising the series. Kudos that they got it past Fox! But, hey, it took them two seasons to rumble it! -At least I assume the hasty-feeling ending at end of season 2 was because it got cancelled. I gather that the original idea was for a 5-year story arc.

Trusting the poor with the money

This article Why we should give free money to everyone, shook me because it made me realised that I too tended to accept that just giving people money to help them is an invitation to abuse.

 The trend from 'welfare' to 'workfare' is international, with obligatory job applications, reintegration trajectories, mandatory participation in 'voluntary' work. The underlying message: Free money makes people lazy.

Except that it doesn’t.

The article shows how poor people all over the world can do great things with money if they're given it -and it's better than what well-meaning and even well-researched aid workers might do. And from my experience of having little money, it makes sense: it is frustrating to see how ones lack of money shuts someone out from economies of scale, helpful social networks, time-saving, training and so on. Having enough money -that is access to power to be an agent in ones own life and in community with others. So,

Proven correlations exist between free money and a decrease in crime,
lower inequality, less malnutrition, lower infant mortality and teenage
pregnancy rates, less truancy, better school completion rates, higher
economic growth and emancipation rates. ‘The big reason poor people are
poor is because they don’t have enough money’, economist Charles Kenny, a
fellow at the Center for Global Development, dryly remarked last June.
‘It shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that giving them money is a great
way to reduce that problem.’

 There's actually a virtuous circle as readers of The Spirit Level might just suspect. Add to that the costs of giving aid and there is more 'bang for your buck'.

Why would we send well-paid foreigners in SUVs when we could just give
cash? This would also diminish risk of corrupt officials taking their
share. Free money stimulates the entire economy: consumption goes up,
resulting in more jobs and higher incomes.

Only problem is that our assumption that people will waste money is so strongly ingrained that it's a hard sell. And it's an assumption that is based more on repetition than on self-reflection. Because, if we reflect (most of us, anyway) on what we would do with, say, three grand when we had nothing, we know, most of us, that we would want to 'invest' our money for the longer term and to make it go as far as possible. We'd want to use it to enable us to have a regular income and to feel like worthwhile members of society. So why do we think that others are so different from us?



And indeed, I would go with the next move in the article I've been citing:

A monthly allowance, enough to live off, without any outside control
on whether you spend it well or whether you even deserve it. No jungle
of extra charges, benefits, rebates - all of which cost tons to
implement. At most with some extras for the elderly, unemployed and
disabled.



The basic income - it is an idea whose time has come.

 Now I've known about basic income for a long while -it's been Green Party policy since the 1970s (when it was the Ecology Party) and I wrote one of my first practical theology papers in 1982 on unemployment in which one of the conclusions was that a citizen's income would be theologically justified. What i didn't know until this article is that there had been a real-life experiment in Canada which was cancelled for political reasons with the data unanalysed until recently. And the results are conversant with what we would probably predict for ourselves on reflection on ourselves rather than on presuming on the actions and attitudes of other people (hooking our 'us and them' negativity).

‘Politicians feared that people would stop working, and that they
would have lots of children to increase their income,’ professor Forget says.










You can find one of her lectures here.

Yet the opposite happened: the average marital age went up while
the birth rate went down. The Mincome cohort had better school
completion records. The total amount of work hours decreased by only
13%. Breadwinners hardly cut down on their hours, women used the basic
income for a couple of months of maternity leave and young people used
it to do some extra studying. Forget’s most remarkable discovery is that hospital visits went down by 8,5%.

 The article goes on to consider whether it would be affordable -it sounds like it would be so expensive. But then again ....

It would allow us to cut most of the benefits and supervision programs
that the current social welfare system necessitates. Many tax rebates
would be redundant. Further financing could come from (higher) taxing of
capital, pollution and consumption. [...] Holland, has 16.8 million inhabitants. Its poverty line is set at $1,300
a month. This would make for a reasonable basic income. Some simple
math would set the cost on 193.5 billion euro annually, about 30% of our
national GDP. That’s an astronomically high figure. But remember: the
government already controls more than half of our GDP. It does not keep
the Netherlands from being one of the richest, most competitive and
happiest countries in the world.

 Remember too, that such a policy would mean that employers would offer wages over and above a basic income -reducing their direct wage bills. Also the apparatus of control, surveillance and processing of social security would be hugely reduced. And if the Mincome experiment panned out, health costs would be likely to fall somewhat. I could see it making an interesting difference to education -what price student loans with less living costs needed?

Worth thinking about, surely?

PS. this RSA video with Daniel Pink showcasing research on motivations raises the tantalising possibility that a basic income could be the most creative and liberating thing we could do with our society.

Price ebooks less stupidly

This is ridiculous! I fancied this book, but when I saw this:

Kindle Edition 9.69
Paperback -- 8.91 

Something rebellious rose up in me: The ebook should be cheaper -there's insignificant costs for production: no costs for paper, printing. I think a fee for the author and for editing services is fine. But. So come on Westminster John Knox Press: price it properly. I reckon a fiver might be reasonable. The US site has it the right way round (though still on the high side).

A Thicker Jesus: Incarnational Discipleship in a Secular Age eBook: Glen H. Stassen: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store:

Tax, reward and the favours of fortune

I'm feeling a bit vindicated reading the report of this research. I've been saying in several posts over the last couple of years that we should be aware that the talk of rewarding the entrepreneurial is overblown by giving too much credit to their 'exceptional' ability (ie it's not normally that exceptional) and too little to circumstances and the formation by their society (if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a nation to raise an entrepreneur). This study shows that we humans have a confirmation bias about this that needs challenging. Hey, -and it has a pedagogic dimension too!

 "Humans, however, often rely on the heuristic of learning from the most successful. Our research found that even though observers were given clear feedback and incentives to be accurate in their judgement of performers, 58% of them still assumed the most successful were the most skilled when they are clearly not, mistaking luck for skill. This assumption is likely lead to disappointment -- even if you can imitate everything Bill Gates did, you will not be able to replicate his initial fortune. This also implies that rewarding the highest performers can be detrimental or even dangerous because imitators are unlikely to achieve exceptional performance without luck unless they take excessive risk or cheat, which may partly explain the recurrent financial crises and scandals." Reward the second best, ignore the best:

 And because their success often is magnified or amplified by those good old dynamics to do with the first player in the field being able to set the parameters, make faster progress, accumulate critical economies of scale etc, we should consider a kind of windfall tax approach. I'ts like in the game Monopoly, the ones who get to the premium properties first and have a half decent strategy tend to win; it's not skill, it's luck plus, as I say, a half-decent strategy (but probably no better than most of the other players).

 The lucky few may be more skilful than others eventually, but the way they gain their superior skill can be due to strong rich-get-richer dynamics combined with the good fortune of being successful initially. This can justify a higher tax rate for the richest when their extreme fortune is accumulated in the fortunate fashion defined in this research.

And I thought it quite interesting to note that we need to try to work against the apparently counter-intuitivity about rewards in this kind of case:

policy-makers need to design 'nudges' to help people resist the temptation to reward or imitate the top performers.

Part of what needs to happen though, surely, is that we keep banging on about this research and we keep analysing and publishing and highlighting the luck and happenstance that has actually 'made' these so-called 'self-made men'. Society has helped make them; the rest of us are entitled to ask for a dividend for the investment we have made in their success. We are all shareholders in the common good; it's time to stop exempting those who impress us.

Mutiny continues

Increasingly there is a link to the current post -banking-crash, post-'Occupy', mid-austerity world. The way-in to that is noting that the monopolistic tendency historically tends towards blockage and stifling of creativity. One craven example of this is the copyright regime and it becomes particularly pointed in relation to performed music. Kester homes in on Mick Jagger because (perhaps ironically given his rock'n'roll image) he supports the extension of copyright on music. Apparently Jagger wants money to roll in for his family from his record sales for a long time. And yet, we are reminded, how much of Jagger's oeuvre is totally new? -Like much creativity the cleverness is about remix and development. And indeed, Jagger has benefitted from being a performer in a unique window of history when recording was possible but not easily 'ripped'. It's hard to be sympathetic for the guy (who has clearly sold out and has become the man).

"People are naturally going to feel less inclined to listen to Mick Jagger's concerns about being paid for years and years more for songs he wrote and made millions from years and years ago. What much of the recent mood of protest has been about is the lack of a perceived principle of fairness ... how long did it take for Mick Jagger to write 'Street Fighting man'? Perhaps 20 hours. And on a generous wage of  .... time for recording ... equipment ... marketting ... $15000. Many of the Stones singles sold well over 500,000 copies. At what point would it be fair to say that Mick Jagger has received a fair reward for his labour?"

My comment: It is obviously a question that could be asked of many others: they happen to to found themselves occupying an gilded position in the economy  and have enough talent to exploit it. We should stop buying the myth that they are uniquely talented individuals entirely worth it from their own exclusive and unaided resources. I've been around enough to know that there are actually hundreds of people, probably thousands, that in every respect that enabled Jagger and his ilk to exploit the gilded position they found themselves in would be just as capable of producing 'good stuff' in terms of writing, performance and business acumen. This gilded position is borne of things like being in the right  place at the right time and to have received an education developing their abilities and to have been socialised in a way to be able to connect with monetisable trends. 


So it is that copyright, overextended, allows commons to be enclosed. It's fair enough to be able to make back some reward for the effort and work put in; but not in a way that fails to recognise the indebtedness of the author/maker to wider society or the possibility that others might build upon the work. If that doesn't happen, the injustice of it makes for conditions which are likely to produce 'piracy'.

Life co-op

It's important to note this kind of thing; not all evolution is about competition: some is about co-operation. See here.

Life began with a planetary mega-organism - life - 25 November 2011 - New Scientist:

LUCA was the result of early life's fight to survive, attempts at which turned the ocean into a global genetic swap shop for hundreds of millions of years. Cells struggling to survive on their own exchanged useful parts with each other without competition - effectively creating a global mega-organism

.

This is important because there is a tendency for some to use the competitive view as justification for a eugenic ideology or cut-throat capitalism. This kind of discovery/hypothesis tends to undercut that piece of lazy political ethics.

The New Socialism

I've benn meaning to blog this for ages. It is essentially making a connection between the bottom up, 'creative commons', copyleft ethos of the 'hacker plus' communities and more global political movements. The full title says a bit more: The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online And I judge that the best summary quote is this: "When masses of people who own the means of production work toward a common goal and share their products in common, when they contribute labor without wages and enjoy the fruits free of charge, it's not unreasonable to call that socialism."
In the bad old days when Maggie Thatcher's blue rinsed minions were squandering north sea oil and making short-trem profits for the state by selling back to the ideologically primed sections of British society what we all once collectively owned (some might call that stealing), the main alternative was a version of state-monopolistic capitalism which some sections of the Labour party and people like the SWP embraced. The other alternative of co-operatives was mainly propounded by the Liberals and the Co-operative party (who bizarrely, imo, make common cause with the Labour party which consistently ignores opportunities to encourage co-operatives): namely co-operatives. The article referenced here is essentially talking about informal, 'liquid' co-operatives. Of such is the Kingdom of heaven ...

Raining on the G20 parade?

I've been trying to work out what substantially is being achieved, apart from politicians managing to put their posturing differences behind them. It seems that we should be wary of the hype; just because Nicholas Sarkozy seems to cozy up a bit doesn't mean everything's sorted. See here: A little progress, a lot of missed opportunites says Put People First | Ekklesia here's the Put People First take: "“The G20 appears to have made progress on some critical issues but there are also missed opportunities, especially on building a green economy and causes for real concern in other areas. G20 leaders have not yet gone far enough on the fundamental changes the world needs.
“Our campaign for jobs, justice and climate has clearly made some impact, but three big tests remain:
'Will the G20, the UN and the Copenhagen climate conference do far more to break from the failed policies that brought about the global crisis?
'Will governments agree a comprehensive package of policies that will deliver a new financial architecture and ensure the world emerges from the global recession as a fairer and green place?
'Where there are positive words today, will they be turned into action tomorrow?'"

"You Can Do It!" Prosperity teaching reconsidered

Peter Berger, imho, deserves a listening to. And certainly this article is a helpful corrective to a too-easy dismissal of prosperity teaching. "You Can Do It!" - Books & Culture In particular this quote probably encapsulates the challenge nicely: "Is there a theological warrant to propose that God wants us to be poor? Any more than he wants us to be sick? The prosperity gospel contains no sentimentality about the poor. There is no notion here that poverty is somehow ennobling. In that, speaking sociologically, the prosperity gospel is closer to the empirical facts than a romantic idea of the noble poor—a notion reminiscent of another romantic fiction, the noble savage. Such notions, of course, are always held by people who are not poor and who do not consider themselves to be savages. The notions are patronizing. They are implicit in the famous slogan of liberation theology: 'a preferential option for the poor.' Mind you, not of the poor, but for the poor—pronounced, as it were, from on high."
This is important, along with the sociological reflection based on Weber etc. However, I did feel that before we get too cosy with prosperity teaching, we should consider that the way that trade systems operate works against the poor. And in this I have, therefore, to place a question mark against Berger's assertion later on: "One does not have to be a dogmatic "neoliberal" to understand that the major beneficiaries of capitalist growth are, precisely, the poor—in the aggregate if not without exception, later if not sooner, and if the political context is not one in which an élite forcefully hoards the fruits of growth. If one truly cares for the poor, one will hold a "preferential option" for capitalist economics—and ipso facto will be cautious in one's criticisms of the prosperity gospel."
The question mark is that it is too easy to overlook the qualifier 'if the political context is not one ...'; because in international terms, that is precisely what we have. I have little quarrel with the decentralisation, devolution and subsidiarity that markets represent at their best; but let's be clear that markets 'at their best' require regulatory frameworks to make sure that they resist monopolisation and enforce level-playing fields and also to mitigate the human cost of their wastefulness at times. Frankly, global financial and trading arrangements do not do this. Real 'prosperity teaching' needs to take seriously the structural economic issues: and that is precisely part of our prayer-in-action in global solidarity. Part of the problem with prosperity teaching is that it absolves the rest of us from reflecting and acting on what it means for us to pray for daily bread not as 'I' and 'me' but as 'us' and 'our': our role is also to make sure that others' prayers for daily bread can be answered in the aggregate by systems that are not 'kleptic'. Until that happens wealth will not trickle down.

The Future of Money: and the latest deflation

My last listing of this book was £180. Amazon.co.uk: The Future of Money: Creating New Wealth, Work and a Wiser World: B.A. Lietaer: Books Well some other seller has entered the frame and my first 'competitor' has dropped their price (from £360.52 to £106.12 -still the odd pennies, which may be due to calculations being done in dollars, it occurs to me now). So we're not it double figures yet (still triple), but it can't be long now.

Outsourcing: just colonial chickens coming home to roos

This article, They've sold off their souls is a quick intro to the way that the big global funds players are fastening down the profit motive hard into the companies they buy into and buy up. The result being that considerations that humanised capitalism in the recent past, about how the company's ethos was, keeping stakeholders sweet, motivating workers through vision and so forth, are being shed along with expensive first world workforces.

One of the comments (the 6th) is very much to the point, imho: "To talk about out-sourcing is missing the point. The issue should not be about trying to privilege ourselves by refusing to give jobs to overseas workers: the issue should be why we allow ourselves to retain a system that produces such startling inequality of wealth. The system has always been hugely unequal, but in the past we, the workers of the West, were bought off on the proceeds of screwing over the Third World: but now, as profits get inevitably tighter and tighter, our chickens have come home to roost."

Of course, the irony would be that this process could kill the goose that lays the golden egg: while most disposable income is in the west that's where the markets are -but only as long as people are employed and paid relatively well. Outsource too quickly and recession hits. It is probably true that there needs to be a global redistribution of income; this may be one way it could happen. The issue is how it can be managed so that chronic decline doesn't cause even moGuardian Unlimited | Comment is free | re suffering and so that many can be lifted out of poverty largely by their own efforts?

I need to reflect on this more, but I'm not sure, in the grander scale of things, outsourcing is necessarily a bad thing.

The Future of Money: inflation

Some of you may have noticed this book appear in the margin in my current reading 'bit'. (And it may be gone by the time you read it, of course) The Future of Money: Creating New Wealth, Work and a Wiser World. Did you also notice the price? £1,142.55!!!!! I bought it a couple of years back from Amazon (yes; I found the delivery slip inside the front cover when I final got round to reading it) for much less (double figures under £20). But it appears that this is the only copy being offered for sale: so does that account for the price. I'm considering the experiment of offering it for sale to see whether that changes the price -it's such a random figure, as well as being high; is there some kind of market-analysis bot operating to work out what the market might bear? I suspect it needs a service if there is.
It's ironic, given the title, dontcha think? Especially as one of the things that the book does is explain why inflation to some degree is built into the way we do currency at present.

PS I decided I would experiment and offered the book for £500 (I'd get just over £400 of it if it sold at that price -unlikely!), so that may appear in the price now and you'd have to click on to Amazon to see the £1k+ price and whether it changes.

Super-rich turn their children into philanthropists

I wonder how far this may be a result of the very rich having a sense that the wealth gap, beyond a certain point certainly, tends to breed a sense of just resentment, so the way to try to head that off is to be seen to be doing good. "High-income parents are enrolling their children in philanthropy workshops designed to teach them how to use their wealth to do good. A new generation of philanthropists are being encouraged to imagine ways they would change the world, and consider which charities might benefit from their money."
The issues this generates are worth keeping an eye on in my opinion. One is mentioned in the article: that philanthropy tends to devolve into support of pet projects that emotionally resonate with the givers.

the youngsters' initial charitable instincts were typical of their age: "All they really cared about was battered dogs and saving the whale. Having had the session with NPC they were more interested in things that relate to children, gang violence, things that happen in east London, say, that are visible and concrete for them

This is rather similar to the issue fashionable charity I mentioned a few days back. And I'm not sure that I like the model that potentially social support would be voluntary rather than there being a state dimension: the welfare state at least tries to address social need fairly and broadly not at whims of individual givers which tends not to address underlying causes. My fear is that philanthropy can be an attempt by the rich to buy their way out of the trouble that the underlying system that allows them to gain riches far beyond how hard they work, mainly because they are able to occupy strategic places in the social and economic structures of our society. Taxation is a surer and fairer way of addressing the issues. The rich should regard their tax burden as rent for their occupation of society's strategic positions and for the infrastructure that the majority of us have a hand in providing and maintaining. It is a recognition of reciprocity. Its redistributive potential is also a way to offset the social ills that accumulate with increasing inequality, which a number of studies are now recognising. The rich have a choice, privatisation which will mean increasingly being separated but therefore being increasingly insecure; or seeking the common good by participation in democratically accountable processes around the redistribution of wealth. Philanthropy is part of the package of the former, I fear, when the health of the world requires the latter.
Super-rich turn their children into philanthropists | Money | The Guardian:

Forget the green technology - the hot money is in guns

Naomi Klein: "If you are looking for a sure bet in a new growth market, then sell solar and buy surveillance: forget wind, buy weapons."
In other words prepare for a return to the dark ages. And note, people, that by doing so you will make that return more sure. If we don't invest in the risky business of collaborative solutions then we will face the risky consequences of a fragmenting society where might is righter and we and our descendants (for most of us will end up in the have-nots) will be excluded and those who are rich will live like barons but pay for it with insecurity and ever mounting security bills.
The issue is about perceptions and futuring.

This trend has nothing to do with real supply and demand, since the demand for clean-energy technology could not be higher. With oil now reaching nearly $100 a barrel, it is clear that we badly need green alternatives, both as consumers and as a species.... we can choose to fix, or we can choose to fortress. Environmental activists and scientists have been yelling for the fix. The homeland security sector, on the other hand, believes the future lies in fortresses.

Again, comments are interesting.
Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Forget the green technology - the hot money is in guns:

capitalism's inner contradictions?

A banking friend of mine was shocked once when I pointed out in a sermon that money runs on faith. And I still stand by it: you have to believe that this token will be accepted (on faith) by other people when in turn you want to turn it into goods or services. The banking system is more so. If we lose faith in the system, it will collapse. So it's interesting to note, that herein, lies one of the contradictions of capitalism: it promotes self-interest but within a system that relies on others to maintain good faith. Perhaps it's another variant on the epistemological paradox that you have to believe something to know something.

I find some confirmation of this in the recent matter of the run on the Northern Rock bank following the blowback from the USA's bad debts problem. The fact is that the institutions that are often most gung-ho about the importance of private enterprise and not ruining markets by government intervention, nevertheless are happy to be bailed out when it suits. The irony is magnified when seen through the lens of particular protagonists like this: "When his libertarian business model failed, Dr Ridley had to go begging to the detested state. If the government and its parasitic bureaucrats had not been able to use tax-payers’ money to clear up his mess, thousands of people would have lost their savings. Northern Rock would have collapsed and the resulting panic might have brought down the rest of the banking system." Thanks to George Monbiot for the nice quote. The irony is that the business model the guy lived by says you go to the wall in such circumstances. The difficulty is that to allow them to do so could actually be bad for the economy more fully and there is a problem about letting financial institutions think that they can take big risks because they will be bailed out if they are wrong. We have to find a way to make sure that risk-takers in such influential positions get the feedback of failure to keep them from risking our futures and resources.
Monbiot.com � Libertarians are the True Social Parasites:

crony capitalism

In this reflection from Naomi Klein on the legacy of Alan Greenspan based on his autobiography, we find a laying-out of the old problem of whether free-market ideologues are pushing a genuine belief in trickle-down economics, or a veiling of cronyism. Now I have written before about trickle-down economics,

"Greenspan's legacy hardly fits the definition of a libertarian market, but looks very much like another phenomenon described in his book: 'When a government's leaders routinely seek out private-sector individuals or businesses and, in exchange for political support, bestow favours on them, the society is said to be in the grip of 'crony capitalism'.' He was talking about Indonesia under Suharto, but my mind went straight to Iraq under Halliburton. Greenspan is currently warning the world about a dangerous looming backlash against capitalism. Apparently, this has nothing at all to do with the policies of negligent deregulation that were his trademark. Nothing to do with stagnant wages due to free trade and weakened unions, nor with pensions lost to Enron or the dotcom crash, nor homes seized in the subprime mortgage crisis. According to Greenspan, rampant inequality is caused by lousy high schools (which also have nothing to do with his ideology's war on the public sphere). I debated with Greenspan on the US radio show Democracy Now! recently and was stunned that this man who preaches the doctrine of personal responsibility refuses to take any at all."

So that eventually leads to the idea that perhaps, this man who showed little interest in big ideas when training in economics, is perhaps still not interested in them, just in an idea that allows him to feel better about the politics of greed.

Perhaps the true purpose of the entire literature of trickle-down theory is to liberate entrepreneurs to pursue their narrowest advantage while claiming global altruistic motives - not so much an economic philosophy as an elaborate, retroactive rationale.

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Thanks a million, Ayn Rand, for setting the greedy free:

The Fat Cats Protection League

I seem to recall saying something similar to this that appears in George Monbiot's latest: "the neoliberal project - which demands a minimal state and maximum corporate freedom - actually relies on constant government support."
In fact my point has been wider: that neoliberal society actually relies on a host of 'unliberal' and unacknowledged supports to keep it going: it is in fact parasitic on certain kinds of infrastructure but tends to make rude comments when other people try to have more advantageous infrastructures.
As George points out "The current financial crisis, caused by a failure to regulate financial services properly, is being postponed by government bail-outs. The US Federal Reserve has reduced its lending rate to the commercial banks, while the Bundesbank organised a E3.5bn rescue of the lending company IKB. This happens whenever the banks suffer the consequences of the freedom they demand."
Indeed. They have us by the short and curlies. 'We' can't afford for them to go under, so all of a sudden, in financial crisis they become state-subsidised: where did all that talk of the market, fitness and competition go? We are all state-interventionists when it's to our advantage!
Monbiot then goes on to talk about the PFI fiasco through a case study of a hospital in Derby. It only serves to drive deeper for me the question of how having to pay shareholders in addition to normal costs can make a project cheaper.
Monbiot.com � The Fat Cats Protection League:

Globalisation facing a revolt of the middle classes?

Hmm, makes you think, eh?

"think of the programmers and accountants who got themselves educated and trained as they were told to do, and now find their skills don't make them any more employable than assembly-line operatives.
Blinder reckons 30 to 40 million American jobs - between a quarter and a fifth of the total - are potentially offshorable. Not all will go, but the threat will send a shiver down the spine of Middle America and, Blinder predicts, transform its attitudes to social safety nets.
Combine that with the rise of the super-rich. This is another effect of globalisation: capital can ignore international barriers and drive down taxation by setting one country against another. Under new Labour, Britain has become a tax haven for the very wealthy and, as we are slowly realising, the distorting effect on the London-area housing market is profound. A generation of middle-class youth is moving into its thirties without the smallest prospect of owning a home"

New Statesman - Revolt of the middle classes:

Why I don't trust Cameron's left shift

David Cameron keeps saying things that I like the sound of. On environment and social justice, he keeps making the right noises and I compare the current Labour regime and think; "Hmmm, are they switching politics?" But I can't quite get a sense of how the Rt Hon Mr Cameron actually means to achieve his stated aims or, more importantly, how he thinks he can carry the Tories in the field with him. I know a few Conservative voters and I can't see them adopting Cameron's cuddly version without a lot of persuasion. So it was interesting to read this and have my suspicions somewhat confirmed.

Robin Harris, a former speechwriter to Mrs Thatcher ... argues that alienating the party's electoral base is potentially disastrous, adding: "There are good reasons why every Tory leader since Margaret Thatcher has started by proclaiming the party's transformation into something kinder, gentler and more leftwing - and then conducted a sharp rightward turn."

Yep; the membership consists of a lot of 'flog 'em and hang 'em' types who think dealing with causes of crime is pandering to social evils and that the less fortunate are actually the less competant and deserve their lack of opportunity. They also believe that a rising tide lifts all boats. Of course we now know that a rising tide only lifts the boats that have already had money spent on them and that haven't been filled with boulders and concrete ... .
Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Senior Tories voice fears at shift to left
You might want to look also at this.

Trickle down economics is a myth

Neo conservative economics are betrayed by the figures and shown up for the ideological smokescreen they are.

the notion that global economic growth is the only way of reducing poverty for the world's poorest people is the self-serving rhetoric of those who already enjoy the greatest share of world income. Based on the global distribution of income in 1993, even if the benefits of global growth were distributed evenly, it would benefit someone in the richest 1 per cent of the world's population 120 as much as someone in the poorest 10 per cent.

So let's not take any more guff about the benefits of growth filtering down to the poor and 'a rising tide lifts all boats' -comforting but merely feelgood talk; it's just not true. For it to be halfway true, different systems of trade and finance would have to be in place. And consider the minimal cost meaningful redistributive policies would have...

poverty could be reduced without growth by more effectively distributing what we already have: For example:
* redistributing just one per cent of the income of the richest 20 per cent of the world's population would have the same benefit as world growth of 20 per cent without redistribution. This is over ten times the average per capita growth rate of global GDP since 1981;
* the rate of poverty reduction achieved between 1981 and 2001 could have been achieved through the redistribution annually of just one tenth of one per cent of the income of the richest 10 per cent of the world's population.

What needs to happen?

...a shift in power relations, both globally and nationally, to move power from developed countries, elites and commercial interests to the majority of the world's population, the poor.

Global democracy instead of the current oligarchy, no -plutarchy, no -kleptarchy.
world economy giving less to poorest in spite of global poverty campaign says new research:
See also http://nouslife.blogspot.com/2006/12/why-its-bad-for-rich-to-get-richer.html