An OurKingdom conversation. [History: Thomas Ash > David Marquand > Thomas Ash > George Gabriel > this post > George Gabriel > Thomas Ash > George Gabriel]
I want to make a few points about attitudes to competive markets in response to George Gabriel's post on 'neo-liberal nihilism' below.
The first concerns public attitudes to them. George describes me as saying that public anger at bankers stemmed from violations of free market norms, but it's important to read this the right way. I claimed that the anger stemmed from taxpayer bailouts. These are violations of free market norms, but that fact was not the main cause of the anger. After all, it's not clear that most people care about these norms in general - though open to correction on this point, I'm not aware of evidence that they dislike subsidies for agriculture or car-makers, as they would if they were convinced free-marketeers.
Instead, it seemed that the main cause of public anger was public money being used for pay for bankers' compensation. A sense that this was against the rules of the neo-liberal game we'd been playing (to bankers' benefit) - because, as George says, after privatising profit it socialised risk - may have played a small part. But if so it was small indeed compared to the simple fact that it was our money being used. (Contrary to what many on the left now claim, I doubt that the average taxpayer objects to excessive salaries if they come out of banks' own money, and employers are left to pick up the tab if they prove to have catastrophically over-estimated their employee's financial value.)
So I question George's claim that "the congregation believes in neo-liberalism as a social vision, that fair and free competition will allow those who deserve it to advance in the market in the pursuit of happiness by the sweat of their brows." Even some of neo-liberalism's defenders reject the second half of that claim, if it's read to imply that all the 'deserving' (presumably those who are talented, hard-working and so on) will succeed.
Now, move on to George's own attitude to competitive markets, which I sense many on the left now share. He charges their participants with amoral psychological egoism (or at least he charges bankers with this, though it is not clear how bankers' bidding on assets differs in this respect from the man on the street's bidding for, say, a house to live in). But to talk of amorality is going too far; it would involve lacking any respect for human rights, and though George accuses the bankers' philosophy of commitment to this, I presume he does not seriously mean that bankers woud mug forgetful old ladies if it redounded to their benefit.
In the description of neo-liberalism to which both George and I responded, David Marquand spoke of "the unhindered, rationally calculated pursuit of individual self
interest in free, competitive markets". The restriction of this to activity to the marketplace brings with it many legal restrictions, informed by society's moral decisions. Moreover, the parties to marketplace deals all believe that these deals are beneficial to them, and except in cases of asymmetrical information or rationality all parties should lean towards thinking a deal beneficial to their counterparties: win-win, in other words. This is part of the rationale for encouraging any markets that lack significant negative externalities.
The trades at the heart of the financial crisis proved to be neither win-win nor, to say the least, free from negative externalities. But many of the bankers - certainly those sensitive to the fortunes of firms accumulating inflated assets - did not know that. 'Moral reform' on their part would not have averted the crisis. Granted, we have all read of financiers who sold mortgage-backed securities without a stake in, and so without concern for, their future performance. However, at its worst this is on a par with a making a bet you think you will win, and our regarding this as unacceptably amoral would involve some pretty extreme changes in our outlook - changes which it would take more than a financial crisis to show the desirability of.