Homework

           As a veteran campervanner, I have been amused by the naïve enthusiasms of this summer’s crop of newbies, many of whom are reluctant staycationers. There has been an explosion in demand for all things camping – from humble tents to monster motorhomes – and a consequent congestion of facilities. But next week, when the holiday season subsides, it will be my turn to experience the wild western coasts of Wales and Scotland in relative seclusion. I know this sounds smug, but the fact that my choice of leisure time is relatively unconstrained means that the joy of travelling off-peak has become my norm.

          Of late, commuters have had a taste of this more relaxed way of living because of the pandemic. Indeed, many will end up with more flexible life timetables (school holidays excepted) and may be permanently working from home, holiday resort, country retreat, campervan, motorhome, yacht, barge or wherever. And not before time. The technology required to enable this has existed for a few years. What was preventing it was lack of impetus and imagination. The prevailing economic system has become a fait accompli. The pandemic, however, has necessitated some changes, working remotely being one of them, and questions are being raised about what to do with soon-to-be-redundant office blocks, department stores and commuter-oriented infrastructures, the physical manifestations of the way we have lived and worked for generations. There could be some radical changes ahead, some of which are envisioned in Economic Science Fictions, a collection of writings that pushes the boundaries.

          In one piece, a writer re-imagines the story of the mythical Ned Ludd. Ned smashed the mechanised loom not to preserve weavers’ jobs but to save their lives, having witnessed how dangerous the machines were and how little the owners cared for the workers’ welfare. But he also saw the wealth-generating capability of machinery and, eventually, built a sufficiently popular following to wrest ownership and transfer it to the workers. It was the start of Luddism, a movement that embraced and adhered to the principles of Utilitarianism and Human Flourishing, by which means it prevailed as an uncorrupted version of communism. The result was that the extra wealth produced was more evenly distributed and technology, having been freed from the narrow, short-term imperative of private profits, made huge advances for the benefit of humanity. During the 1830s, the analytical engines developed by Charles Babbage and Lady Ada Lovelace were adapted to run production lines. Twenty years later, most households had a personal analytical engine and, during the 1910s, ‘garden printers’ were available, enabling manufacturing at home rather than in factories. Supporters of private ownership continued to object but, by 2095 the ‘hoarders’ as they were known, were living in the asteroid belt, scavenging and harrying interplanetary supply ships. But all this is wishful thinking, intended to highlight the drag that the current economic model has on progress. Luddism didn’t prevail. Both the wealth generated by technology and the focus of its future development remain in the hands of the few, not the many. Most people still work for a boss, even if some do have the benefit of working from home.

          Perhaps the best of both worlds is to work from home under one’s own steam. One such is a person who goes by the moniker “Shifty_sion” on eBay and from whom I purchased a £30 book at the bargain price of £5.99 + postage. When it failed to arrive as promised, I contacted him for an explanation. He said that he was self-isolating and could not go to the post office. Could I wait? I agreed (I have plenty of books to read) but, when I remembered to chase it up three months later, Shifty had disappeared without trace. Had the virus done its deadly work, or did I miss the clue in the name?

 

Get Out While You Can

          Although it was forty years ago, I remember clearly the day I moved to Manchester. The sun was shining and the people were welcoming. But, back then, there were no pavement cafés at which to sit and enjoy the summer. That changed over the years, as ever more holidaymakers returned from southern Europe having acquired a taste for the al fresco culture of our continental cousins. Lately, with motor traffic banished from many city streets, there has been an explosion of the trend. Cafés and bars have spilled outside to fill the space creating, to a large extent, an unsightly mess, a hastily martialled collection of scrappy, battered furniture huddled behind chunky red and white plastic traffic barriers, with only a few plant pots arranged here and there in half-hearted attempts at glamorising the experience. The arrangement is, of course, makeshift, a chance for the desperate hospitality sector to make hay while the sun shines. Nevertheless, despite it being a clumsy attempt to recoup revenue, it is welcomed by customers who have missed face-to-face socialising.

          Of course, it will come to an end with the onset of winter, which is likely to precede the availability of a vaccine – though I hear that the Russians are already trialling one. At first I thought it mere competitive propaganda but, on reflection, Russian scientists may well be ahead of the game. Remember Sputnik? The fact is that there is a residual pool of taxpayer-funded research facilities that survived the collapse of the Communist Party and continues to operate for the benefit of the state rather than private profit. Compare this with the situation in the West, where ‘Big Pharma’ companies lay claim to be at the forefront of medical research, when the reality is somewhat different. Freighted as they are with their primary commitments to ever more generous dividend payments and constantly rising share prices, they have adopted a business model based on cutting R&D costs, patenting small enhancements and marketing me-too drugs to a privatised healthcare industry. They may be well placed to manufacture in huge quantities, but they are not motivated to innovate, despite their protestations otherwise and their concomitant justification for high drug prices to subsidise R&D. * The West also has government-sponsored laboratories, but they have been reduced in circumstances, ravaged by neo-liberal dogma which has insisted that the privatisation of everything is better than State control of anything. Thus have we arrived at a point where the State, having sub-contracted all its responsibilities to the private sector (don’t get me started on Serco!), no longer has the in-house expertise to manage national crises such as this pandemic.

          Despite this, the day will come when the corona virus is under control – one way or another – and we will all be at liberty to indulge, once more, in that mind-expanding experience of travelling, perhaps to places where pavement cafés are abundant and stylish. But this period of staying-put has had its pros and cons: restricted travel – especially flying – has highlighted the extent to which we need to reduce our air-miles to meet carbon targets while, on the other hand, public transport, the hopeful eco-saviour, has lost the ground it had gained from private car usage; staying at home has been good for those whose interests are solitary and stationary, such as the consumption or creation of reading, listening and viewing, while it has been tiresome for those who like to participate in sports, or the sociable arts of conversing, communicating and real-time flirting. All in all, staying at home may be comfortable – productive, even – but it is hardly the stuff that memories are made of. For that, we really do need to get out more.

* Mariana Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State

Not Holiday Reading

          Anger, outrage and frustration – these have been my overweening feelings these past few days. So, what happened to make me feel this way? Well, I did get a letter informing me of a fine for an “alleged bus lane contravention”, but that provoked only a fleeting outburst of incredulity. (It was, after all, a fair cop.) No, what is really upsetting me is nothing less than the state the world.

          I take in the news and despair: Lebanon turned into a failed state by its corrupt, incompetent and uncaring government; citizens  of Belarus, Zimbabwe and even the USA battered by “security” forces just for voicing alternative opinions; populist bullies in India, Poland, Hungary, Egypt and Brazil turning inclusive societies into exclusive clubs; and the CCP enforcing its will on everyone within its ambit, while intent on obliterating all cultures that are perceived as a threat to the dominance of Han Chinese. And those are just the high-profile items. Add in the constant stream of stories about human rights violations and the constant degradation of our biosphere and you have to ask what hope there is for the health, wealth, happiness and freedom of the majority of this planet’s population.

          Well, there was at least one good news story this week: the UK’s GDP is down by twenty percent. Of course, this was not presented as good news because it goes against the grain of accepted economic wisdom, which is that constant economic growth – regardless of its real cost – is desirable and that the international league table of ‘successful’ national economies depends upon this crude statistic as a measure of ‘progress’. Which brings me to the main cause of my current state of despair, the books I am reading.

          The Finance Curse (Nicholas Shaxon) is a convincing account of how our economies, especially those of the USA and the UK, are being destroyed by the dominance of their financial sectors which, although they are counted into the calculations for GDP, are actually there under false pretences. The financial sector does not create wealth, it extracts it. In fact, it goes deeper than that – it destroys real wealth-creating activity by smothering it at birth and “financialising” every asset within its grasp.

          Doughnut Economics (Kate Raworth) analyses the accepted principles upon which economic policies are based and rejects them as counterproductive and destructive. Better still, it proposes an alternative path, one which is feasible, beneficial to the majority, not just the elites and, furthermore, is sustainable, i.e. rooted in the fact that the planet’s resources are finite.

          Shikasta (Doris Lessing) is perhaps the most depressing of these three books, which is ironic since I chose it as a light-hearted distraction from Economics. Although it is counted in the sci-fi genre and was published in 1979, its theme is prescient. The author imagines galaxies inhabited by other civilizations, one of which created humanity as an experiment (it’s a variant of the god theory) and has been monitoring the progress of its progeny ever since. I am only partway through this story but, thus far, there is no sign of a happy ending. Its moral appears to be that we human beings are a failed experiment, uniquely capable of screwing up what was a wonderful opportunity to live happily on a perfect planet. Neither a god nor a superior race from another galaxy is about to rescue us.

          These books illustrate the harms we are doing to ourselves and the planet in pursuit of more – more power, more money and more resources – all increasingly concentrated into fewer hands, despite a growing population. Perhaps I should lighten up my reading list with frothy novels, but that would be a temporary fix. Burying one’s head in the sand works only for a while.

Dream Sequence

          Last night, I awoke in terror from a nightmare involving claustrophobia – my only phobia, as far as I am aware, though I don’t dwell on it and rarely have truly terrifying dreams about anything. Perhaps it was just one of those weirdly enhanced dreams that so many people have been experiencing since the pandemic took hold. If so, it was intense beyond the actuality: I have been locked down, but I have not been locked-in or locked-up.

          From the beginning, back in March, the weather was spring-like and the outdoors beckoned. Bicycles became a thing in our lives and picnics replaced dinner parties as the urge to socialise re-established itself. Now, with guest place-settings redundant and stowed in sideboards across the nation, picnic gear has come into its own and sales are booming. (I have just acquired a dedicated backpack – so much more convenient than the cumbersome old hamper that one strapped to the boot of one’s imaginary convertible MG.) I know, winter will come and social gatherings outside will lose much of their appeal but the urge to mingle is a powerful force and, because virtual meet-ups are second-best, I am sure the next retail boom will be in warm, waterproof clothing.

          Meanwhile, there is much that can be achieved – and more efficiently – via video calls. For example, our block has just established a Leaseholders Association using Zoom, to which purpose the medium is well suited. When properly mediated by a “chair”, everyone gets a chance to speak and interrupters, ramblers and inveterate moaners can be muted at the touch of a button. Plus, there is the bonus of being allowed to peer into neighbours’ apartments, since none of them has mastered the technique of setting a virtual background. Mind you, I do miss the opportunity to slope off to the pub afterwards for a session of private bitching.

          Video calls are also useful in easing the burden on doctors. Fortunately, I have not been ill, though I did have need of medical advice about a sudden swelling on a finger joint, so I called the doc accordingly. Unfortunately, the dedicated, “world-beating” app that is used by the NHS did not work on my phone and, despite the fact that I have three other apps that would do the job, the doc declined to use them and insisted that I attend in person, which I did, despite my misgivings about overburdening him. He appeared clad head-to-toe in heavy duty PPE and I apologised for having put him to so much trouble for so trivial a complaint. But he shrugged it off, saying that it was easy to “gown up” and that, as soon as I left, he would throw it all in the bin and don a fresh set. Which made me feel bad about being responsible for adding so much plastic waste to the oceans.

          Some of the adaptations we have made may end up becoming ‘normal’, though, in that process, it is apparent just how transient ‘normality’ actually is – which affords us an opportunity to question some of the things that are currently embedded in our cultures. Conventions, such as shaking the hand of a stranger, which no longer seems a sensible thing to do, could be abandoned at last (I never was comfortable with its forced intimacy anyway). And on a bigger scale, international rivalry that tips into hostility might be called into question by common consent and a new era of cooperation, such as prevailed for a while after 1945, might be established. Dream on, you say? Well, it is apparent that covid has meant anxious dreams for some and living nightmares for others, so perhaps it is all the more imperative we should focus on dreaming in that hopeful, future sense.

Goodbye, Facebook

          "There comes a time when a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do” (John Wayne?) and, corny context notwithstanding, the adage rings true enough. I returned from campervanning in Northumberland to find that the barber and the gym had both reopened so, after getting a decent haircut and resuming my minimal fitness routine, I resolved that that the time had come for this man to bite the bullet and quit Facebook. It may not seem a momentous decision, but I did have to do it – even if it is more symbolic than practical. Quitting is a visible token of my disapproval of monopolistic practices and the threat they pose to democracy.

          Let me explain. At the end of the 19^th century, free-market capitalism in the USA ran rampant. For example, Rockefeller’s Standard Oil obliterated almost all competition by methods so ruthless that public outrage had to be assuaged and legislation was introduced, eventually, to curb monopolistic practices. Known as anti-trust laws, they were subsequently strengthened and enforced until the 1960s, when a certain school of free-market economists undermined their validity, notwithstanding the irony that when competition is eliminated by monopolies, the market can no longer be described as “free”.

          But the consequences of monopolistic practices are much more far-reaching than the consolidation of profit and the excessive extraction of value. Ultimately, they are political. In an address to Congress in 1938, Roosevelt warned, “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in essence, is Fascism – ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.” He would have been aware of the supporting evidence: the Nazis encouraged the buildup of big industrial cartels, which returned the favour by supporting the party with Hitler at its head. You don’t have to squint to see that this scenario resembles the one that exists right now in the USA, so-called “land of the free” and defender of western democratic ideals.

          But, you say, I am shooting from the hip. Why not also boycott Amazon, or Apple, or Google – valid targets all? Well, to some extent, I do (with a scattergun) but all aspects of life outside a monastery involve compromise and I, too, want a slice of modern technology. Also, I have tasted Facebook’s blood! When certain advertisers withdrew their custom from the platform because of its reluctance to edit and  limit the spread of hate speech, the share price dropped and the company was obliged to act. Corporations do not possess a conscience. They feel pain only through their profit and loss accounts. Loss of revenue is anathema. And, although Facebook users are not, strictly speaking, paying customers, they are a valued asset. If and when they leave, the company will feel further pain.

          Ah, you say, but have you not shot yourself in the foot? How will you keep in touch with friends and family? Well (assuming I do want to stay in touch with them) there are still postal and telephone services. And as for tracking down those long-lost friends, well, if I have “lost” them it will probably be due to negligence and a lack of application to the art of friendship on my part. Likewise, some of said friends.

          The western democratic tradition is being eclipsed by the rising power of kleptocrats and autocrats, aided and abetted by monopolistic corporations whose profits are sheltered from tax in havens that are facilitated by their accommodating politicians. Why else do tax havens exist? We still have some freedoms of action, some choices, some opportunities so, before they are further diminished, we should use them to good avail. It’s sundown in the West: showdown time, gunslingers.