why there's never been a free market and never will be

     cash in hand is the nearest to a free market and even this is regulated

Markets have been regulated from the beginning.

Markets other than barter that use some form of exchange require a formal financial system to regulate the flow of savings, investment, the amount of exchange (money) in circulation, its value and its manufacture.

According to classical economics, interest is supposed to balance the demand for investment and savings. Therefore interest should fluctuate with the supply and demand of investment. This can't happen in practise under a system of financial control.

Savers reduce their current spending ability in anticipation of the need for money in the future. This means savers need liquidity. (Will Hutton, The Revolution That Never Was)

Investors need long term stability or illiquidity of money provided by savers.

This and other factors will lead to crises. When the financial system hits a big enough crisis the state steps in. The first measure the state will take will be to adjust interest rates. Next, it will increase or decrease the money supply.

The fact that markets need a formal and regulated financial system and that the financial system needs state aid from time to time means there can only be a limited free market. The market is limited in scope and time.

Markets are inherently cyclical becoming freer on the upswing and more regulated on the downslide.

Keynes recognised this.

Keynes wasn't the first to record this, a few years earlier Marxist economist Michel Kalecki wrote an analysis almost identical to that of Keynes' General Theory (An Attempt at the Theory of the Business Cycle 1933).

The British economist Alexander Cairncross was a student of Keynes and he advised the Chinese government how to build the successful demand based economy they have now. The Chinese government may call themselves communists but they operate a solid Keynesian system. The demand came from Britain and America. 

The growth and success of China is a direct result of Thatcherism

In Britain ex-bankers like Sunak and Javid, who should know better, are harking back to the failed and failed again 19th century ideology that we can still call Thatcherism.

Why no 'common good' hinders Keynesian measures in UK and US

 

A problem with introducing Keynesian or socialist measures in the UK is there's little to no experience of the 'common good'.

Any notion of 'common good' in the UK is the sum of private gain, commercial interest and individual actions.

The underlying 18th/19th century based ideology of the British is individualism, individual action and individual responsibility. This was exported with even more veracity to North America.

The writers whose work explored the concept of individual action and rational individual decision making have become the cultural norm. This is the case even though their ideas are generally relegated to their historical time and context.

There's a group of alt-right think tanks in the UK and the US who firmly believe in this defunct ideology and the notion of free markets that go with it. Most of the current government ministers are products of and have been spawned into leadership positions from these alt-right groups. The 

The UK is in a dangerous situation because we need to pull together but the government is encouraging us to pull apart.

Should Labour help the LibDems win more seats?

During the early years of the Labour Party, Labour and the Liberals cooperated to win parliamentary seats. The small group of Labour MPs cooperated with the liberals in Parliament against the Tories. Did they co-operate too much?

Ben Tillett thought so. he said the party has no teeth no claws and has lost its growl.

He argued that labour should stop supporting the liberals (so much) and start fighting unemployment.

Ramsay MacDonald at this time was a kind of secretary chairman and I think an unofficial leader. his strategy was to help the liberals so that the liberals would help labour get more MPs in the future. In this way, the Labour Party would have a much bigger representation in Parliament.

Perhaps McDonald's strategy worked?

I wonder...

Did Ramsay MacDonald have a bigger input to the development of the Labour Party that he's given credit for?

Would Ben Tillett's observations be quite pertinent now?

Should labour help the liberals again, in reverse this time? That is should Labour help the liberals get more MPs where they have a better chance of ousting a Conservative?

Why we feel anxious after making an important decision

 Buyers always think before doing anything.

Sometimes they only think for a split second and sometimes they think about a purchase for months, even years.

 

When buyers think about a purchase they access memory and emotions.

 

Thinking is an emotional as well as a cognitive process. Every thought we have brings with it a congruent emotion. Unless we are anxious when the emotions can disrupt our thinking.

 

Decisions about whether to buy something or not involve thoughts, memories and emotions. The emotional aspect of decision making is the most influential.

 

Thinking about a purchase provokes feelings of anxiety to a greater or lesser degree.

 

Every time we make a decision we experience anxiety to a greater or lesser degree. The more meaningful the decision is to us the greater will be the anxiety.

 

When anxiety reaches a certain level we begin to think irrationally.

 

When we experience anxiety our brains act in a set way that is difficult to override.

 

When we experience anxiety about making a decision three things happen in a progressive sequence.

 

1.    We avoid thinking about the subject

2.    Our brains block access to thoughts about the subject

3.    We will 'escape' if the anxiety gets too high.

 

As we approach the point of making a decision the anxiety will increase.

The bigger or more emotionally important the higher the anxiety.

All this brings a sense of mixed feelings, psychologists call it cognitive dissonance.

The bigger the purchase or the higher the emotional charge the bigger the feelings of pleasure and anxiety and the more we research the purchase.

Eventually we make a decision and buy the big item or make an important decision.

We experience a moment of pleasure but very soon after the purchase we begin to question if we've done the right thing. Another wave of cognitive dissonance hits us and this is called 'buyers regret'.

It passes in due course.

Why Keir Starmer was wrong to oppose Scottish independence now

 personal opinion:

I think Keir Starmer was wrong to voice opposition to Scottish Independence. There's no reason for Labour to mention it at this stage. I think it's coming from Claire Ainsley and I don't think she's the right person for the job.

The result will be to move what little support Labour has in Scotland to the SNP. Scots voted strongly to remain so there's bound to be a backlash of support for the SNP after Brexit. If I were a Scot living in Scotland I'd be an active member of the SNP at this time. And what will Scots think when they learn about the deal Gibraltar, who voted strongly to remain is getting compared to Scotland, who voted strongly to remain, being glued to Johnson's England. The EU might buy into the idea of a genuine freeport in Aberdeen or Clydeport, the British Ports Association (BPA) are calling for something similar*. A freeport has special tax, import and export arrangements with other countries as do Hong Kong or Singapore. Aberdeen could have freeport status within the EU and strong links to Scandinavia and Clydeport to Northern Ireland?

I think Keir Starmer could have said that Labour will open negotiations with the EU about a close long term relationship, perhaps similar to that of Ukraine when elected to government in 2024. He might also have said Scotland, that has historically had closer links to Europe than England should be given special status along with Northern Ireland. This might put the brakes on, or take the edge off the rush to deregulate that's coming our way.

The time for Labour to take a position on Scottish independence is when it becomes a live issue. I voted Starmer/Rayner and hate to say that I am disappointed in both of them.

Sorry...

*sunak pinched the freeport idea from BPA although sunak's version is plain daft.

How attitude changed cross pressured working class voters

 Steve Rayson in his book The Fall of the Red Wall describes research that shows working class voters to be cross pressured. The Conservatives took note of this and other research and boiled it down to an emotional heuristic - “get Brexit done.” Whereas Labour without any attempt to understand voter attitudes had the strapline, “time for real change.”

Time for real change get Brexit done.

There’s a lot of work ahead for the Labour party and we need to understand how to work with and where necessary change attitudes.

Attitudes are simply a measure of how much a person or group likes or dislikes something. They can be measured using focus groups. Shortly after I joined Bournemouth University from Southampton we did focus group work to understand attitudes with the Labour party c 1994. The Conservatives did it in 2019. Our main work on attitudes at Bournemouth was with the pharma sector on the take up and prescription of drugs and similar.

Attitudes can be changed or strengthened. Most attempts to change attitudes have the opposite effect.

Put together a diagram to show this. When I worked in the university sector you could knock up diagrams like this on an OHP or whiteboard as you went along and they worked. Couldn’t do it now though.

Using the political measure of left and right we can put the majority of British attitudes to the right of centre. If we put forward left wing - socialist - arguments we will entranch the current attitudes or push them further to the right.

In order to bring these attitudes closer to our position we need to start with arguments they will accept and straddle the current attitude position with messages. This is a long process and we should start now. Gradually we can bring the attitudes closer to our position. As Labour is generally a centre left party it shouldn’t be too difficult.

There’s a slight difficulty.

Steve uncovered research that showed working class voters are cross pressured. That is they are to the left of labour on economic issues and to the right of the Conservatives on cultural issues.

The diagram is something like this

At the 2019 election the Conservative strategists, Cummings and team understood this and boiled down messages to hit both pressure points with simple emotional (post truth heuristic) messages. Get Brexit done, levelling up and take back our borders. 

Where labour missed the target entirely.

The way forward.

The research is already done, much of it on behalf of the Conservative party who stupidly didn’t embargo it, so enough of it is in the public domain. Labour needs to understand the cross pressures and boil down simple emotional messages that resonate with the voters.

John McDonnell has some great ideas but they need boiling down almost dry. I favour the old Keynesian adage of a ‘mixed economy’. Although the public sector can’t be as it was in the 1950s - 1970s.We can still have a mixed economy and we can attack the Cumming Tory deregulation as dog eat dog.

In fact dog eat dog is exactly what Boris Johnson means by levelling up. He’s pushing social Darwinism.

Why the BBC should move leftwards

The Tory toting BBC News may shortly have two new rival news channels coming out of America.

The cable billionaire boss of Liberty Media, the word 'liberty' says it all, and biggest shareholder in the Discovery Channel, Mr Cable Cowboy himself John Malone is backing GB News. Part of a company called All Perspectives.

Malone is a big Trump supporter and Liberty Media give big donations to the Trump Circus.

Murdoch is to open a new news channel it's less clear what this will be like at this stage.

The opening marketing messages will focus on the BBC having a left wing bias and supports militant socialist and environmental activists.