It’s the economists, stupid

Couldn’t be bothered to read Capital in the Twenty-First Century, or any other weighty tome on the future of capitalism and its impact on the media industry? Good job Route’s James Whitmore has done it for you.

It’s been the news for a while but it has taken an age to read. I give you, Thomas Piketty’s door-stopping Capital in the twenty-first Century. In a selfless act on behalf of Newsline readers, I stuck to my task so that I might report back to you.

I suppose the question is; does it have any relevance to our industry? Not really.

Piketty shows that high growth rates are an aberration and that the long-term evidence is of modest gains in economic activity. He argues that capitalism is in danger of eating itself if it does nothing to regulate the disparity between those who work and those who possess wealth.

The natural state of the free market is to increasingly reward a tiny number of rentiers to the detriment of the mass of the population. Eventually we will stop titting about on social media and get properly pissed off – there will be unrest and hell to pay. Piketty’s answer is to tax excessive wealth – property and financial holdings mainly. This is fine by me.

Last week, David Cameron invited £11 billion of wealth to a party shindig at the Hurlingham Club. Had the attendees left half at the door on the way out, I am sure they wouldn’t have noticed any great change to their lifestyle.

Undeterred, I turned to other recent books on political economy. Would they be more pertinent to our industry? In How Much is Enough? The Love of Money and the Case for the Good Life, Robert & Edward Sidelsky argue that with future economic growth likely to be modest at best, the key questions are; why do we need growth anyway, and when might we reasonably be sated?

They have a good old dig at advertising (primarily on the pages following 208, should you be browsing in Foyles). Suggestions to reduce advertising’s capacity to get people to want more than they need include “health warnings” on all advertisements as well as a progressive tax on them – where the goods that least meet basic need carry the heaviest advertising tax.

One more title struck me like a reflection in a looking glass, I Spend Therefore I Am: The True Cost of Economics. It is a cracking tome from Philip Roscoe. He debunks the idea that people are calculating individuals focused only on material gains and consumption. He also demonstrates the folly of imposing crass market-based solutions on social necessities such as education. He shows some great examples of the capacity of neoclassical economics to be precisely wrong rather than roughly right.

Three books in and I am now an expert. I must say that if there is a depressing thing about the subject, it is that neoclassical theory is the only prism through which we get to view the world. We inhabit a sort of mono-fixation, in that it is unquestioningly accepted that there is only one economic way and that it begins and ends with the free market. (I offer Marx, Keynes, Classical, Behaviourist and the Austrian school as examples of alternatives. There are a few more but I don’t understand them.)

Dissent is dismissed as “anti-business”, when it might easily be a different perspective that sheds light. John Hegarty’s “digital Taliban” have nothing on this. Have you ever heard a BBC news presenter question the orthodox platitudes of neoclassical economics? Me neither. (In fact you might question if the BBC has made a conscious decision not to molest the establishment in any way, as this recent News Review highlights.)

Economics isn’t a science and there is no ideal answer. That is perhaps the fundamental thing. Whatever approach we use, however we view the statistics, they are not an answer in themselves but a contribution to a discussion. It is the debate that matters and where decisions should be made.

And that is the lesson for our industry.

Whilst we’re obsessing about anniversaries

In 1914 a small minority saw the outbreak of war as an opportunity to purge what they saw as unpleasant trends in society – most specifically the increasing voice of the common man, the uppity behaviour of certain women and the confrontation of the newest art. A quick bish-bash and all would be back to normal.

I am sure that you can choose any year and argue that it’s all gone to pot. I suggest two more recent anniversaries as having shaped the world we live in today. The Sun will be fifty in September and it is twenty years since showbiz hack Piers Morgan was made editor of the News of the World. By anointing the then guru of celebrity fluff, the agenda for news media began to change.

One might argue that the appointment marked a watershed leading, as others aped the market leader, to an increased rate of decline for rigorous news reporting and analysis, and an increasing promotion of personality-based puff. What follows are phone hacking, unaccountable corporate greed and a purposeless political class. Mind you, I do not think a quick war will change anything soon. You see, you can learn from history.

Save the Budleigh Beavers

Finally, welcome to the Western Morning News on Sunday, which launched two weeks ago. It’s great to see a positive story from the regional press. I shall write in to add my voice to those who wish to save the wild beavers living on the River Otter near Budleigh in Devon. George Eustace, Environment Minister, wishes to envelope the beaver family in his evil clutches and consign them to captivity. Boo hiss.

James Whitmore is managing director of Route, the audience research body for out-of-home media.

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