I've been looking for a drum trigger and found one on ebay on sunday. I mailed the guy and asked for a buy it now price. The mail exchange went like this.

"I don't know, what are you prepared to pay?" he said.

"In the spirit of Life of Brian i will give you 60 sheckles for the gourd" i said.

"How about £10 plus postage?"

"This really feels like the Life of Brian! I wish i had a fake beard. That seems awfully cheap. New they're £100 so £60 seems like a reasonable offer, remember when haggling you have to give a higher figure"

"Yes I've seen them for that new how about £25 plus postage?"

"Deal send me an invoice"

I'm not making it up, I know i'm soft, I should have gone for the £10 plus postage, but it's that sort of attitude that got us in this mess isn't it.

One Love

** You do meet (on-line and real-life) who rail against the State sector and come out with statements such as you allude to. But in my experience, any interaction with these people soon turns into a version of What have the Romans ever done for us? What people say before and after engaging the brain are often only loosely connected.

I really struggled to come up with a good analogy for the State spending argument above.

Something that has the essential message that by evading the the really bad thing we still get snagged by the quite bad thing. If you can get in something about how our leaders would be happier that the really bad thing happened to us because if we evade the really bad thing, a really bad thing happens to them, that would be peachy.

Yours fruitfully, Unclear.

Anyway, we digress…
Do you think (free) market idealogues are in favour of bank bailouts? Denninger, ZeroHedge etc.

There's a dissertation in here about whether some private enterprise, running scared of the effect of a banking sector meltdown, are shedding their free market ideology while self-preservation is the uppermost motive. These are exceptional times.

My view: whatever happens with regard to the banks, we are going to face an extraordinary contraction in the economy. Either a) we allow the banks to detonate or b) we dismember ourselves to keep them alive. Either option will result in severe cutbacks in Govt spending.

Then there's the question of whether recent Govt tax income is a bubble itself, following the lending/construction/housing/consumerism bubbles that have yet to properly go pop.

Who knows? It may never happen.
As ever, Unclear.

In my second post, I didn't actually say that there was a prevailing view that the public sector was unnecessary, rather that it was portrayed as dependent upon and subservient to the private sector's ability to generate 'real' money.** It's a question of the relation, not that one sector wants to other to disappear (which I was trying to show in the paragraph above), and this relation is what I called paternalistic. I think you're buying into this relation when you use phrases like "beneficial but expendable if push comes to shove" – in other words, your phrasing treats the economic crisis as unavoidable, as the immutable circumstances from which public spending decisions must be made. Public spending has to accommodate the 'realities' of the economy, such as the 'need' to have spent a trillion or so bailing out or insuring the banks against losses (scare quotes because I can't treat the terms at face value, not because I'm quoting you). My view is that we have to start refusing the logic of necessity that presumes the protection of private investment as a given; categories such as odious debt might be helpful in this task.

Best,
Ben.

* I once tried to source this statement; it apparently came from an interview she did for a a woman's magazine; I find it quite funny that the most pithy utterance of a political philosophy originated in this type of source.
** And on all my posts on this thread, I never made a statement that could be read as implying this view on the part of ideolouges of the free market. So I would say that the “extreme view” that you say I am putting forward as a straw man, is actually an extreme view that you are attributing to me; hence the suspicion of trolling.

"There are very few free market idealogues who argue that a public sector is not necessary. Those that don't are often termed anarchists of some kind e.g. anarcho-capitalists. I've never met one, I guess they must be a fairly select fringe bunch. You're anchoring your argument by refuting an extreme view."

I agree with you, but perhaps not as you might think. There is an observable tradition in the UK of appealing to precisely the view that the public sector is not necessary; this was put forward in the realm of political theory by the libertarian right, Nozick et al., adopted by Thatcher, and expounded in her famous dictum that "there is no such thing as society".* My gloss on events: Blair's Labour party continued an ideological attachment to 'marketised solutions', but what we're seeing now is a return to a more naked libertarianism re. public spending; see for example today's announcement that cuts to living allowances will not harm people because private landlords are 'probably' going to lower rents accordingly, but if not, the individual can always move house. (Here we see the two essential concepts of the libertarian right: the responsive market and the rational consumer.) But, of course, and as Golem's blog has made abundantly clear, these market-ideological (and I don't treat this as a dirty word, there's an ideology of the left as well) justification of spending cuts only apply to spending on public infrastructure and welfare (HE and living allowances, for example). There has been massive expenditure of public funds on protecting speculative investment, ie. banks. and their backers. In other words, there are large sectors of the economy for which the state stands as guarantor – and this is of course defended as being in the public interest. So the traditional idea of the small state is a lie – a state which can raise billions of pounds to safeguard private investment is not small at all, and is very willing to intervene in markets. That's why, to return to your point, I agree that there are very few market ideologues who believe the a public sector is not necessary; for it serves to dress the state and validate its self-appointed power to raise taxes, upon which the private economy depends.

[…]

You may be correct that the vast majority of the population isn't able to give a decent answer to the question: "Where does money come from? That doesn't make your answer right (or wrong); it simply drives a wedge between the two.

There are very few free market idealogues who argue that a public sector is not necessary. Those that don't are often termed anarchists of some kind e.g. anarcho-capitalists. I've never met one, I guess they must be a fairly select fringe bunch. You're anchoring your argument by refuting an extreme view.

Most of the public would say something along the lines of, "Some private sector spending is necessary, too much is a bad thing." Most would struggle to identify what "too much" is and what the "bad thing" would turn out to be; but if they were to answer, "7m and an unsustainable economy" they'd chime with me.

If we are allowed a debate on the future of the public sector, we will need to decide: what is essential, what is beneficial but expendable if push comes to shove and what is a waste of space.

For me, currently, most of HE falls into category 2 (I should be more loyal I suppose) and the Equality & Diversity officers I share an office with, fall into Cat3.

But I'm open to persuasion, which is why I like to read Golem's and Denninger's and others' thoughts, buy the Guardian but read the Telegraph on-line etc, etc…

Yours transpicuously, Unclear.

The claim that the private sector stands above and has a paternalistic attitude to the public sector IS a central claim to market ideologues. It's an assumption that stands behind pretty much every talking head featured on the documentary, and which is the foundation for current tabloid attacks on benefits and non-jobs.

Are you trolling behind that polite demeanor?

The one to be had.

"One claim seems central to the market ideologues…"

"The fact is that pro-capitalists don't have an easy answer to this question…"

Your original comment started out addressing the documentary but soon broadened into an attack on all 'market idealogues' and 'pro-capitalists', i.e. the vast majority of the population.

So I'm going for a version of 2.3. Presenting someone who defends a position poorly as the defender, then refuting that person's arguments — thus giving the appearance that every upholder of that position (and thus the position itself) has been defeated.

P.s. I originally started with, 'Hi Benek99, the one to be had.'- Which didn't read right at all. As ever, Unclear.