Philip Roscoe Meet the Author


Philip Roscoe

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businesses. The latest headlines on the weight

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and the latest on the weather situation. I had that, time for Meet

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The Author. . He is also a former scholar of

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medieval Arabic thought, a journalist, Radio 3 new generation

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thinker, and an exasperated man. The source of his exacerbation is

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economists, and he has written a tractor. I spend, therefore I am:

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The true cost of economic, in which he takes issue with not only the

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pervasive presence of economic and modern life, but also the way it

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makes real people behave like a kind of people economists think they

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ought to be. Philip Roscoe, you started out by

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making two basic points, it seems to me. One is that the classical

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economist approach to the world, to create a model, in which there are

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rational consumers making choices. It has been around for 200 years,

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but flawed, why? I think there is a tendency in economic to retreat, to

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head for simplicity and to try and abstract from the world. That seems

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to me to be a problem when you look at other natural sciences, which

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tend to embrace complexity, do away with these artificial assumptions.

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It is the assumptions that make economic 's possible as a

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discipline, but at the same time, they are very problematic. It is a

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tricky issue, with the fundamental purpose of economic 's, to create a

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model of the way society works which makes some sort of sense. A

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particular kind of economic 's, I suppose, which is why Michael

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neoclassical or neoliberal, which really can from the work of Milton

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Friedman. My main objection is to the rational economic agent at the

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centre of this, and the problem is, we are not rational in that sense.

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We know this. Economic 's admits this is self. Nonetheless, is to

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bring that rational agent into being. This is your second point,

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that not only does it is at an artificial vision of how we behave,

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but it has a tendency over the past 50 or 60 years to make is behave

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like that. Of course, mankind has always been greedy and so pushed, --

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selfish, some more than others. There is a very particular kind of

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calculated, motivated, technical self-interest that is at large in

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the modern world, and I think that can tie very neatly to economic

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behaviour in its different kinds. Economists argue that, in the

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complex model world we inhabit, actually, imperfect though their

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models may be, artificial though the rational economic actors they posit

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might be, there really is not an alternative when it comes to making

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difficult choices about how to allocate resources in something like

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the health service, for instance. How else do you do it? I think there

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is a public debate that needs to be had about whether if fish and the is

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the virtue that we want to prioritise are both all others. --

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efficiency. Because it is prioritise to the inclusion of things like

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compassion of Venice? Exactly. If you replace all dialysis treatment

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with hip replacements, or stop treating Alzheimer's or dementia,

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I'm not quite sure which, then you exclude all kinds of virtues, and we

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are in a position where, for example, we find ourselves those

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members of our society who are old or infirm or sick, because it is

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cheaper and more efficient to fit the young people. You have better

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outcomes. These are things I think we should discuss. Behind all of

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this, there lies the notion of the cost benefit analysis, that you can

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compare almost anything and still come up with a solution. You believe

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that the basis, the mathematical basis, the scientific basis, on

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which a lot of that analysis is based on is fraudulent, that's

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putting it too strongly, but flawed, partly because it is not too

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clear what the calculations are based on. Often, it is of the

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calculation, and secondly, if you go back far enough, they are based on

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the judgement has me, then another one. Yes, that is true. In a sense,

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that wouldn't be so much of a problem if we recognised it. I think

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the issue with economics particularly is that we don't

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recognise the role that experts judgement plays in it, like any

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other science. Facts are made. And economists are not honest about

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that? I think in the public discourse, economics is not, no. It

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punches above its weight in a sense, in that we are presented with facts

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that are seemingly objective and apolitical, when they are manifestly

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not. What do we do about it? Towards the end of the book, you make a

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number of observations, talking about local currencies like the

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Totnes pound. A local currency which is traded, as a sort of alternative

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to real money. You talk about things called local exchange trading

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systems, which are basically a form of barter. But I don't quite see how

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those addressed the problem. Those are alternatives the money, but

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money is not the problem. That is adequate as a way of exchanging

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things. Your beef is not with money, but with the way that money is

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brought into calculations which should not be about money, and the

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way cost benefit analysis dominates. Yes. There is a strand

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right through the book that puts the modern world, the beginning of the

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economic man at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, where a

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market appears, where the capital -labour relations we know today

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started, where manufacturing takes off. It seems to me that somewhere

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in that arrangement, in this depersonalisation, this abstract

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should, like the seeds of what anthropologists now call a savage

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money, money that completely depersonalise, the kind of money of

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high finance and global derivatives and options and so forth, that

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really isn't anchored to anything and just goes around doing its own

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thing. It has been shown to beach and a sleek destructive. What can we

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do? How can we refocus our public discourse in a way that is

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constructive and can give us some hope and possibility going forward?

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It won't happen, will it? Everyone involved in the public sector and

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policy-making in politics and business is to in thrall to these

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ideas. I don't know, is the answer. It will certainly not happen

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tomorrow, but if you look back at the birth of neoliberalism, Milton

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Friedman and high-tech and their society and so forth, these were a

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group of obscure, unknown... I wouldn't say left field. That is the

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wrong side! Right-wing academics, and they said there are real

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problems of the world, and their complaint was with the Soviet bloc,

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totalitarianism, whatever. They had great argument and justification is

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for that, and I am sympathetic to those basic argument about

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calculation and so forth. But over the course of time, they managed to

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completely change the political discourse of the Western world. And

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if they can do it, you think yourself and people who think like

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you can do it back? I would hope that can be done in the long-term.

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Thank you. Thank you.

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