We believe Western societies operate as ‘market economies’. Look at the caravan of market spruikers shout…
We believe Western societies operate as ‘market economies’. Look at the caravan of market spruikers shout down Albo this week for daring to suggest government invest in manufacturing.
But we never have been market economies. /1 https://t.co/MngoRFVasG
It’s an illusion created by outsourcing most of our manufacturing to China. That’s what allows us to have endless, pointless debates about ‘the role of the State in our economies’. The State IS our economies. It creates all economic activity. There’s no binary here. /2 https://t.co/wmNro7SlUc
We just don’t see it because the huge levels of State planning and investment needed to sustain a modern society is being done by China, FOR us. So we can sit here awash with cheap consumer goods they make for us, pretending we’re living ‘freely’ in a market. /3
With ‘supply and demand’ then magically replacing the need for centralised State planning or investment. Except our demands and subsequent supplies *are* centrally planned - by China, as their industrial megastructure responds to our consumer needs. /4
That’s what keeps the delusion of market economies afloat. By removing most State activity at home, they can pretend the State is irrelevant, or plays only a minor role. That it shouldn’t ’pick winners’. /5
But when we do then pick winners, as a ‘market’, the vast Chinese megaState-driven industrial complex whirrs into action to supply our desires. Running a society needs massive planning and investment, coordination. It’s all still happening, just hidden offshore. /6
We desperately need to ditch the pathetically thin gruel of our political ideologies, and return to some basic material understandings of how societies are actually maintained. We’re exactly like the old aristocrats, who had no idea how their lifestyles were maintained. /7
We’re rich societies, we ARE the new aristocrats. All of our Left v Right politics is a laughable team sport almost completely divorced from the material realities of making a modern society run. Societies, to use a business term are *always* ‘vertically integrated’. /8
There are no flat markets guided by the invisible hand of supply and demand. All that we’ve done is beheaded the top of our own material vertical integration, the ‘factory’ feeding our social lives, and transplanted it in Asia. Our megafactory. /9
They’re now re-purposing it for their own ends, leaving us flailing with now unfamiliar ideas like industry policy. With the market economy folk bleating about the dangers of picking winners etc. /10 https://t.co/vwjlEMHpoN
It may in fact not be possible for much of the West to re-industrialise. As some commentators have said, it may be too late, we’re now so far behind Asia. Covid unveiled this whole mechanism, when we in the West suddenly realised we barely make anything ourselves. /11
Our ‘supply chains’ collapsed. But only building things brings long-term stability to societies. So we better at least try, if we’re to survive. And dial down the Yellow Peril politics at the same time, the ultimate way to cut off our nose to spite our own face. /end