Author Archives: Diane Coyle

Rawls, reloaded

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A few weeks ago I read Thomas Aubrey’s All Roads Lead to Serfdom, which argued for an alternative philosophical foundation to simple-minded utilitarianism for economic policy, if market liberalism is to survive. In Free and Equal: What Would A Fair Society Look Like, Daniel Chandler offers a modern interpretation of Rawls as an alternative to Aubrey’s Ordoliberalism.

The first part of Free and Equal is a clear and useful summary of what Rawls said. It’s over 40 years since I read A Theory of Justice, so this was a terrific refresher. And indeed for a liberal-minded person there is much to like in the Rawlsian approach, which is presented here as both comon sense and yet quite radical given where we are.

The second part of the book takes the themes – freedom, democracy, equality of opportunity, shared prosperity and democracy at work – and analyses the current state of the world in the light of each. It has many policy recommendations, many of them familiar such as UBI, worker rights in gig jobs, proportional representation in elections, all justified in terms of the underlying Rawlsian philosophy. Again, there are some unexpected overlaps with the ordoliberal case for power dispersion: Chandler writes: “Properly understood, the difference principle is concerned not just with the distribution of income and wealth but with the concentration of economic power and control.”

It seems hard to disagree with the contention that both wealth and power have become too concentrated in the western democracries and some things badly need fixing. But reading Free and Equal so soon after All Roads Lead to Serfdom crystallised for me an uneasiness I have with both underpinning philosophies, namely their individualism. Take Universal Basic Income for instance. Chandler is an advocate, but recognises there are critiques – such as undermining the sense of purpose people get from work, or the cost. The one critique he does not address is the one I’m going to label the Coyle Critique: you can’t buy a public realm – transport services, decent schools, waste collection – with your UBI.

Both books have plenty of specific recommendations, and a fine liberal individualist philosophy, but no positive account of the public realm. Improving economic and social outcomes will require a shift in public philosophy away from the bankrupt post-1980 set of assumptions; while there is much to like and much sense in Free and Equal, it doesn’t achieve this, although recognising the need to get away from the false dichotomy of market fundamentalism vs statist socialism. It argues that Rawls’ ‘difference principle’ lays the foundation for “a richer and more nuanced conversation about our economic structures,” but for me it doesn’t add up yet to “a new and inspiring political economy.”

Still, it’s unfair to expect a ready-packaged answer. Free and Equal makes an important contribution to the conversation, also explored in the recent special issue of Daedalus and elsewhere. It’s an optimistic take, and it’s interesting to revisit Rawls in such depth.

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One of my long weekend reads (alongside a detective novel – Death Before Evensong – and Metamorphosis, amazing memoir by Richard Douglas-Fairhurst about his diagnosis with MS) was Henry Dimbleby’s Ravenous: How to get ourselves and our planet into shape. The three sections cover health, nature, and what to do. Much of the material it covers is in his terrific Food Strategy document, which the government commissioned and ignored. But here it is written in compelling manner – this is an excellent and anger-inducing read. In short, the food system is making us obese and diabetic (because processing food is so profitable and is under-regulated), massively contributing to global warming, the depletion of biodiversity and other environmental harms (fertilizer use, red meat eating), lacks resilience to shocks (including because of near-monoculture production), and is inhumane to animals and birds that are industrially farmed and processed.

The food strategy has many sensible recommendations, reproduced here, including the use of taxes to cut the use of sugar and salt, more free school meals, changing the approach to farm subsidies and land use, and starting to tackle the UK’s unhealthy food culture. It is not an easy task though because there are several policy aims and some trade-offs. The aims: better health, greater equality of nutrition in an unequal society, more nature-friendly farming and food trade/consumption, improved food security, better treatment of farmed creatures. For instance one implication of several of these is that food prices should be higher – but this works against reducing food inequality and shifting the British diet to a healthier mix. So while some policies are no-brainers (tax sugar in food processing!) others are less obvious.

The first chapter starts with obesity as a system outcome rather than a failure of individual willpower. Not the ideal read as one tucks into an Easter egg (where lack of willpower definitely comes into play). Still, I hope the book makes some impact – not least shaming the government into action despite the lobbying by the food industry.

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What a spectacle

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The subtitle of Alex Preda’s The Spectacle of Expertise is ‘why financial analysts perform in the media.’ I was interested because the everyday perception many people have of economists is shaped by seeing City economists talking about markets up, exchange rates down, inflation either up or down…. whereas of course most economists don’t do financial or macroeconomics. Yet the financial markets and commentary on them define the subject for so many.

Anyway, the book is rather interesting. It’s a sociology or ethnography largely based on fieldwork in Hong Kong, where there are many, many more financial programmes to be filled with expert commentary, and it seems that for many people working in the markets there is pretty much a full time career phase of going around the studios performing. The best known even get hired to advertise other products – a new hair conditioner being a ‘good investment’ for instance.

Prada describes the whole spectacle (yes, Debord, hello), a performance requiring a team – the expert talking head but also their research assistants back on the trading floor, the programme anchor, the producer and their team, the make-up artists and sound technicicans. All in the interest of selling more finance products and growing the sector. In the financial realm of exchanging digitised symbols, the embodied reality of a persuasive talker with good make-up and a Bloomberg screen accessible on their phone is central.

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Not engineering

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This week I read Herbert Simon’s The Sciences of the Artificial, first published in 1969, and must confess to not knowing what to make of it. He contrasts ‘the artificial’ to ‘the natural’ but also more specifically applies it to complex systems designed to adapt to their environment, and compares arenas such as economics, management, and engineering systems. The point is then to analyse what properties they have in common, on the basis of information theory. The aim is evidently to present a common analysis of the various types of system considered. So far, so good. And as Professor Google tells me, the book was very influential in the design of computer systems and design theory more generally.

Beyond that? Well, I asked Bard, which said:

“The book argues that artificial systems can be studied scientifically, just like natural systems. Simon defines an artificial system as “a system that has been brought into being by human design.” He argues that artificial systems are not just imitations of natural systems, but are in fact a distinct class of systems with their own properties and laws.

Simon then goes on to discuss the various aspects of artificial systems that can be studied scientifically. He covers topics such as the design of algorithms, the nature of problem solving, and the role of heuristics in decision making. He also discusses the relationship between artificial systems and human intelligence.”

Very timely, then. But I’m hard pushed to summarise what the conclusions are, and allergic to the strong positivism of it. As readers of Cogs and Monsters will know, I think economic systems differ from engineering systems in important ways, and are not amenable to exactly the same kind of ‘scientific’ analysis. The ‘sciences of the artificial’ seem like they do well in analysis of algorithmic systems, but not so much – contrary to the claim in the book – for education, art and architecture, or indeed economics.

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Then and now

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Two of my latest reads have been Melvyn Bragg’s memoir of growing up in mid-20th century, working class Cumbria, Back in the Day, and Alwyn Turner’s canter through early 21st century British politics, All In It Together. They make quite an instructive contrast. Bragg’s warm perspective on postwar optimism – despite material hardships – complements his own story of academic success through grammar school and Oxford scholarships. Turner’s jolly but fundamentally pessimistic account of a materially far richer country is a contribution to the large and sadly still-growing literature on the UK’s decline. Both good reads, although as a working class kid from the north west who clambered the social ladder via grammar school scholarship and Oxford (albeit 20+ years later) I particularly enjoyed Back in the Day: pick according to your mood.

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