Weekend picks / The Game - 9 comments
Just a few posts I bookmarked over the weekend:
David Nishimura at Cronaca, via Socialism in an Age of Waiting, on abuse of the term gulag by Amnesty International (and many others), plus the Americans' response to the charge (1300 Korans in 13 languages!). The Wikipedia gives a more balanced definition of the term:
Gulag (from the Russian "Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitelno-trudovykh Lagerey") ... The total documentable deaths in the corrective-labour system from 1934 to 1953 amount to 1,054,000, including political and common prisoners; note that this does not include nearly 800,000 executions of "counterrevolutionaries", as they were generally conducted outside the camp system. From 1932 to 1940, at least 390,000 peasants died in places of labor settlements; this figure may overlap with the above, but, on the other hand, it does not include deaths outside the 1932-1940 period, or deaths among non-peasant internal exiles.Slightly out of Bush's league, I think.
Just spotted this article about Tax Freedom Day at Stephen Pollard's blog. You won't find many on the Left arguing that we can enjoy a happy, liberal, social democratic life under a capitalist system without "creating wealth", or rather, allowing people to create wealth. All the same, to completely ignore the importance of public services and public goods, which can make us happy over and above any diminution of productivity, and which the private sector may never provide, relegates Stephen's articles from a decent undergraduate essay to a partisan rant. The "crowding out" (of the private sector) argument is pure Uni textbook.
Hamish's account of his wander around the Imperial War Museum, was also very interesting.
I haven't really decided about the whole Euro referendum business. There seem to be pretty good reasons - from a point of view of consolidation - for voting Yes if one is interested in the European project, though the poor performance of the French and German economies, which is by no means entirely the result of their close association with Europe, seems to have hijacked the issue. How can you separate, even among the French Socialists: (a) those who voted Non because they object to a 'big business'/corporate Europe, (b) those who voted Non because they see the need for economic reform as being incompatible with an even more 'organised' Europe, (c) those who did so because of a desire to thwart the scheme the political elite had 'cooked-up', and (d) those who, as Paul Anderson reports, didn't vote Yes for the reason "... that it doesn't create a European super-state"?
It seems to me that the leadership of France and Germany ought to be trying to decouple the issues of European integration and economic reform if the former isn't to be so easily portrayed as a straitjacket, arch-enemy of pan-Atlantic free-marketeers and Conservatives alike.
If you take the view that capitalism is a game with certain rules, and is currently the only game in town, then one ought to be playing it as intelligently as possible in order to maximise one's winnings and minimise one's losses (these being inevitable), rather than clinging to a discredited strategy that makes it even more costly for players to pool their resources. Of course this logic also applies to the 'left of Labour' parties (should have mentioned this before May 5th), whose position is that they will participate in the game, but will either play with a blindfold on, or blow their stake in the first few moments and go down in a 'blaze of glory'.
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9 comments so far...
I don't think Stephen Pollard is ignoring the importance of public services at all. His concern appears to me to be that an important public service is being delivered in a grossly inefficient manner and that throwing money at the problem has not helped. He shows that NHS output has gone up barely at all while spending has gone through the roof. Accusing him of partisan ranting is to avoid this point. Are his figures correct or not? If they are then not to change course is (IMHO) immoral.
What do you mean by "pure Uni textbook"? This is basic economics isn't it? There is a limited supply of money, and if the state takes more there must be less for the (more efficient) private sector.
Yes Amnesty International owe the Americans a serious apology.
After all, its not as though they are kidnapping innocent people, and sending them to other countries to be tortured.
And they would never leave a drenched, beaten, naked, innocent man chained to a floor overnight, let him die of hypothermia, and then promote the CIA agent responsible.
As for the useful idiots on the left, who are happy to criticise Amnesty, while glossing over the Americans secret program of torture ...
I don't think I was "accusing" Stephen, as such, BH. I'm thinking about the role of productivity and whether it is always important. We're no longer in a world of primary and secondary industries, so how does one accurately measure productivity in a 'knowledge/idea' economy? Might have been interesting to discuss that. I'm not doubting the figures, the problem is that the article is really very similar to the kind of bald example you'd find in a textbook. 'Crowding out' is a great theory, but (a) where's the evidence that it is happening, and (b) should governments draw back just because it might be? Perhaps other health providers would immediately fill the gap. My other gripe is the us/them distinction between public and private sector, given differences between the various industries that existed long before we cared about things like health service productivity.
Anonymous, I thought the problem was that by claiming that what the Americans have is a 'gulag', AA were perpetrating a distortion of history, a distortion of scale (millions killed?), and sheer opportunism, considering we have the real deal in North Korea (not that it justifies any less serious treatment committed elsewhere). AA criticising them seems to have no effect, which perhaps tells us something about their interest in democracy and negotiation, while criticising the USA gets an immediate reaction. Obviously we expect more from them, but that mustn't let genuinely cruel regimes off the hook. Perhaps the Americans are lining up political prisoners in front of firing squads too, but I don't believe it. Let's see the photos first.
You seem to be implying the CIA agent was promoted as a result of chaining someone to the floor and 'letting' him die - perhaps you need to rephrase that bit.
I'm not sure I'm quite following you. Are you really saying that productivity in the public services is not important because you can't easily measure it? I must say my jaw still hasn't got off the floor here. Productivity might not be important? Do you mean this?
Thing is that a number of interesting things overlap when we talk about productivity in the public services:
There's "value for money", individual and collective performance (teachers and schools/hospitals), as well as the traditional GNP/industry output/value per employee.
If I said productivity "wasn't important", it might look like I was in favour of a blank cheque, featherbedding, or turning a blind eye to poor performance, and I don't want to defend those things.
One aspect that interests me is that there are employees for whom the traditional economic measure of productivity is not relevant. Economists would love to use a sort of 'social capital' measurement, which could even be given a sterling value, but the headline figures sure as hell don't give us this information.
I'm glad you don't want to defend poor performance. I would hope you would want to attack it. I agree with your point on productivity of individuals -it is difficult to measure, as it is in many industries.
To summarise then, you don't dispute Pollard's assertion that the public sector is inefficient, you agree that productivity is important, but you rightly say it's difficult to measure.
So what would suggest is done about it?
No, I don't want to get involved in a discussion of stereotypes - you're turning what I hoped was a nuanced argument into Us v. Them. We'd end up using clichés like 'management best practice' and 'commercial freedom' before the day's out.
Given that we agree on what the problem is, why would discussing possible solutions lead to a discussion of stereotypes? (I hope I never sink so low as to use the expression "management best practice"!)
You're right that this is going to come down to public v private sector ("Us v them"). But at the end of the day isn't this the fundamental question now? The public sector is failing to deliver. The question now is how best to use the private sector to deliver public services.
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