Romnesia by G. Monbiot

A potent myth is being used to justify economic capture by a parasitic class.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 24th September 2012

We could call it Romnesia: the ability of the very rich to forget the context in which they made their money. To forget their education, inheritance, family networks, contacts and introductions. To forget the workers whose labour enriched them. To forget the infrastructure and security, the educated workforce, the contracts, subsidies and bail-outs the government provided.

Every political system requires a justifying myth. The Soviet Union had Alexey Stakhanov, the miner reputed to have extracted 100 tonnes of coal in six hours. The United States had Richard Hunter, the hero of Horatio Alger’s rags-to-riches tales(1).

Both stories contained a germ of truth. Stakhanov worked hard for a cause in which he believed, but his remarkable output was probably faked(2). When Alger wrote his novels, some poor people had become very rich in the United States. But the further from its ideals (productivity in the Soviet Union’s case, opportunity in the US) a system strays, the more fervently its justifying myths are propounded.

As the developed nations succumb to extreme inequality and social immobility, the myth of the self-made man becomes ever more potent. It is used to justify its polar opposite: an unassailable rent-seeking class, deploying its inherited money to finance the seizure of other people’s wealth.

Ένα μανιφέστο για Ψυχοπαθείς

Ayn Rand’s ideas have become the Marxism of the new right.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 6th March 2012.

It has a fair claim to be the ugliest philosophy the post-war world has produced. Selfishness, it contends, is good, altruism evil, empathy and compassion are irrational and destructive. The poor deserve to die; the rich deserve unmediated power. It has already been tested, and has failed spectacularly and catastrophically. Yet the belief system constructed by Ayn Rand, who died 30 years ago today, has never been more popular or influential.

Rand was a Russian from a prosperous family who emigrated to the United States. Through her novels (such as Atlas Shrugged) and her non-fiction (such as The Virtue of Selfishness(1)) she explained a philosophy she called Objectivism. This holds that the only moral course is pure self-interest. We owe nothing, she insists, to anyone, even to members of our own families. She described the poor and weak as “refuse” and “parasites”, and excoriated anyone seeking to assist them. Apart from the police, the courts and the armed forces, there should be no role for government: no social security, no public health or education, no public infrastructure or transport, no fire service, no regulations, no income tax.

* Comment is free The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen

• George Monbiot
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 7 November 2011 
Illustration by Daniel Pudles
If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren't responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes.

Μια απάντηση για το νόημα της ζωής

The well-intentioned dolts putting a price on nature are delivering it into the hands of business.

By George Monbiot. 

Published in the Guardian 7th June 2011

Love, economists have discovered, is depreciating rapidly. On current trends, it is expected to fall by £1.78 per passion-hour between now and 2030. The opportunity cost of a kiss foregone has declined by £0.36 since 1988. By 2050 the net present value of a night under the stars could be as little as £56.13. This reduction in the true value of love, they warn, could inflict serious economic damage.

None of that is true, but it’s not far off. Love is one of the few natural blessings which has yet to be fully costed and commodified. They’re probably working on it now.

Under the last government, the Department for Transport announced that it had discovered “the real value of time”. Here’s the surreal sentence in which this bombshell was dropped: “Forecast growth in the real value of time is shown in Table 3.”(1) Last week the Department for Environment announced the results of its National Ecosystem Assessment, a massive exercise involving 500 experts. The assessment, it tells us, establishes “the true value of nature … for the very first time.”(2) If you thought the true value of nature was the wonder and delight it invoked, you’re wrong. It turns out that it’s a figure with a pound sign on the front. All that remains is for the Cabinet Office to tell us the true value of love and the price of society, and we’ll have a single figure for the meaning of life.

The government has not yet produced one number for “the true value of nature”, but its scientists have costed some of the assets that will one day enable this magical synthesis to be achieved. The assessment has produced figures, for example, for the value of green spaces to human well-being. If we look after them well, our parks and greens will enhance our well-being to the tune of £290 per household per year in 2060(3).