I've been struck by the "new" paradigm presented by an increasingly noted system of thought among economists called Modern Monetary Theory. It seems to provide those things many of us have been searching for: workable answers for what seemed an intractable situation. We discover that we are not locked into a prison cell of insufficient funds for society to operate, and structures all around us falling into decay as a result. Instead, we are being kept in that space by a dominant paradigm which is not an inevitability. Immediately the question comes up - who is doing the imprisoning? Who has skin in the game in keeping things as they are, starved and decaying?
The answer appears to be the economics of what has been called neoliberalism. This is the line which, among other things, says "publicly owned enterprises are inherently inefficient, so we need to get the private sector involved". It also says "when we get the private sector involved we are contributing to 'lean and mean' tendencies that are already there in our environment as a natural consequence of our being human - the 'survival of the fittest' fight which occurs will keep things fresh". In other words, there is nothing more essential or more basic and bedrock than these ideas. So of course it's interesting that there is incredible inefficiency in a lot of public enterprises now, even though the private sector is playing a huge part, or even the whole part, in them. The proof of that one's in the pudding, literally.
And subsequently of course the question comes up: "a lot of money and resources are flowing through these chains, but the chains themselves are starved and decaying, so where are the money and resources going, and why aren't they achieving more?". Which leads to the basic realisation that private involvement predicates the owners of these concerns, sometimes a small group of individuals, sometimes a larger group, where we are including shareholders. It would seem that that's where a lot of the money goes. So, again, the vision develops: private owners in small numbers but having large pockets, shareholders in large numbers whose collective pocket is equally sizeable, requiring their emolument. This requirement being solid, a first consideration. So the public purpose which any given enterprise might have becomes a subsequent concern, a next level down thing. We are helped to understand: "without our input this enterprise would be sloppy and inefficient, so we are worth the money paid in order to obtain the better result". Except that this better result is not how things are. And this is not a difficult or subtle analysis. It's obvious for pretty well anyone to see.
And of course this neoliberal thing stretches back deep into the 1970s, so it's been on the go for 50 years and more, even before the big cheerleaders of its virtues, Reagan and Thatcher, came to power. 50 years and counting of slow starvation and decay in public enterprises has meant that there are now entire generations younger than myself who simply assume that this is the only way things can be - our society's trajectory has only ever been thus to them. (As an aside, it's interesting (possibly only to me!) to think about what somebody from prior to that period might make of where we are now. Imagine 'reviving' Churchill even, let alone some other less 'capital C' conservative leader, let alone someone of more "left" principles, from that era, and having them see how we've arranged things, and where the money's going, and what the results are across society. I think they'd be a bit shocked by our arrangements: "why can't they see what they're doing?")
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