Twitteretter

A recently published study by Columbia University seems to demonstrate, statistically, that having visited restaurants is the one activity that correlates to increased coronavirus infection. Those who ate out had a higher chance of becoming infected, whilst other activities had no statistically relevant impact. This is hardly surprising when you watch unmasked waiters breathing over the food that many customers are going to eat in a single evening. A waiter, infectious and asymptomatic for 2 weeks, can easily infect over 300 people. The study is so far being ignored by policy makers, especially in UK, where the government are encouraging citizens to visit restaurants with the ‘ Eat out to help out’ campaign. The message is clear, our contribution as consumers is more important than our survival as humans, at least to those that govern us and who we entrust with our safety. I feel for restaurants but surely masking waiters would not be too high a price to pay for that consumer effort?...

The keen observer will have noticed an unexpected, amusing and somewhat shocking phenomenon in the last few days. The plan by the UK conservative party to balance the accounts after the coronavirus economic shock by taxing the rich and corporations. This policy is anathematic to the Tories, who have built their proud electoral record on the opposite, the liberalisation of capital. Their U-turn, the last of many to date and the first of many more to come, is the consequence of a startling fact. There is nowhere else to get money from, no other politically acceptable way to balance the books. The Tories have exploited the working classes to such extent that, on exiting the latest shock, they dare not, despite their fanatically ideologic penchant to do so, tax the rank and file of British society. It is akin to watching the shipwrecked turn to eating each other to survive, when all else fails. We, the no longer targeted, watch in mirthless bemusement as they fall on their neoliberal sword...

  Inequality is one of our major social challenges nowadays. The political turmoil agitating our societies today is a direct consequence of it. In fact, inequality is nothing new, humanity has lived with it for centuries, at many times graver than currently. But, alas, as we grew wealthier in the last century, there was hope that we may start to address it, that mindless accumulation of profits would be superseded by more lofty objectives and focuses from the powerful and the mighty. It is interesting, revisiting John Stuart Mill in the last few days, to note that he was already, 150 years ago, preoccupied with the same issues and also that his blueprint for solving them, and his actual expectation of the evolution of capitalism, remains relevant today. It seems that, in socio political terms, we have made little progress since the Victorians. His recipe? Higher inheritance taxation and workers cooperatives competing in a capitalist system with private enterprises. Would they work ...

Modern economic theory, á la Friedman and Hayek, would have us believe that protectionism is bad. As citizens, we are quite conditioned to buy into this idea. But it is a red herring. Protectionism is bad or good depending on perspective. It is bad for the most developed economies, as it prevents their companies from accessing other markets, winning them and sending the resulting loot back home. Fledgling competitors in less developed countries cannot stand against fully grown industrial or commercial giants. But, for less developed economies, protectionism is the only way to successfully foster own industries. A great current example is the birth and growth of WeChat, Ali Baba, Lenovo and Huawei in protectionist China, not replicated in the EU, which opened up its markets to the US giants and has not developed a competitive chat app, search engine, marketplace or computer manufacturer. We gave away the crown jewels of the future economy to an apparent friend who may turn out otherwise...

I have commented on the inadequacies of free markets in post XXX. It is striking to the observer that countries and even regions most aligned with these philosophies are performing much worse than all others in protecting their citizens from a health crisis like coronavirus. Free market fundamentalists are loath to imposing the wearing of facemasks, or lockdown, on their population. For them, the illusion of an individual’s freedom is more important than safety or the rights of others. The consequences are not only obvious in catastrophic pandemic statistics in Brazil, US or UK, but also for example in the Madrid region in Spain, governed by a particularly fundamentalist cabal of PP politicians. Free marketeers undertake a systematic long term reduction of Health and other Public Safety resources. Its effects on local populations (longer queues, dropping standard of treatment) are blamed on invented pressure from immigration. Alas, this may fool voters, but it does not fool viruses Len...

The coronavirus pandemic has brough along an understanding by the public of the value and importance of science in society. This should, of course, have been there before, science did not become important in 2020, but it was not. The fact is, those who work in science must do more to expose it to the public eye but, more importantly, to explain its utility and value. This is something which has been understood by some Universities, which now have Chairs for the Public Understanding of Science, or similar. But everyone working in science must further its public understanding, we don’t need to be given the job to do so. We must make it an item of conversation, in social media and at the bar, now that they are reopening in many places. Only when the public understands its importance will science get the investment and support it needs to increase its impact and, hopefully, prevent the next pandemic or similar disaster. And only by numbers can we beat those that deal in confusion and mayhe...

The economic system we’ve built relies on growing consumption to function. Endlessly Rising GDP is a requirement, one that can only be met by a relentless increase in the purchase of goods and services by the population. This is aided by population growth, and even more by slow but steady increases in the standard of living of consumers in developing countries. Africa’s development, combined with its predicted large increase in population, up to 2 billion people by 2050, will be the next growth engine. But It cannot last forever. Global population will plateau at 11 Bn, and there is only so much appetite normal consumers can have for buying things they don’t need and rarely use or engaging with useless services. Resources are scarce and there is a limit to what we can make. We therefore need a new way to measure success, or we will eventually fail consistently. A worrying observation is that no currently credible political option challenges the dominance of GDP as a society’s yardstick...