Lakoff on “growth” & “degrowth” frames

George Lakoff was recently asked if he thought economic “degrowth” framing was any use, and he immediately replied: “No, it isn’t…” (the video is here – Lakoff’s comment starts 49/50 minutes in). I originally wrote the following article for OpenDemocracy as a readable, non-technical summary of “growth” and “degrowth” frames. I repost it here now, as it sheds light on Lakoff’s recent brief comments…

Outside governments and corporations, the pursuit of economic growth is no longer taken for granted – some commentators are challenging the orthodoxy. But the “growth” concept has deep roots, and in its absence we have what George Lakoff calls “hypocognition”, a lack of established frames enabling us to think differently about the economy.

The “growth” frame shapes economic thinking along metaphoric lines – “natural” organic growth being the source of the “more is growth” metaphor. As Michael White points out (in Metaphor and economics: the case of growth), this isn’t just a convention of language: “[W]hen economists and journalists deal with economic performance, the metaphoric sense of growth is highly active”.

What this means is that various ideas are imported automatically – and largely unconsciously – from the “growth” metaphor into our attempts to think quantitatively about “the economy”. For example:

1. Growth tends to be conceptualised as natural and good. This deeply positive sense is universal, and is imported into our conception of quantitative increase in economics via the metaphor. It’s not just a superficial “surface language” matter.
2. Conversely, absence of growth is conceptualised as bad and unnatural – eg due to adverse conditions, or to interference with the natural process. The list of examples of economic metaphor expressing this fundamentally negative, unnatural aspect of “no-growth” seems endless in our culture. One interesting example is economic “flatlining”, in which “flat growth” metaphorically signifies death. The negative connotations of no-growth aren’t overt here – they’re entailments of the metaphor.

So deeply established is the “natural growth” metaphor (and its negative obverse) that we might find it hard to think in positive terms about “the economy” without it. Or, as Anna Gustafsson puts it (in The Metaphor Challenge of Future Economics), “We may even have difficulties in conceptualizing a society not built upon growth; this is visible in our language.”

Both “growth” and “the economy” are what Lakoff calls ontological metaphors. They enable us to think about multifarious phenomena (eg all the things “of value” that people do) in terms of “discrete entities or substances of a uniform kind”. The price we pay is to be stuck with crude, reductive logic, eg growth/no-growth. And it doesn’t help much to change the definition of “Gross Domestic Product” (GDP), or to divide “the economy” into sectors – it simply applies the same logic to slightly different, or smaller, entities.

Of course, there have been many conventional criticisms of GDP as a “measure” – eg that it confuses different types of “growth”, and doesn’t reflect (unequal) distribution, environmental damage, etc. These criticisms have been around for a while – some of them were made by Simon Kuznets, the economist who originally developed the ideas behind GDP. “Economic growth” was first adopted by governments as national policy objective after the introduction of GDP (1940s-1950s) – not for its own sake, but as an approach towards achieving “full employment”. Peter Victor, an ecological economist, has argued (Nature, 18/11/2010) that because “growth”, as a government objective, is a relatively new notion, “dethroning it seems less improbable.”

From a cognitive frames perspective, that seems optimistic. “Growth” is a “deep frame” – its use in economics goes back at least as far as 18th century classical economics (although not as government policy). But, most significantly, it’s been a key feature of business propaganda for decades, since political strategists first noticed that “economic growth” and market ideology are mutually reinforcing. That means the frame has been hammered into our skulls relentlessly – in all kinds of ways, without pause – for much of our lives.

“Growth” frame reinforces market logic

Market ideology holds profit maximisation to be a moral good, and interference in the market (eg by government) to be a moral ill. Both notions combine easily with the “economic growth” frame. Firstly, with the idea of total increase as a “natural” good, regardless of the divisions, characteristics or manner of distribution of that increase; and, secondly, of interruptions or interferences with “growth” viewed as unnatural and inherently nefarious.

Market logic on labour is reinforced by the notion of “growth”, also. This regards labour as “a natural resource or commodity, on a par with raw materials”, to quote Lakoff and Johnson (Metaphors we live by), who argue that uniformity – or interchangeability – is implied by the metaphor of labour as material resource. Overall “productivity growth” is the criterion – the well-being of the worker doesn’t enter into the equation.

Another aspect of market ideology reinforced by the “growth” frame is the heroic individualist entrepreneur fairy tale. “Growth” as a personal or individual-business metaphor seems unproblematic, but when we conceive of “the economy” as an object with an attribute of “growth”, the entrepreneur idea extends to it “naturally” because of the “good growth” frame. This is the myth that practically all “growth” comes from entrepreneurial enterprise, which is heroically fighting against “unnatural” interference (eg from “do-gooders”, Green activists, etc).

In fact, corporate market ideology and “economic growth” framing seem so closely intertwined that the mutual reinforcement appears seamless and invisible – unless it’s pointed out. Perhaps the most obvious example for most people would be “trickle-down economics” – the idea that as long as “the economy” is “growing”, all those minor inconveniences like mass poverty and corporate monopoly will “naturally” sort themselves out.

“Degrowth” and “post-growth”

The labels, “degrowth” and “post-growth”, obviously express little more than negation of “growth”. Lakoff advises that direct negation of a frame merely activates that frame, although this might seem like a trite formula to those who fervently oppose any further “economic growth”. And judging by the frequent use of these “de-” and “post-” terms in Green projects and proposals, Lakoff’s advice has either been overlooked or misunderstood. As a result, the negating labels tend to communicate the very idea of “growth” that market ideology thrives on.

A better frame? – Wealth as well-being

“[T]here is a crucial movement toward a new economics – an economics of well-being, in which the Gross Domestic Product is replaced by an overall indicator of well-being. This new perspective is directly counter, in many ways, to the narrowly imagined concept of economic growth.” (George Lakoff, Why it Matters How We Frame the Environment)

Promoting an economics based on well-being and its indicators has the advantage, from a cognitive frames perspective, that wealth as well-being is a very deeply rooted – and universal – metaphoric frame. Our original conceptions of “wealth” are inseparable from expressions of well-being. The problems of hypocognition posed by negation of “growth” thus seem partly averted when we shift our economic focus onto well-being.

To give a ‘concrete’ example: Work evaluated in terms of the well-being of the worker, as opposed to employment policy made on the sole basis of boosting “growth”. If economic ends are primarily framed in terms of well-being, not abstract “growth”, this makes sense. The subjective experience of the worker is barely considered at all by governments and corporations fixated on “growth”. With well-being central to economic thinking, things like leisure and quality of life “naturally” come to the fore – they’re assigned a value that was always excluded by the “economic growth” frame.

“Degrowth” – a problematic economic frame

Jan 15, 2015 – The term, “degrowth”, is increasingly used to designate a sort of environmental movement. And while it may be an effective label to unite people with similar views, it ignores pretty much all the advice from the field of cognitive framing on building popular alternatives to conservatively-framed “common sense”.

[M]any people engaged in environmentalism still have the old, false view of reason and language. (George Lakoff)

I touched on this in an earlier post on economic “growth” framing. Reaction to that post was mixed – some people “got” it; others seemed to think I was talking just about language. We have to remind ourselves that cognitive framing is about how we think – how we form worldviews. Ideas, beliefs and impressions which have been reinforced in our neural circuitry over decades, thanks to constant cultural repetition, cannot be undone simply by using a language of opposition (with some exceptions*).

With that in mind, here are some pointers on the problems with “degrowth”, starting with “growth” basics:-

“Growth” frame basics

♦ “Growth” of “the economy” is what George Lakoff calls an ontological metaphor. In plain English, this means we think about the unthinkable (eg immeasurable complexity) in terms of “entities or substances of a uniform kind” (Metaphors we live by, Lakoff & Johnson, p25). Thus, the diverse activities of millions of people are aggregated into a single entity called “the economy”, with a uniform attribute of “growth”.

♦ This metaphorical framing has some important downsides (as some economists have realised, at least since the establishment of Gross Domestic Product as a “measure”). For example, the crude binary logic of “growth”/”no-growth”, as if “the economy” has only two ways to go. Also, the dangerous illusion of uniformity in the aggregate measure of “growth”, as if different “economic activities” (with irreconcilable measures) can meaningfully be lumped together in a single quantitative measure.

♦ “Growth”, as metaphor for the increasing “sum” of diverse human activities, excludes qualitative differences. It thus conflates life-nurturing and life-destroying activities (both of which may count as “growth”). Qualitative frames (eg for differentiating types of activity creating well-being or environmental damage, etc) are diminished in cognitive importance by a repeated focus on “growth”.

♦ “Growth” overwhelmingly tends to be conceptualised as natural and good, while lack of growth is seen as bad and unnatural. This is universal, deep-rooted, and unlikely to be reversed by promoting “degrowth” as a good, or by analogies with special cases where growth is seen as bad – eg growth of disease. (See my earlier post for details, including cited research).

♦ Market ideology and the Protestant work ethic mutually reinforce the notion of “growth” as outcome of (and moral reward for) “efficiency”, “discipline”, “productivity”, “hard work”, etc. This moral framing system is deeply rooted in our culture.

Problems with “degrowth”

♦ “Degrowth” isn’t a different frame from “growth” – it entails the same set of conceptual metaphors: an entity (“the economy”) with a single aggregate measure (“growth”), and the implication of a top-down policy whose primary objective is to increase or decrease/stabilise “it”. Both “growth” and “degrowth” are single, quantitative ends for “the economy”.

♦ Although direct negation (eg as “degrowth” negates “growth”) may appear to logically undermine a frame, it activates the frame in our brains, strengthening its physical, neural basis. And, by a process which cognitive linguists call “mutual inhibition”, alternatives to the frame are inhibited by continual focus on its reinforcement/negation.

♦ The “growth”/”degrowth” frame of an aggregate quantitative measure, usually at a national level, reinforces both market capitalist and conservative nationalist conceptual schemas. (See my earlier post for details on reinforcement of the former.)

♦ Nationalist schemas include the Nation as Person metaphor in thinking about “national interest”. In conservative framing, this means competition between nations, in which “national interest” (ie economic health and military strength) is about aggregate maximisation of wealth and power. This ties in with (mutually reinforces) national economic “growth” (ie “growth”/”degrowth” framing).

In short, the way we think about “the economy” in terms of “growth” is reinforced in important respects by the “degrowth” vs “growth” narrative – including inhibition of alternative frames. And in what might be called  conservative “felt” common sense (which is widespread as a result of cultural repetition of the economic “growth” and market frames over decades), “degrowth” will be “felt” as deeply unnatural, nefarious and weakening to the nation.

If the penny still hasn’t dropped for “degrowth” campaigners, I recommend they read, and carefully ponder, Lakoff’s paper, Why it Matters How We Frame the Environment.

Never accept the right’s frames – don’t negate them, or repeat them, or structure your arguments to counter them. That just activates their frames in the brain and helps them. (George Lakoff)

*In some cases, direct opposition seems the only way to go. When slavery (for example) is directly opposed, the slavery frame is, of course, activated and reinforced in our brains. Does that undermine the anti-slavery cause? Clearly not when slavery is already widely conceived as immoral and unacceptable. But what about before that point in a given society? You might want to ponder the differences between something like slavery and something like “growth” of “the economy” – in terms of conceptual metaphor and level of abstraction. Also, consider my article on Antiwork. Am I contradicting myself by using a term that opposes work? Or is the idea of negating all work so obviously ludicrous, that I must be attempting some sort of “guerilla ontology”, simply to provoke thought/debate?

The economic “growth” frame – and its opposition

Aug 27, 2014 – Outside governments and corporations, the pursuit of economic growth is no longer taken for granted – some commentators are challenging the orthodoxy. But the “growth” frame has deep roots, and in its absence we have what George Lakoff calls “hypocognition”, a lack of established frames enabling us to think differently about the economy. Cognitive-linguistics studies have even suggested that direct opposition to the language of “growth” may be counterproductive.

Promoters of “economic growth”, together with their opponents (eg “degrowth” and most “post-growth” adherents*), share the same starting premise – that something called “the economy” has a meaningful single measure (“growth”, GDP, etc) which should either be increased or not, depending on the respective view.

Both views (pro- and anti- “growth”) tend to reinforce aspects of market ideology as a consequence of this shared premise. To understand why – particularly in the case of Greens – we need to look closely at what the “growth” frame brings to economic thought.

Since we don’t want “to confuse the map with the territory”, it seems a good idea to briefly recall the human-level terrain – the unthinkably diverse activities, communications, materials (or “resources”), processes, “products”, “services”, skills, know-how, information access, etc – all of which have different, and largely irreconcilable, “measures” – and all of which we contrive to aggregate into a single object, or entity, called “the economy”.

Okay, now back to the abstractions which govern us.

Framing economic “growth”

Economics at a “macro” level is, by necessity, a construct of models and metaphor. The conceptual metaphors we use to think about “the economy” bring their own weird logic to the party – mostly from domains more concrete than macroeconomics. This is no trivial matter, as metaphoric frames define the dominant economic worldviews.

Even the basic notion of economic “growth” shapes our thinking along metaphoric lines – in this case, the “natural” growth of a living organism, which is source domain for the growth-as-increase metaphor (“more is growth”).

“Growth” might seem to be merely a dead metaphor – ie one which is conventionalised (or “lexicalised”). But, as Michael White points out (in Metaphor and economics: the case of growth): “despite this lexicalisation, when economists and journalists deal with economic performance, the metaphoric sense of growth is highly active“. (My emphasis)

This seems an important point – and worth emphasising, particularly for those who aren’t familiar with the field of conceptual metaphor. What it means is that various ideas are imported automatically – and largely unconsciously – from the “growth” metaphor into our attempts to think quantitatively about “the economy”. For example:

1. Growth tends to be conceptualised as natural and good. This deeply positive sense is universal, and is imported into our conception of quantitative increase in economics via the metaphor. It’s not just a superficial “surface language” matter.
2. Conversely, absence of growth is conceptualised as bad and unnatural – eg due to adverse conditions, or to interference with the natural process. The list of examples of economic metaphor expressing this fundamentally negative, unnatural aspect of “no-growth” seems endless in our culture. One interesting example I’ve previously written about is economic “flatlining”, in which “flat growth” metaphorically signifies death. The negative connotations of no-growth aren’t overt here – they’re entailments of the metaphor.

So deeply established is the “natural growth” metaphor (and its negative obverse) that we might find it hard to think in positive terms about “the economy” without it. Or, as Anna Gustafsson puts it (in The Metaphor Challenge of Future Economics), “We may even have difficulties in conceptualizing a society not built upon growth; this is visible in our language.”

(Note: There are a few exceptional cases where growth is regarded as bad in its source domain – eg disease and obesity. The phrase, “obese economy”, might have satiric potential, and “cancerous economic growth” makes a point about growth with no end. But I suspect that if Frank Luntz found that his opposition was framing economic growth as “disease” or “cancer”, he’d clap his hands and take the day off. The implication would be of humanity as disease – presumably not a frame that Greens would be keen on promoting.)

“It’s the economy, stupid”, stupid

Both “growth” and “the economy” are what Lakoff calls ontological metaphors. They enable us to think about unthinkably multifarious phenomena (eg all the things “of value” that people do) in terms of “discrete entities or substances of a uniform kind”. This isn’t about “mere language”, but about how people think. The “price we pay” is to be stuck with crude, reductive (eg two-valued) logics, eg growth/no-growth. And it doesn’t help much to change the definition of “Gross Domestic Product” (GDP), or to divide “the economy” into sectors – it simply applies the same binary logic to slightly different, or smaller, entities.

Of course, there have been many conventional criticisms of GDP (and GNP) as a “measure” – eg that it confuses different types of “growth”, and doesn’t reflect (unequal) distribution, environmental damage, etc. These criticisms have been around for a while – some of them were made by Simon Kuznets, the economist who originally developed the ideas behind GDP.

“Economic growth” was first adopted by governments as national policy objective after the introduction of GDP (1940s-1950s) – not for its own sake, but as an approach towards achieving “full employment” (a point I’ll return to). Peter Victor, an ecological economist, has argued (Nature, 18/11/2010) that because “growth”, as a government objective, is a relatively new notion, “dethroning it seems less improbable.”

From a cognitive frames perspective, that seems optimistic. “Growth” is a “deep frame” – its use and extension in economics goes back at least as far as 18th century classical economics (although not as government policy). But, most significantly, it’s been a key feature of saturation-level business propaganda for decades, since political strategists first noticed, or vaguely intuited, that “economic growth” and market ideology are mutually reinforcing.

That means the frame has been hammered into our skulls relentlessly, repeatedly – in all kinds of ways, without pause or break – for much of our lives. This is why Lakoff and his colleagues often bring neuroscience and the physical brain into the equation. If it were just a question of “pure”, disembodied ideas, we could drop the idea, or belief system, immediately, erase it from our minds and replace it with a new one. But we know it doesn’t work like that.

“Since the synapses in neural circuits are made stronger the more they are activated, the repetition of ideological language will strengthen the circuits for that ideology in a hearer’s brain. […] ideological language repeated often enough can become ‘normal language’ but still activate that ideology unconsciously in the brains of citizens – and journalists.” (George Lakoff, Why it Matters How We Frame the Environment)

“Growth” frame reinforces market logic

Market ideology holds profit maximisation to be a moral good, and interference in the market (eg by government) to be a moral ill. Both notions combine easily with the “economic growth” frame. Firstly, with the latter’s entailment of total increase as a “natural” good, regardless of the divisions, precise characteristics or manner of distribution of that increase; and, secondly, of interruptions or interferences with “growth” viewed as unnatural and inherently nefarious.

Market logic on labour is reinforced by the notion of “growth”, also. This logic regards labour as “a natural resource or commodity, on a par with raw materials”, to quote Lakoff and Johnson (Metaphors we live by), who argue that uniformity – or interchangeability – is implied by the metaphor of labour as material resource. Overall “productivity growth” is the criterion – the well-being of the worker doesn’t enter into the equation.

Another aspect of market ideology reinforced by the “growth” frame is the heroic individualist entrepreneur fairy tale. “Growth” as a personal or individual-business metaphor seems unproblematic, but when we reflexively conceive of “the economy” as an object with an attribute of “growth”, the entrepreneur idea extends to it “naturally” because of the “good growth” frame. This is the myth that practically all wealth/”growth” derives from entrepreneurial enterprise, which is heroically fighting against “unnatural” interference to growth (eg from governments, “do-gooders”, Green activists, etc).

In fact, corporate market ideology and “economic growth” framing seem so closely intertwined that the mutual reinforcement appears seamless and largely invisible – unless it’s pointed out. Perhaps the most obvious example for most people would be “trickle-down economics” – the idea that as long as “the economy” is “growing”, all those minor inconveniences like mass poverty and corporate monopoly will “naturally” sort themselves out.

The inverse is “mutual inhibition” between “economic growth” and policies which oppose corporate-market domination. Perhaps this explains why the idea of a “leisure society” seemed to grow weaker in our society during the period in which the dogmatic pursuit of “economic growth” grew stronger. As mentioned above, “growth” was originally adopted as a government measure/policy for the purpose of achieving “full employment”. This situation now seems to have reversed, with “economic growth” regarded as an end itself, and “job creation” (at all costs) as a putative (and usually dubious) means to serve that end.

“Degrowth” and “post-growth”

Obviously, these terms express little more than negation of “growth”. Lakoff, as we know, advises that direct negation of a frame merely activates that frame, but this might seem like a trite formula to those who fervently oppose any further economic “growth”. And judging by the frequent use of these “de-” and “post-” terms in various Green projects and proposals, the advice has either been overlooked or misunderstood.

Any use of these terms (eg as proposals, without quotes) tends to imply (and communicate) the premises that I’ve described above, which market-ideological views thrive upon. GDP (or any alternative single “measure” of “growth” of “the economy”) is, by definition, bought into. It’s simply a “for” or “against” inversion according to the narrow terms of the worldview which created the problem.

“Green growth”

I’ve seen differing definitions of “green growth”, but they all start with the conventional premise of overall “growth” in “the economy”, and its inherent two-valued logic. Some “de-” and “post-” “growth” adherents oppose “green growth” by using the argument that any society (historic or modelled), regardless of how “green”, will show correlation between rising GDP and environmental damage. (Some studies have indicated that this correlation does indeed apply).

That seems a good argument against continuous pursuit of “growth” (eg rising GDP) in even the most greenly-imagined society – but only if you accept that a single aggregate “measure” of “growth” in “the economy” isn’t a nonsense to begin with.

A better frame? – Wealth as well-being

“[T]here is a crucial movement toward a new economics – an economics of well-being, in which the Gross Domestic Product is replaced by an overall indicator of well-being. This new perspective is directly counter, in many ways, to the narrowly imagined concept of economic growth.” (George Lakoff, Why it Matters How We Frame the Environment)

Promoting an economics based on well-being and its indicators has the advantage, from a cognitive frames perspective, that wealth as well-being is a very deeply rooted – and universal – metaphoric frame. Our original conceptions of “wealth” are inseparable from expressions of well-being.

The problems of hypocognition posed by negation of “growth” thus seem partly averted when we envisage a system of economic indicators based on the existing deep frame of wealth as well-being.

To give a ‘concrete’ example: Work evaluated in terms of the well-being of the worker, as opposed to employment policy made on the sole basis of boosting “growth”. If economic ends are primarily framed in terms of well-being, not abstract “growth”, this makes sense. The subjective experience of the worker is barely considered at all by governments and corporations fixated on “growth”.

With well-being central to economic thinking, things like leisure and quality of life “naturally” come to the fore. Policies previously avoided because they don’t provide “growth” will be considered if they boost well-being. Interestingly, some of the research into how societies might function without “growth” have found that greater leisure and reduction of poverty may be key elements (together with reduction in the use of fossil fuels, materials, etc) – even without any focus on well-being as a criterion.

More leisure, less anxiety

In the late 1700s, Benjamin Franklin predicted we’d soon work a 4-hour week. In 1965, a US Senate subcommittee predicted a 22-hour work week by 1985, and a mere 14 hours by 2000. Paul and Percival Goodman, in the 1960s, estimated that just 5% of the work being done would satisfy our food, clothing and shelter needs.

What happened to the dream of a leisure society made possible by more-for-less efficiencies in know-how and technology? The conventional answer is that productivity increases were channeled into a spiral of greater consumerism and more work, rather than into increased leisure. And the conventional reason is the massive propaganda push from big business to sell the consumerist culture.

Less conventional a reason, but probably just as important, is the moral framing of work in our society. As David Graeber puts it, “there’s this ideological imperative to validate work as virtue in itself. Which is constantly being reinforced by the larger society. On the other hand, there’s the reality that most work is obviously stupid, degrading, unnecessary, and the feeling that it is best avoided whenever possible.”

Economic “growth” is tied into the “full employment” narrative, and has been since the 1950s. This is where I see an interesting leverage point for change – in terms of broad public acceptance of a new economic worldview. Not in terms of “growth” abstractions (for or against), but towards a greater emphasis on free time, leisure, contentment, happiness, fulfilment – rather than more work, more stuff to buy.

That, and less anxiety. Anxiety seems epidemic in our society – much of it related to work and income. That’s why I see a need for something like a Universal Basic Income to accompany a shift in attitudes away from “more work at all costs” consumerism (or “growth”), and towards an embrace of a time-rich leisure society for all.

* Note: Some “post-growth” and “degrowth” adherents do question the validity of GDP, and argue for alternative measures, etc. But the post-growth and degrowth literature typically proposes reduction or stabilisation of overall “growth” of “the economy” (in other words, it accepts the premise of a single measure of “growth”). 1/9/2014

Graphics by NewsFrames

Endless “austerity” framing

April 29, 2013 – The “austerity” frame currently dominates political and economic debate. How do we usefully describe the cognitive frame (as opposed to the calculated spin, sales pitch or rationalisation)? Here’s one view:

In conservative ideology, “austerity” isn’t a temporary economic measure, it’s a permanent moral imperative.

[Update, 14/11/13 – In the last few days, David Cameron has called for “permanent” austerity, to the surprise of many commentators.]

We’re talking about a cognitive frame

It’s like the “war on drugs”. No matter how overwhelming the evidence of failure, it will still be pursued as policy, because the alternative is routinely framed as immoral (see below for examples). The Wikipedia entry on economic austerity won’t tell you anything about this moral dimension, and most economics pundits will tell you little. Analysis of front-page newspaper stories and political speech can, however, tell us much…

Every day we’re presented with a false moral dichotomy: Austerity vs X. What is X? It’s both the disease whose cure is austerity, and the only available alternative to austerity. And it’s framed as being essentially immoral. X is “government waste” on “dependency culture”, “something-for-nothing culture”, “living beyond one’s means”, “spiralling welfare spending”, “benefit cheats”, “benefit tourists”, etc. Recipients of state “handouts” are placed on the moral spectrum somewhere between idle fecklessness and fraud/theft.

This is the moral-metaphorical framing which has usurped the facts and figures. It doesn’t matter to the frame that the real costs of both welfare fraud and legitimate unemployment benefits (etc) are relatively low. As George Lakoff puts it, “frames trump facts”. Another way of putting it is that evidence-based reason is unlikely to prevail while moral outrage against X is triggered by headlines every few days.

The austerity frame combines with the economy-as-household metaphor, which Paul Krugman has described as follows:

The bad metaphor – which you’ve surely heard many times – equates the debt problems of a national economy with the debt problems of an individual family. A family that has run up too much debt, the story goes, must tighten its belt.

The result of this combination is that we think of austerity in terms of household activity (working, spending, borrowing, etc). This has two damaging consequences. First, it gives a false idea of how national economies work (as Krugman explains). Second (and most relevant here), it makes us think of economic-failure’s causes and solutions in terms of household behaviour. The problem with this is that household metaphors don’t fit the actions of banks which led to the financial collapse, or the steps which still need to be taken against the banks.

When economy-as-household metaphors are used repeatedly with the austerity frame, it becomes difficult to discuss the role of the banks – especially when communication is limited to soundbites. Opposition politicians tend to opt instead for the path of least resistance: “tough on welfare”. Or they repeat the “getting people back to work” line. Unfortunately, even the latter reinforces moral “austerity”. Why? Because worklessness is presented as the problem – particularly the behaviour of individuals and households with regard to “finding work”. The logic is as follows:

1. Poverty/joblessness is viewed as moral failure of the individual.
2. “Austerity” is the moral discipline that will punish these failures.
3. Austerity means people can’t be “dependent” on benefits – they must alter
   their behaviour and “get back to work”.

The real giveaway about “austerity” is that not everyone is subjected to it. Those most deserving of austerity’s pain and punishment (eg banks and bankers) have escaped it. The financial institutions that are more dependent on state handouts than all “benefit scroungers” put together exist in a different compartment of media/political debate. After all, they are wealth-creators, job-creators – they are respectable, they wear suits, they make tons of money, and they reward political parties with it in various ways. This means they have the right kind of discipline. They don’t need the moral discipline of austerity. That’s reserved for the dirty scrounging peasants who are viewed as too feckless and idle to get a job.

The bottom line is that most conservative ideologues don’t really want austerity to end any more than they want the “WAR ON SCROUNGERS” headlines to end. Both are an integral part of the same conservative frame (or “ideology”). It isn’t new – the recent Philpott “vile product of welfare UK” case is preceded by countless others. In 1976, Ronald Reagan referred to a “Welfare Queen” who had supposedly received $150,000 in government handouts and was driving a “Welfare Cadillac”. The media could never find this person – it appeared to be a made-up stereotype.

Lakoff explains in technical terms why such stereotypes are readily adopted by our brains (“Prototype Theory”, “salient exemplars”, etc), but it boils down to existing “deep frames” which have been repeatedly reinforced:

Of course, what made this [stereotype] possible were strict father framings. First, there was the conservative logic that morality requires discipline, discipline in the market leads to prosperity, and lack of honest prosperity means laziness, lack of discipline, and therefore immorality. The Welfare Queen myth fit the frame – and would not have worked if it had not. (Lakoff, The Political Mind, Chapter 9)

Living wage slavery

Nov 14, 2012 – Last week was officially ‘Living Wage‘ week (UK) – and only the most committed sadist would object to a campaign to raise the wages of the working poor. But, for me, the framing was wrong, and served to reinforce some deeply conservative ideas about “jobs” and “income”.

For example, the Living Wage Foundation states in big letters on its homepage that: “We believe that work should be the surest way out of poverty.”

The “surest way”? What are they thinking? Are we living inside a Dickens novel or something? (No wonder we’re seeing a rise in regressive measures such as workfare). In the technological 21st century, only a small fraction of total wealth is generated by human labour (and the fraction seems to be dwindling all the time, according to Jeremy Rifkin’s book, The End of Work) – I see no logical or economic sense in making “work” a condition for having a living income.

And I see no “moral” sense in the idea that work “should” be the “surest way” out of poverty. I’m not even certain what that means, since there’s nothing very “sure” about jobs these days – regardless of wage levels.

If this were a TV debate, I’d probably get drowned out by “orthodox” economics-talk from both left and right. The right talks about “job loss” resulting from raising incomes; the left counters with statistics about minimum wage, etc. But both accept the aim of getting as many people as possible “into work”. It’s like a superstition.

This “orthodox” economics reflects Victorian (or earlier) frames and metaphors (eg see economist Paul Ormerod’s work in this regard*). And, going back to Charles Dickens, you can see the whole worldview described (and seemingly subtlely satirised) in his novel Hard Times: the “self-made man”, the “dissipated, extravagant idler”, time as commodity, escape from poverty through hard work, etc.

More than a century later, we’re still labouring under the notion that “work” will cure the malaise caused by any economic “crisis”, personal or global. So, when the economy is brought to its knees by a corrupt/greedy financial sector, the answer is to get everyone “back to work”… until the next financial collapse (which is never caused by idleness).

Of course, there are good cognitive reasons why we think in this limited way. In our own personal experience (replayed thousands of times in our brains), “work” produces direct, tangible results, while inactivity leaves work to be done. Repetition in our nervous systems creates the appearance of a universal principle: that “wealth” (in a broad sense) comes primarily from work.

This framing might be appropriate for barter of turnips and chickens – or even, at a stretch, for Victorian mills (if you ignore how the created wealth was distributed). But how can it be suitable for thinking about an economy in which only a small percentage of the total wealth is “produced” or “earned” from present-day human work? (Estimation of ‘total wealth’ should include technological production, infrastructure and land-use, scientific know-how, accumulation of the common wealth of centuries of past human labour – which should be distinguished from current-work “productivity”. It’s the “commons”, the “public” – it’s vast).

Ponder this figure: In just over a decade, the Credit Default Swap market grew from nothing to $54 trillion. That’s close to the total GDP of the planet. Our cognitive frames for human “work” just don’t apply here. (Credit Default Swaps were a main – and diabolical – cause of the recent global financial collapse. They are a type of derivative – they resemble insurance against defaults on loans, but streamlined, packaged, computerised – on an industrial scale, but without human “work” production.)

I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work. (Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness)

The solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income. (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Chaos or Community)

Update 10/12/2013: I’ve previously written widely about economic alternatives such as a Universal Basic Income, which I favour. Here’s one example, an article I wrote for the Idler magazine – Bluffer’s Guide to Revolutionary Economics.

* “as the twentieth century draws to a close the dominant tendency in economic policy is still governed by a system of analysis inspired by the engineers and scientists of the Victorian era”. (Paul Ormerod, The Death of Economics).

◊ The graphic above is from my spoof charity website, NSPCO

Graphics by NewsFrames

If you see just ONE graph this decade…

Dec 8, 2011 – Unsurprising, but jaw-dropping – this graph which George Monbiot linked to a few weeks ago. A continual rise in productivity, matched by a rise in wages… until around 1980. Hold in mind the perpetual rise in productivity, and consider…

Polly Toynbee recently tweeted about Robert Skidelsky’s Occupy LSX talk: “Modern capitalism over produces work and under produces leisure…Skidelsky speaking sense… says 25 hr [working] w[ee]k… Citizens income for work/leisure choice.”

In his new book (on Keynes & the economic crisis), Skidelsky quotes a paper by Thomas Palley, which argues that under the neoliberal model (starting around 1980): “the commitment to full employment was abandoned as inflationary, with the result that the link between productivity growth and wages was severed.” With productivity growing and wages falling in real terms, consumer demand was built upon increasingly high levels of household debt.

All true, of course. But what many accounts leave out is the staggering level of technological advance since 1980. (Advances which ultimately wouldn’t exist without public funding/infrastructure). This enormous technological component of productivity doesn’t translate into wages for human labour, hence the necessity of solutions such as a Citizen’s Income.

It’s good to see commentators such as Robert Skidelsky and Polly Toynbee talking about a Citizen’s Income. This is the same proposal that goes under the names Basic Income, UBI, National Dividend, etc (I’ve written about these proposals in more detail here). I suspect you’ll be hearing a lot more about Citizen’s Income in the months/years to come.

Meanwhile, I think the graph should be tattooed onto our brains…

Sources of graphs:
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/04/opinion/04reich-graphic.html
http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/events/spring08/feller/
http://thecurrentmoment.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/productivity-inequality-poverty/
http://jkornacki.com/?p=1195
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-tasini/conspiracy-of-silence-wag_b_155531.html
http://currydemocrats.org/in_perspective/american_pie.html
http://www.rebelcapitalist.com/index.php/site/permalink/tapped-out/
http://the-wawg-blog.org/?tag=mega-rich
http://www.exponentialimprovement.com/cms/hannityinsanity.shtml

Framing Occupy’s “demands”

Nov 23, 2011 – Should the Occupy movement make specific policy demands? I see two different approaches getting coverage – eg George Lakoff’s (Huffington Post) and Michael Albert’s (Guardian)…

Lakoff says it’s “a good thing” that Occupy isn’t “making specific policy demands”. He argues that Occupy is about a shift in “moral focus”, and that, “If the movement is to frame itself, it should be on the basis of its moral focus, not a particular agenda or list of policy demands.”

Lakoff’s work (on moral-framing systems) shows how the American right succeeded by framing political issues in terms of a moral system which appeals to the “rugged individualist” identity, and which gives primacy to self-reliance and self-discipline, etc. Lakoff describes this moral system as follows:

“Conservatives have figured out their moral basis, and you see it on Wall Street. It includes: the primacy of self-interest. Individual responsibility, but not social responsibility. Hierarchical authority based on wealth or other forms of power. A moral hierarchy of who is “deserving,” defined by success.” [George lakoff, Framing Memo for OWS]

A large proportion of “the 99%” appear to vote out of identification with this “conservative” moral system – apparently against their own “rational” interests (as economists would put it). It seems important to realise this. Lakoff’s work is partly an attempt to explain why, and to offer alternative approaches (see below).

Michael Albert (co-editor of ZNet) suggests a different approach in his recent piece for the Guardian. Albert says that when a movement has sufficient strength (in numbers) it should make demands that “appeal to a very wide constituency”. The first example suggested by Albert is “the demand for full employment”:

“[S]eeking full employment makes sense because firing people is a way out of the current crisis that leaves elites stronger than they were before. It is a way out that leads right back to business as usual, with, in addition, a bonus for the rich and powerful in the form of a weakened working class. Clearly, we don’t want that. We want the opposite, a stronger working class and weaker elites. And that is the point. Full employment strengthens all workers, and it weakens all owners.”
[Michael Albert, Guardian, 15/11/11]

Albert adds that the larger “workforce” would work fewer hours “until the economy is back in shape”. He suggests “30 hours’ work for 40 hours’ pay, at least for everyone who is earning less than some quite high amount”.

“Full employment” – a fascist notion?

I shudder in horror whenever I hear the term “full employment”. The well-intentioned folk who propose it aren’t (I hope) thinking of forced labour, but it’s difficult to see how the latter doesn’t follow directly from the former. The ironies here… that a movement such as Occupy would propose an idea that seems deeply conservative* at best, and which has brutally authoritarian implications, at worst. Albert’s claim that “Full employment strengthens all workers, and it weakens all owners” seems, to me, an inversion of evidential reality in important respects – and it appears to confuse “employment” with livable income.

There’s enough material on the fascistic-seeming “full employment” framing for several articles, so I’ll leave further comment for future pieces. For now, consider the ways in which Michael Albert’s suggestions might conceptually “reinforce” the rightwing Economic Liberty Myth (a term coined by Lakoff). For example, Albert says Occupy should demand that people who have been fired are “rehired”. Central to the Economic Liberty Myth is the notion that employers “give jobs” to employees. This is what makes employers the heroes in the narrative – employers as the source not just of income, but of “meaningful activity” (“work”) and social relationships. The only other alternative (according to the myth) is: people sitting at home doing nothing, wasting their lives, isolated, socially useless parasites. In this quaint fairy tale, the employers – the bosses, the owners – save us all from that horrible fate. We demand it.

Lakoff’s alternative

To return to Lakoff’s idea: that Occupy frames itself “on the basis of its moral focus, not a particular agenda or list of policy demands.” What would this look like in practice? Lakoff’s analysis of the “nurturant” morality which underlies progressive politics suggests the following:

• Publicise The Public: Frame in terms of the common wealth, public infrastructure, public lands, public safety nets. As Lakoff puts it: “The Public is not opposed to The Private. The Public is what makes The Private possible. And it is what makes freedom possible. Wall Street exists only through public support. It has a moral obligation to direct itself to public needs.”

• Reframe The Private Market: Large corporations/banks act like private governments and should be framed as such. They use vast amounts of taxpayers’ money. And not just in bailouts. They’ve always depended on publicly-funded infrastructure. Avoid the corporation-as-individual metaphorical frame, which transfers the notion of “rights” from the domain of individual persons to institutions of concentrated wealth and power.

(My own modest contribution – explained here & here – is that the financial sector should be framed in terms of systemic risk rather than by conventional economic-framing of “competition”, “efficiency”, etc).

• Reframe Income/Work: Technology is, to a large extent, publicly-funded. (Boeing and Microsoft, for example, wouldn’t exist without the decades of public funding of aerospace and computer research and development). The great concentration of private wealth resulting from productivity increases (due to publicly-underwritten technological advances) should be framed as immoral. The so-called “labour market” can be framed as an ideological construct which has failed to provide a fair distribution of wealth, even with relatively high levels of “employment”.

Elsewhere (Moral Politics, p421), Lakoff has suggested a Negative Income Tax as a means of more fairly distributing wealth. But since we’re discussing how Occupy might frame a shift in moral focus, rather than specific policy, I won’t go into details here. (I’ve written about Negative Income Tax – and similar schemes – in a previous piece).

Additional material

Douglas Rushkoff does a great job of reframing the whole job/income issue here (video) & here.

See also this interesting piece on Lakoff/Occupy from the Overweening Generalist blog.

* I agree with Bob Black’s essay, The Abolition of Work, that all ideologies (whether Marxist, Liberal or Conservative, etc) seem conservative to the extent that they believe in maximising employment.

“Financial Crisis” & Media Compartmentalising

Nov 16, 2011 – Media compartmentalising, like frames, can be difficult to spot – particularly in reports which seem factually correct and relatively “balanced”.

Take the global financial meltdown (or “credit crunch”, if you think it resembles a breakfast cereal). Much of the reporting of this complex set of events seems “correct” factually, and even in assigning blame. And yet… if you’re like me, you’ve found it inadequate and unsatisfying. There’s a massive cognitive disconnect here, and it can’t be explained in terms of simple media “bias” (political or otherwise).

Here’s the basic narrative from the best media coverage (in a nutshell and in my words):

The financial collapse stemmed from an ideology (Neoliberalism), in which the financial sector was given free rein to profit with minimum regulation – eg from the high-risk (and very lucrative) subprime lending market. Its false sense of security was due to inadequate models of risk which ultimately failed when the US property market crashed.

That seems accurate enough, based on the known facts. So why the cognitive disconnect? I would guess it’s due to media compartmentalisation of the following two areas:

1. Framing of market ideology (“Neoliberalism”, “Capitalism”) in terms of things like “business efficiency” and “competition” in the real world.
2. Framing of specific “failures” (particularly to do with “risk” & regulation) in the “virtual” world of finance.

The media reporting of the “facts” of the meltdown tends to use 2, with 1 as general background. The “failures”, as reported, occurred in 2, but the fundamental role of 1 in creating the conditions which led to those “failures” (and to the whole “crisis”) is rarely explored.

There’s a huge disconnect, for example, when regulatory “failures” are reported merely in terms of absence of attention to details and technical matters. The years of deregulation, and the failures of regulators, were both due to a culture in which “market discipline” was believed to be the most “efficient” form of regulation. (See my previous piece on the “market discipline” frame). This was an ideology, a sort of secular religion, in which the “free market” was seen as superior to all other forms of organisation.

Given the framed ideological primacy of competitive profit-making and the presumed non-reality of other kinds of social value, market self-regulation was taken for granted as the right way. One result of this (among others) was the rapid emergence of a multi-trillion-dollar market in over-the-counter derivatives – unregulated, not counted by any central authority… plus international agreements allowing banks to measure their own riskiness.

John Lanchester (author of Whoops! – one of the few accounts of the meltdown to successfully integrate 1 & 2 to produce a convincing narrative) gives an example of conventional media reporting, regarding the ideology:

“You get a glimpse into the world-view when you look at The Economist. It is […] full of good first-hand fact-finding. […] But every single piece, on every single subject, reaches the same conclusion. Whatever you’re reading about, it turns out that the solution is the same: more liberalization, more competition, more free markets. However nuanced and original the detail in the bulk of the piece, the answer is always the same; it makes The Economist seem full of algebraic formulas in which the answer is always x.”

Of course, if media reports were framed in a way that showed clearly how “x” was the main, central, primary, fundamental factor (or “cause”) creating the conditions that led to disaster, they couldn’t very well present “x” as the solution to every economic scenario. There are certain realities that The Economist (and other similar media) cannot ignore if they wish to remain remotely credible. And so we get compartmentalisation, whether intentional or not.

There has been, for a long time, a cultural divide in Britain between the The City (finance capitalism) and dirty industry/manufacturing. Ironically, the market ideology which led to massive expansion of the financial sector (over the three decades since Margaret Thatcher came to power) is built on a metaphorical framing (concerning things like “efficiency” and “free competition”) which goes back to Adam Smith’s era. When Smith wrote about the “division of labour” and the “invisible hand of the market“, etc, he wasn’t thinking about risk-modelling for Credit Default Swaps (CDS) on Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO) on pools of subprime mortgages. He was thinking about “tangible” things like pin factories.

(The insurance giant AIG was the biggest player in the CDS market. It was brought to its knees by CDSs on CDOs, but was Too Big To Fail, and enjoyed the biggest bailout of a private firm in history. How’s that for “efficiency”, “competitiveness” and good old-fashioned industriousness).

Framing “risk” – and its importance

In my previous piece, and above, I’ve singled out “risk” as the all-important factor in the financial sector (in contrast with the importance placed on “efficiency” and “free competition” in general business). Why? Because risk determines the outcomes of finance-capitalism in a way that is far removed from our conceptions of things like competitive efficiency in the “real world”. This is illustrated by how banking works, even at a basic level…

Banks pay a low rate of interest to depositors, and charge a higher rate to borrowers – thus making a profit. Banks don’t really make money from providing a “service” – they make it from taking on risk (eg the risk of loans going bad). It’s a “respectable” form of gambling. There are, of course, rules governing the amount of capital (eg deposits) that banks must keep against the risk of loans not being repaid, etc. These rules limit the amount of lending (and other speculation) that banks can make – ie the level of risk they can take on. But they also limit the banks’ profits. The banks hate this. The ‘innovative’ financial products I’ve been writing about (the ones which played such an important role in the financial meltdown – CDSs, CDOs, etc) were designed to get around the rules on risk – in very complex, and profitable, ways – with the effect of making it practically impossible to monitor systemic risk.

Why Nassim Taleb seems angry…

If you haven’t already seen this entertaining clip of Nassim Taleb (author of The Black Swan) on Newsnight, I recommend it. Taleb is angry with “tie-wearing economists” peddling bogus measures of risk in the financial markets.

If you pay attention to what Nassim is saying, you’ll see that he’s talking almost entirely about risk. (If you’re new to the topic, reading my previous piece might help to clarify some of his points). One of the highlights is when presenter Emily Maitlis asks, “Does this require a mindset change?”.

Alternative economic framing

Oct 11, 2011 – Newspapers mostly reflect “conventional” economics, whose textbooks describe variations on the “classical” market economic model, and little else. (Some of the more risqué texts might devote a page to Marxism, but that’s the only alternative we’re supposed to consider). Economics is framed as capitalism vs socialism. (Cognitively speaking, there’s a “good” reason for this limiting dichotomy – but I’ll save that for a future piece).

John Lanchester, in his excellent economics primer, Whoops!, argues that the global financial collapse stems from the perceived victory of an ideology (“capitalism”): “That climate was one of unchallenged victory for the capitalist system, a clear ideological hegemony of a type which never existed before: it was the first moment when capitalism was unthreatened as the world’s dominant political-economic system.”

So, a dichotomy framed as a battle with a clear winner. The financial sector, given “free reign” (as well as “free rein”), became more powerful than ever. This is illustrated by Simon Johnson, a former IMF chief economist:

“From 1973 to 1985, the financial sector never earned more than 16 percent of domestic corporate profits. In 1986, that figure reached 19 percent. In the 1990s, it oscillated between 21 percent and 30 percent, higher than it had ever been in the postwar period. This decade, it reached 41 percent”. *

The financial sector rules – like “a class of priests and magicians”** – by instilling incomprehension and awe (even “experts” apparently can’t agree on many of the basics). In this milieu it’s safer for journalists to use conventional “accepted” economic frames – there’s less risk of exposing one’s ignorance. Alternative economic views/proposals thus receive little coverage.

There’s an abundance of economic ideas which fall outside orthodox framing. The main difficulty is ploughing through them to find the ones which seem neither “crackpot” nor scary. Here are a few of my favourites…

Universal Basic Income (UBI)

A Basic Income is an income paid to all individuals, without work requirement or means test (which is what places it far outside conventional economic “wisdom”). People are free – but not obliged – to top it up with income from other sources, eg self-employment or jobs. Over the last two centuries this idea has been independently proposed under a variety of names – Citizen’s Income, Universal Benefit, State Bonus, Social Credit and National Dividend.

Several ways have been suggested to fund a Basic Income. Nobel prize-winning economist James Meade proposed a social dividend funded from the return on publicly owned productive assets. Some economists think that funding should come from redistributive income taxation or a tax on land. These ideas aren’t new – as far back as 1796, Thomas Paine favoured a state-provided universal income to compensate for the inequitable division of land, which he saw as belonging to everyone.

The Basic Income concept makes good bait to dangle in economic conversations. The uninitiated, taking the bait, will argue that it would remove the incentive to work, and nurture an “idle underclass”. In fact, compared to the existing welfare system, Basic Income provides a strong financial incentive for creative and productive activity (some recent research lends empirical support to this). With Basic Income it’s more financially rewarding to move from unemployment into a job – because you keep your Basic Income payments, whereas you would lose your dole. Many common types of work – eg low-paid casual, part-time or self-employed work – increase your disposable income under a Basic Income scheme, whereas the income from such work is subtracted from your dole under the current system. Many worthwhile activities – adult education, voluntary work, starting a business, etc – are penalised or even criminalised under the current welfare system, because they interfere with the condition of “continuous availability for work.” Most wealth-creating activity begins modestly, perhaps not generating enough for a person to survive on at first. Basic Income nurtures such activity, whereas the welfare system aborts it.

Guaranteed Income

Guaranteed Income is sometimes confused with Basic Income, but the important difference is that it uses a means test. Every individual is guaranteed a minimum income (set above the poverty level) – if your income falls below this level, you automatically get a top-up from the government, but as your personal income increases, the amount of top-up decreases. Guaranteed Income, like Basic Income, is not conditional upon work.

Several variations of Guaranteed Income have been proposed, the most well-known being Robert Theobald’s 1964 scheme for “Basic Economic Security”. Theobald was concerned about the effect of technology and increasing automation – he thought it was time to dissolve the traditional link between income and work, since most work would eventually be automated. By 1968, 1,200 economists (including John Kenneth Galbraith) called on Congress to introduce such a system. A Guaranteed Income in fact almost made it into legislation, under a proposal put forward by – wait for it – Richard Nixon. A book was written about it in 1973, by Daniel Patrick Moynihan (who was appointed to Nixon’s White House Staff as Counselor to the President for Urban Affairs). His book was titled: The Politics of a Guaranteed Income: The Nixon Administration and the Family Assistance Plan (1973).

Negative Income Tax

One variation on Guaranteed Income is the Negative Income Tax, which would provide government top-ups, via the tax system, to those below a certain income level. It should be pointed out to those who see this as a “soft” leftist idea, that Negative Income Tax was proposed by one Milton Friedman. In many ways, we’re outside the right/left framing dichotomy here. Friedman’s apparent intention was to create a system that costs less than the current welfare system (but which also avoids the degrading nature of welfare).

Willingness to Work?

Many so-called “guaranteed minimum income” schemes restrict entitlement, among the unemployed, to those “willing to work” – a condition similar to that of current welfare systems. The Belgian political theorist Philippe Van Parijs argues that when we assess willingness-to-work, we should make the distinction between pointless, dead-end jobs and useful, fulfilling or “stepping stone” jobs – and that the best people to make this distinction are the ones doing the jobs. This is in stark contrast to conventional economic framing, in which all market-created jobs are viewed as “good” and “worthwhile” – by definition.

Zero-interest Currency

A different type of non-coercive redistribution of wealth comes from the old Individualist (as opposed to Collectivist) Anarchist approach of allowing free trade to drive down the cost of “borrowing” money. This idea originated with early anarchists such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Josiah Warren and Benjamin Tucker.

Free trade is supposed to drive down prices through open competition, but according to Proudhon, Warren and Tucker there is a fundamental flaw in the existing system: a lack of competition in the issuance of currency. The current legally enforced money-issuing monopoly (eg the Bank of England or the Federal Reserve) keeps interest at an artificially high level – if free competition were allowed in the creation and distribution of alternative currencies, the cost of credit could in theory fall to a rate well below 1% (the cost of administering the credit; true interest would be zero).

Ironically, this appears to be “true” free-market economics taken to its logical conclusions. The anarchists claimed that zero-interest currency would eventually remove all forms of usury, including “profit”, from economic transactions. Adam Smith’s principle of “labour being the true measure of price” would thus come into effect through free competition driving out all usurious components of price. Workers would be fully compensated for their work at last, and not a Marxist or Collectivist in sight.

Rusting bank notes – Stamp Scrip

“I believe that the future will learn more from the spirit of Gesell than from that of Marx”
— John Maynard Keynes

In 1891 an Argentinian businessman and economist named Silvio Gesell went one step further than the Individualist Anarchists by proposing a system of negative-interest currency. The most well-known form of this currency was “stamp scrip”, which required a stamp to be affixed to the back of a money note each month, to revalidate it.

Gesell believed that money is fine as a medium of exchange, but that it tends to be used as an instrument of power, capable of dominating and distorting the market. For example, money can be hoarded – temporarily withheld from the market for speculative purposes – without exposing its holder to losses. Real material goods, on the other hand, can’t be hoarded without significant costs – either in the natural deterioration of the goods, or in the cost of storage.

In order to encourage the natural circulation of wealth instead of speculative hoarding, Gesell proposed “rusting bank notes” (a metaphor for negative-interest money), to bring about an “organic reform” of the monetary system. With money behaving more like real material wealth, the distortions in the system caused by hoarding and other forms of usury would be removed. This, he argued, would result in people receiving the full proceeds of their own labour, and would enable large sections of the population to quit wage slavery and work in an autonomous manner in private and co-operative enterprises.

A successful experiment with Gesell’s theories took place in the Austrian town of Wörgl in 1932, during the depression. Wörgl effectively ran out of money, so the mayor of the town printed his own. The resulting currency, Wörgl stamp scrip, was designed to automatically earn negative interest. Each month its holders had to pay a stamp fee of 1% of the value of the note, so people spent the money as fast as possible. This resulted in a huge increase in “real wealth” – new houses, a new water system, repaved streets, a new bridge, a ski jump, etc. But when hundreds of other Austrian towns came up with plans to copy the successful Wörgl scheme, the central bank panicked because of the threat to its monopoly. It soon became illegal to issue alternative currency in Austria.

The Digital Economy

Apart from the possibility of alternative electronic currencies, the “digital economy” hasn’t delivered much of revolutionary economic impact (except in the sense of concentrating wealth more “efficiently”). The first electronic money-trading system was opened by Reuters in 1973, shortly after the dismantling of the gold standard and the Bretton Woods system (which regulated international currencies). From earliest records up until then, 90% of capital transactions had involved the “real economy”, ie trade and investment, with only 10% being speculation. By 1995 a staggering reversal had taken place – trade and investment accounted for only 5% of capital transfers, with 95% being short-term speculation.

Electronic trading networks have developed a virtual economy in which most of the money is made not through actual investment, but through transacting in a sort of abstract wealth. For example, huge profits have been made from rumours about indirect effects of future transactions – but the future transactions don’t necessarily have to happen for the profits to be made. Massive profits have been made from currency speculation, conjured up by supercomputers which transact fast enough to exploit microfluctuations in exchange rates.

Very little of this virtual-economy profiteering produces anything of value in the sense of “real wealth” – ie things of real value to human lives. Short-term financial speculation tends to create economies of high profit, low investment and low wages – in other words, it’s detrimental to the lives of most people. We have some strange notions about the respectability of certain types of income. When poor people receive modest welfare payments, they’re labelled “spongers”, but when speculators bleed vast sums from the digital economy, without producing anything of value, we congratulate them on their skill.

The Tobin Tax

James Tobin, a Nobel laureate economist, foresaw the detrimental effects of escalating currency speculation during the 1970s. He proposed a small tax on foreign currency transactions that would put “sand in the wheels” of international speculative finance, and thus help to prevent instability in the global financial system. It would also generate a vast amount of revenue.

This idea has resurfaced as an Internet phenomenon, the Robin Hood Tax.

Final thought to ponder (on Guaranteed Income)

“A system that is less expensive than welfare and also less debasing to the poor, it seems to me, should not be objectionable to anybody but hardcore sadists.”
— Robert Anton Wilson

* Quoted in Whoops! by John Lanchester. Johnson’s figures are for USA.
** Description of financial sector as “class of priests and magicians” is from Whoops! by John Lanchester
*** Much of the above article is adapted from a piece I had published in the Idler magazine, Winter 2002