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businesses. The latest headlines on the weight | :00:00. | :00:00. | |
and the latest on the weather situation. I had that, time for Meet | :00:00. | :00:11. | |
The Author. . He is also a former scholar of | :00:12. | :00:16. | |
medieval Arabic thought, a journalist, Radio 3 new generation | :00:17. | :00:20. | |
thinker, and an exasperated man. The source of his exacerbation is | :00:21. | :00:26. | |
economists, and he has written a tractor. I spend, therefore I am: | :00:27. | :00:29. | |
The true cost of economic, in which he takes issue with not only the | :00:30. | :00:35. | |
pervasive presence of economic and modern life, but also the way it | :00:36. | :00:39. | |
makes real people behave like a kind of people economists think they | :00:40. | :00:47. | |
ought to be. Philip Roscoe, you started out by | :00:48. | :00:51. | |
making two basic points, it seems to me. One is that the classical | :00:52. | :01:00. | |
economist approach to the world, to create a model, in which there are | :01:01. | :01:03. | |
rational consumers making choices. It has been around for 200 years, | :01:04. | :01:10. | |
but flawed, why? I think there is a tendency in economic to retreat, to | :01:11. | :01:14. | |
head for simplicity and to try and abstract from the world. That seems | :01:15. | :01:19. | |
to me to be a problem when you look at other natural sciences, which | :01:20. | :01:23. | |
tend to embrace complexity, do away with these artificial assumptions. | :01:24. | :01:26. | |
It is the assumptions that make economic 's possible as a | :01:27. | :01:32. | |
discipline, but at the same time, they are very problematic. It is a | :01:33. | :01:37. | |
tricky issue, with the fundamental purpose of economic 's, to create a | :01:38. | :01:40. | |
model of the way society works which makes some sort of sense. A | :01:41. | :01:44. | |
particular kind of economic 's, I suppose, which is why Michael | :01:45. | :01:48. | |
neoclassical or neoliberal, which really can from the work of Milton | :01:49. | :01:53. | |
Friedman. My main objection is to the rational economic agent at the | :01:54. | :01:57. | |
centre of this, and the problem is, we are not rational in that sense. | :01:58. | :02:02. | |
We know this. Economic 's admits this is self. Nonetheless, is to | :02:03. | :02:07. | |
bring that rational agent into being. This is your second point, | :02:08. | :02:13. | |
that not only does it is at an artificial vision of how we behave, | :02:14. | :02:17. | |
but it has a tendency over the past 50 or 60 years to make is behave | :02:18. | :02:21. | |
like that. Of course, mankind has always been greedy and so pushed, -- | :02:22. | :02:26. | |
selfish, some more than others. There is a very particular kind of | :02:27. | :02:33. | |
calculated, motivated, technical self-interest that is at large in | :02:34. | :02:39. | |
the modern world, and I think that can tie very neatly to economic | :02:40. | :02:42. | |
behaviour in its different kinds. Economists argue that, in the | :02:43. | :02:46. | |
complex model world we inhabit, actually, imperfect though their | :02:47. | :02:53. | |
models may be, artificial though the rational economic actors they posit | :02:54. | :02:56. | |
might be, there really is not an alternative when it comes to making | :02:57. | :02:59. | |
difficult choices about how to allocate resources in something like | :03:00. | :03:03. | |
the health service, for instance. How else do you do it? I think there | :03:04. | :03:09. | |
is a public debate that needs to be had about whether if fish and the is | :03:10. | :03:12. | |
the virtue that we want to prioritise are both all others. -- | :03:13. | :03:18. | |
efficiency. Because it is prioritise to the inclusion of things like | :03:19. | :03:24. | |
compassion of Venice? Exactly. If you replace all dialysis treatment | :03:25. | :03:27. | |
with hip replacements, or stop treating Alzheimer's or dementia, | :03:28. | :03:34. | |
I'm not quite sure which, then you exclude all kinds of virtues, and we | :03:35. | :03:39. | |
are in a position where, for example, we find ourselves those | :03:40. | :03:45. | |
members of our society who are old or infirm or sick, because it is | :03:46. | :03:50. | |
cheaper and more efficient to fit the young people. You have better | :03:51. | :03:55. | |
outcomes. These are things I think we should discuss. Behind all of | :03:56. | :03:58. | |
this, there lies the notion of the cost benefit analysis, that you can | :03:59. | :04:03. | |
compare almost anything and still come up with a solution. You believe | :04:04. | :04:09. | |
that the basis, the mathematical basis, the scientific basis, on | :04:10. | :04:13. | |
which a lot of that analysis is based on is fraudulent, that's | :04:14. | :04:17. | |
putting it too strongly, but flawed, partly because it is not too | :04:18. | :04:22. | |
clear what the calculations are based on. Often, it is of the | :04:23. | :04:26. | |
calculation, and secondly, if you go back far enough, they are based on | :04:27. | :04:29. | |
the judgement has me, then another one. Yes, that is true. In a sense, | :04:30. | :04:35. | |
that wouldn't be so much of a problem if we recognised it. I think | :04:36. | :04:38. | |
the issue with economics particularly is that we don't | :04:39. | :04:41. | |
recognise the role that experts judgement plays in it, like any | :04:42. | :04:48. | |
other science. Facts are made. And economists are not honest about | :04:49. | :04:52. | |
that? I think in the public discourse, economics is not, no. It | :04:53. | :04:57. | |
punches above its weight in a sense, in that we are presented with facts | :04:58. | :05:01. | |
that are seemingly objective and apolitical, when they are manifestly | :05:02. | :05:06. | |
not. What do we do about it? Towards the end of the book, you make a | :05:07. | :05:09. | |
number of observations, talking about local currencies like the | :05:10. | :05:15. | |
Totnes pound. A local currency which is traded, as a sort of alternative | :05:16. | :05:19. | |
to real money. You talk about things called local exchange trading | :05:20. | :05:24. | |
systems, which are basically a form of barter. But I don't quite see how | :05:25. | :05:29. | |
those addressed the problem. Those are alternatives the money, but | :05:30. | :05:33. | |
money is not the problem. That is adequate as a way of exchanging | :05:34. | :05:36. | |
things. Your beef is not with money, but with the way that money is | :05:37. | :05:40. | |
brought into calculations which should not be about money, and the | :05:41. | :05:43. | |
way cost benefit analysis dominates. Yes. There is a strand | :05:44. | :05:49. | |
right through the book that puts the modern world, the beginning of the | :05:50. | :05:53. | |
economic man at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, where a | :05:54. | :06:00. | |
market appears, where the capital -labour relations we know today | :06:01. | :06:04. | |
started, where manufacturing takes off. It seems to me that somewhere | :06:05. | :06:12. | |
in that arrangement, in this depersonalisation, this abstract | :06:13. | :06:16. | |
should, like the seeds of what anthropologists now call a savage | :06:17. | :06:20. | |
money, money that completely depersonalise, the kind of money of | :06:21. | :06:25. | |
high finance and global derivatives and options and so forth, that | :06:26. | :06:29. | |
really isn't anchored to anything and just goes around doing its own | :06:30. | :06:35. | |
thing. It has been shown to beach and a sleek destructive. What can we | :06:36. | :06:42. | |
do? How can we refocus our public discourse in a way that is | :06:43. | :06:49. | |
constructive and can give us some hope and possibility going forward? | :06:50. | :06:53. | |
It won't happen, will it? Everyone involved in the public sector and | :06:54. | :06:56. | |
policy-making in politics and business is to in thrall to these | :06:57. | :07:01. | |
ideas. I don't know, is the answer. It will certainly not happen | :07:02. | :07:05. | |
tomorrow, but if you look back at the birth of neoliberalism, Milton | :07:06. | :07:12. | |
Friedman and high-tech and their society and so forth, these were a | :07:13. | :07:22. | |
group of obscure, unknown... I wouldn't say left field. That is the | :07:23. | :07:26. | |
wrong side! Right-wing academics, and they said there are real | :07:27. | :07:30. | |
problems of the world, and their complaint was with the Soviet bloc, | :07:31. | :07:35. | |
totalitarianism, whatever. They had great argument and justification is | :07:36. | :07:39. | |
for that, and I am sympathetic to those basic argument about | :07:40. | :07:42. | |
calculation and so forth. But over the course of time, they managed to | :07:43. | :07:47. | |
completely change the political discourse of the Western world. And | :07:48. | :07:54. | |
if they can do it, you think yourself and people who think like | :07:55. | :07:57. | |
you can do it back? I would hope that can be done in the long-term. | :07:58. | :07:59. | |
Thank you. Thank you. | :08:00. | :08:03. |