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