« Bruce Kent | Main | New Blog »
March 14, 2007
Who is this Mark Steel Character?
Anyone know ? Someone to take seriously or not? On the basis of this screed not:
Surely the Adam Smith Institute should lead a boycott of anything made in Third World sweatshops, until the 12-year-old machinists are given a week off, a free pass for art galleries and a six-pack of their choice.
Oddly, no. The ASI supports buying things made by people in poorer countries so that more wealth is created so that said machinists can indeed have a week off. If we don't buy what they make then they'll be back in the paddy fields and there ain't no six packs or culture out there.
One further thing that might be worth mentioning here. Incomes in those sweatshop factories are, adjusted for inflation, somewhere round and about the sort of levels that Smith saw around him. In fact, in many cases they're rather higher.
Could there be a more shambolic way to organise everyone's houses, than leaving it to the free market?
Err, yes actually, and I've lived in a country that did it. Compare and contrast the average UK housing stock with the average Russian housing stock. Run the time machine back to say, the 1980s. Which would you prefer to live in (and please remember that a significant amount of Russian housing then was still multi-family units)?
We might also remind outselves that the crap housing in this country is the stuff that was not built by the free market. Now, it was the planned stuff, wasn't it?
Presumably, the Adam Smith Institute's answer would be to start selling shop doorways and park benches. So before long the homeless would go: "Here, I got this place two years ago for two tins of Special Brew and a box of KFC bones. Had it valued this week: it's worth a six-pack of Tennents Extra and a whole binful of discarded Chinese rice. Ridiculous, this housing boom, isn't it?"
Might even be worth trying to find out what the ASI does indeed say on the housing market. Here. Broadly, the thing which creates a shortage of housing in the UK and thus the high prices is the planning permission system. Relax that and prices will come down, to all our benefit.
An excellent piece of investigative reporting from Mr. Steel, don't you think?
Looking him up, he's a SWPper. Typical.
March 14, 2007 in Economics | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c2d3e53ef00d83521f5f869e2
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Who is this Mark Steel Character?:
Comments
Duh. He's a stand-up comedian. And a very funny one too. His history of the French Revolution is hilarious (and highly accurate). Recommended reading.
OK, OK, he's a leftie with no common sense. But that doesn't mean he can't spot a weak argument, hence his legendary stand up routine on the Iraq war.
Posted by: Kay Tie | Mar 14, 2007 2:07:47 PM
"Anyone know? Someone to take seriously or not?" - The BBC obviously do by the about of work they throw him.
I watched his "Mark Steel Lectures" which was an alternate history series where the Oliver Cromwell was the founder of the socialism.
Posted by: Kit | Mar 14, 2007 2:16:41 PM
Not.
He's a member of the SWP. He is a fave of the BBC in the same way that Jeremy Harding is. He was a Guardian columnist until Bee Campbell bitch-slapped him in print over something he wrote.
His technique, as you'll have noticed, is to turn something through enough of an angle to make it absurd, then point out the absurdities he's just introduced as though they somehow invalidate his starting point.
Not to be confused with rational argument.
Posted by: Peter Risdon | Mar 14, 2007 2:26:45 PM
Wikipedia knows all
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Steel
Posted by: Dave Cross | Mar 14, 2007 2:54:53 PM
Surely nothing is as ridiculous as this though:
He certainly wouldn't recognise the insatiable greed of modern business, in which nothing is assumed to have any value unless it makes a profit. If someone turned up on Dragons' Den, saying they needed a few grand because they'd love to set up a home for destitute sick people, the panel would go: "How dare you waste our time? This crackpot scheme's going to lose money hand over fist."
Even though it's not worth it, I had to give it a little bit of a fisk over at Conservative Party Reptile...
Posted by: Timj | Mar 14, 2007 3:05:14 PM
I'd not want to live in a 60s tower block built by some forward thinking council-Tory or Labour-in the Butskellite frenzy of that time.
But the tiny boxes with internal walls made of platerboard being put up by the well-known building companies and that many of us proles in the South-East have to settle for are hardly exemplary.
Posted by: Will | Mar 14, 2007 3:29:47 PM
"I'd not want to live in a 60s tower block.."
I live in an early-50s semi built to Parker-Morris standards by Hornsey council as was, and it's very nice thank you. Almost certainly better than the back-to-backs the private sector produced somewhat earlier. And certainly better than the semis the private sector is currently putting up round our way where you have to buy special tiny furniture to get it through the doors.
Posted by: dave heasman | Mar 14, 2007 4:17:44 PM
"But the tiny boxes with internal walls made of platerboard being put up by the well-known building companies and that many of us proles in the South-East have to settle for are hardly exemplary."
It's partly about lending. Spending a huge amount on those things doesn't increase the value much, so that affects how much the bank/building society will lend on it.
That's also tied up with prices, which is largely the result of the planning system. It means that to afford even a shoebox is expensive, so people aren't going to have the capacity to buy a "premium" shoebox.
Posted by: Tim Almond | Mar 14, 2007 10:39:30 PM
[Oddly, no. The ASI supports buying things made by people in poorer countries so that more wealth is created so that said machinists can indeed have a week off. If we don't buy what they make then they'll be back in the paddy fields and there ain't no six packs or culture out there.]
do you happen to know the ASI's position on child labour, and whether it differs from Adam Smith's own view, which IIRC was quite a significant exception to his general support of laissez-faire?
Tim adds: No, sorry, I don't know the view on that. Email Madsen and ask perhaps? My own view is that it's a function of extremely poor, especially agrarian, societies. As soon as parents have a couple of coins to rub together they seem to send children to school as is shown by the huge number of private schools in the poor countries. Education is something parents want for their children and something they buy as soon as they can.
Posted by: dsquared | Mar 14, 2007 11:41:18 PM
Aren't we all missing the point? Steel may have inadvertently devised a brilliant scheme: tradeable pavement rights for beggars. How is it any different from councils selling stall space on local markets?
Posted by: William Norton | Mar 15, 2007 6:18:32 PM
Tim,
Steel's a bit of a blowhard (I am no economist, but I always thought Hayek, not Smith, was Thatcher's favourite); but I would make one observation in his defence concerning his critique of the ASI.
No ASI, no Poll Tax.
No Poll Tax, no Tommy Sheridan.
Never mind, you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.
Posted by: Martin | Mar 15, 2007 9:28:18 PM
