Psychopath Economics: Part 1 – The Bull & The Bewildered Herd
By Peter Batt
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About this ebook
More than politics, economics is the art of the possible; a discipline that goes to the heart of how we live our lives. It can deliver riches beyond dreams, as well as the famine of nightmares. Its exercise exceeds even war as the ultimate expression of human power. Indeed, economics is usually the war itself.
The 2008 financial crash and its aftermath has exposed many of our comfortable beliefs about how our societies work. Criminals in suits are showered with riches, while people who actually make things of use increasingly struggle to make ends meet.
We see that hard work doesn't necessarily pay; that we don't live in a meritocracy; that the avenues to progression are increasingly blocked; that the system just isn't fair. Growing inequality has created a widespread sense of injustice.
But human societies are very rarely egalitarian. And in this respect, today's elite – the so-called '1%' – is treading a well-worn path. Most, if not all, civilisations of the last 5,000 years were hierarchical and distributed their wealth according to power and status. History suggests that populations grow and are sustained by their ability to exploit the natural resources available to them, as well as their own people.
As civilisations rise from the land, a social pyramid inflates and elites emerge at the summit. Once at the top, elites maintain, increase and extend their power by relentlessly reinforcing the hierarchy and consumption patterns that gave them their dominance. An elite might have everything, but it's never enough. It's a dynamic that steadily undermines the pyramid's whole social and environmental foundations.
Psychopath Economics is about legitimacy and the logic of power. In it, journalist Peter Batt argues that power is ultimately psychopathic because, in its purest and most effective form, it applies a cold, calculating focus on achieving its aims to the exclusion of everything and everyone else.
Psychopaths tend to be charismatic, effective and fearless. They are attracted to power, just as they are attractive in power. They are results-driven and dynamism, and have an unshakable focus on goals. But they lack any emotional connection or concern about consequences.
From this flows a number of conclusions. To start with, psychopathic power is destructive; it seeks to exploit human and natural capital to breaking point. It exhausts the land and targets those within society least able to resist. This is ultimately self-destructive and today's societies have all the hallmarks of a civilisation careering towards collapse.
Secondly, an elite is not terribly interested in reasoned arguments for change, because that, by definition, would suggest that it will concede some power. Inequality is a self-reinforcing process, and psychopathic power makes no concession without a threat.
So, thirdly, any change of direction is dependant on the herd actively disrupting the system.
Psychopath Economics looks at the interaction of three dynamics: belief systems, consumption and the logic of power. Written in four parts, the first gives an overview of the whole book before looking at today's mainstream economic narrative as a belief system designed to legitimise and hide the unequal exercise of power, and the true motivations of those who wield it. Peter Batt uses the market imagery of the bull, the faceless power of capital, and Walter Lippmann's concept of the 'bewildered herd'. It argues that neoliberal economics is a belief system created by the psychopath, for the psychopath.
Part 2 looks at how belief systems and the logic of power drive societal development and collapse. Part 3 takes these themes and looks at how they are playing out today. The fourth and final instalment looks at why and how the 'herd' can repatriate power and potentially break the cycle by disrupting the system, most likely via debt denial, anti-branding and direct action.
Peter Batt
I'm a journalist of 30 years experience that includes freelance writing and production roles for private clients and at various UK national newspapers – and particularly the Times Educational Supplement, the Independent and the now-defunct Sunday Business. In 2007, I developed and launched a mainstream-style green consumer magazine in the UK, called GreenerLiving, as a means of promoting sustainable change ‘within the system’. However, GreenerLiving closed during the post-crash recession, and I became managing editor of the international ethical business title, Ethical Performance. However, I felt that the CSR sector has not succeeded in changing corporate priorities anywhere near fast enough, and so I decided to leave the treadmill of corporate employment and debt accumulation to focus on my own projects. Now poorer but a billion million times happier, I write on political, economic and social issues – usually seriously, but I also like a bit of satire. I’m currently writing Psychopath Economics, a book about belief systems, the psychopathic logic of economic power and the rise and fall of societies. In the book, I argue that civilisations rise and fall in a cycle often driven by psychopathic elites, and that if we are to halt the downward arc of today’s cycle, then ordinary people must challenge the elite's power via debt rebellions and by 'democratising' the creation of ideas, particularly when it comes to intellectual property and branding. This book is my contribution to the grassroots momentum for change that I believe we very badly need.
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Book preview
Psychopath Economics - Peter Batt
Psychopath Economics
The Bull & The Bewildered Herd
the first of four parts
by Peter Batt
for Ellie, Sula and Louis
Published by Peter Batt at Smashwords
Copyright © 2015 Peter Batt
Cover design by Peter Batt using original artwork by Chrissy Norvell
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
The arguments outlined in this book do not constitute financial advice and should not be construed as such. For financial advice, always consult a qualified financial adviser.
riot shields voodoo economics in turn your turn
it’s just business cattle prods and the IMF
I trust I can rely on your votes
when I go forwards you go backwards
and somewhere we will meet
I go forwards you go backwards
and somewhere we will meet
from Electioneering by Radiohead
c
Contents
Preface
Chapter 1 Introduction
Power and consent
Running off a cliff
Psychopath economics
Forewarned is forearmed
Feel the power
The reality gap
Chapter 2 The Failure of Economics
I The Ideological Science
Inequality bingo
Money as power
Enslaved by debt
II To Hide An Elephant
Who pays the piper?
Neoliberalism
Money over matter
Robin Hood in reverse
Yet more debt
III Weapons of Mass Destruction
An abdication of responsibility
Insolvency abuse
Theft by another name
IV Where to Now?
Endnotes
Acknowledgements
About the author
Preface
More than politics, economics is the art of the possible. It can deliver riches beyond dreams, as well as the famine of nightmares. Its exercise exceeds even war as the ultimate expression of human power. Indeed, in the competition for finite resources, economics is more often the war itself; a war once silently waged primarily by Western elites against the developing world. Now it seems to be increasingly directed by Western elites and their governments against their own citizens.
But the four parts of this book covers much more than just economics. It’s also about how we use symbols and narratives to label and understand the world around us. It’s about the logic of power; where it’s held and how societies respond to its exercise. And it’s about human societies and their relationship with the land – a relationship that tells us about the rise and fall of civilisations. In this way, this book’s perspective is located as much in politics and social psychology, with a bit of history and anthropology thrown in, as it is in economics.
Economic themes, though, are this book’s starting point, and specifically the economic narratives that dominate much of the West today. Economics is a belief system that’s central to how people understand who gets what and why, and the economists’ ideas subtly shape our perceptions of everyday things; from the money in our pockets and bank accounts, to why we deserve our rewards in the first place. We might not like them but what the economists say is important because their theories have such a pervasive impact on our lives.
Secondly, economists often present themselves as independent experts working in a kind of natural science. The appearance of science creates a respectful space that few politicians enjoy and which, more importantly, makes us much more likely to blindly accept what they say. This is, as I argue in the book, a mistake and my reason for writing this, apart from anger, is to emphasise that it is in all our interests that we engage with the arguments. We don’t all have to be experts – as, indeed, neither am I – but by deferring to the cult of the economics expert, we are conceding power.
Here we have to make a distinction between the so-called ‘mainstream economics’ of TV and most newspaper commentators, along with the academics, market analysts, bankers and regulators, as opposed to the mavericks, who have been banging this drum for years. The former accept current narratives on market practices and government and central bank policies, if not at face value, then likely because facts on the ground have been changed. The mavericks, by definition, are dissenters, some of whom see their mainstream counterparts as engaged in a cruel deception that explicitly seeks to manipulate markets and minds. The mainstream narrative is increasingly incredible – at least to me.
While there are many economists who are passionate and genuine in their search for ‘truth’, whatever that might be, the economists’ ‘science’ is more apparent than real. In today’s world, the mainstream economist’s parables are every bit as likely as the politician’s and propagandist’s to rely on profoundly-flawed assumptions.
I am not an economist myself, but I don’t think you have to be to see the discipline’s shortcomings. In my view, those who believe mainstream economics is unconnected with reality are right. Many would be amazed at, for instance, the concept of fairness and the assumptions around human motivation that lie at the heart of mainstream economic theory. Many more – including quite a few economists – would be even more amazed to discover the real origin and nature of something as basic as money and debt, a big issue in this book. Indeed, I’ve come to realise that working as an economist doesn’t preclude you from being as in the dark on economic functioning as anyone else.
And much of the stuff that economics hides from itself and the general public could easily cause a scandal if better understood, generally because it relates to the silent possession and exercise of power. In the course of researching this book, exposing the elite’s invisible exercise of power became one of my primary motivations. Increasingly unchallenged in the developed, mainly English-speaking industrialised nations, this power is progressively transforming capitalism into a new form of colonialism. Vast reservoirs of money are spirited away in offshore tax havens from which the elite can separate itself from the great mass of humanity – the so-called ‘bewildered herd’ – and often with the collusion of their own governments.
In writing this book, I have tried to produce something that’s useful for people as frustrated as I am with the unreality of it all. I’ve tried to present the arguments in as clear and accessible manner as possible so it is readable for a mainstream audience. I’m not simply trying to sell a book here; this is my small contribution to a grassroots movement for change, so that inequality and the banks’ parasitic existence are no longer simply accepted as inherent parts of our economic system. It’s an ideal, I know, but any loosening of the elite’s power would be welcome.
To this end, I’ve tried to avoid jargon and technical explanations. This hasn’t always been possible, partly because I can’t always ignore the economists’ technical concepts, and partly because the systems I’m describing are sometimes genuinely complex. For instance, chapter 1, on the Failure of Economics, seeks to show how technocratic language is used to give respectability to an unedifying bunfight of industrial-scale theft and corruption – a theme continued in this book’s third instalment. In the process, I could use any number of words to describe the actors in this great drama – the oligarchs, kleptocrats and plutocrats. But, for simplicity’s sake, I’m going to stick with the word ‘elite’ to cover them all.
The truth is that despite all the trappings of science, it’s the mainstream economist’s client – the corporate and financial elite – that shapes the agenda. Critical but inconvenient issues, such as mountainous household debt and the debt colossus that is the derivatives market, are typically met with a deafening silence while others, such as public debt, fuel a constant background chatter of haranguing analysis, along with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. A focus on convenient facts reflects a strategy designed to hide and protect the elite’s economic stake, while helping it to outmanoeuvre competing centres of power.
However, this strategy’s success alone doesn’t explain why the inconvenient facts make little impact beyond those with a keen interest in the subject. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, the information is out there for anyone interested in finding it. Only, so far at least, it hasn’t made a sufficient difference. Where I have used economics terminology, I’ve tried to link them to webpages – usually on Wikipedia – that will both give more detailed descriptions and will exist for some time.
When I decided to write Psychopath Economics, I initially set out to answer two core questions. The first revolves around why wealth and opportunity is distributed so unequally, even when there’s an abundance. What is it about our psychology that makes us happy to deprive others of their basic needs for life? Of course, this question doesn’t just relate to the elite; the majority of us in the West are extremely well off compared with citizens across the developing world. Why do we so easily accept the predicament of those less fortunate than us? Attributing this behaviour entirely to selfishness doesn’t get to the root