Three Japanese Snippets

Male bras. (No, I don't understand either).

Blood Groups: the Japanese equivalent of horoscopes or Myers-Briggs tests apparently, and hugely popular as an explanation for all personal issues. Just in case you were wondering, here's some examples of the incisiveness of the personality insights you can gain from looking at things this way.

• Type A Reserved and prone to worry, sensitive perfectionists such as Britney Spears and Adolf Hitler.
• Type O Decisive, self-confident, curious, and ideal for sport, including Elvis Presley and the Queen.
• Type B Cheerful caring, flamboyant free-thinkers such as Jack Nicholson.
• Type AB High-maintenance, distant, suited to arts, such as Mao Zedong.

& they're about to release a Manga version of Das Kapital. ( H-T Dave)

It's Not All In The Mind

Matt Grist neatly summarises the 'line of attack' being taken by those who would demolish the vanishing consensus underpinning neo-liberal economics, and neo-liberal social science more generally:

"....one reason for adopting neo-liberal capitalism is the claim that people won’t be motivated to work hard by anything other than self-interest. Or, that even if they can be otherwise motivated, the motivation of self-interest is so powerful, producing so much surplus wealth, that discounting other forms of motivation can be justified. Here in the UK, New Labour has bought into this motivational model wholesale.

But this claim has hardly any credibility any more. At the level of the brain, research is showing that altruistic and other-regarding concerns have their own distinct neural pathways. At the level of analysing individual behaviour, in game-theory, behavioural economics and social psychology, it has been shown that people are at least sometimes as motivated by such concerns as they are by self-interest. (..... most theorists now accept that it is optimally rational to be as swayed by ‘pro-social’ concerns as self-interested ones - for example, game-theorists recognise that it is rational to maintain one’s social reputation as a ‘good person’ through altruistic acts.) "

I'm so old. I've been away from this stuff for so long. Long enough, in fact, to be surprised that the argument is still taking place at the level of individual motivation, as if the principal problem with neo-liberal theory is that it mistakes the nature of homo economicus' reactions to sticks and carrots.

'Social being determines social consciousness' is what I was taught - even by Weberians. This really isn't a matter of innate psychology - or at least I can't productively think about it in that mode - it's about structure and power relations. Which is why economics, and those other social sciences which have bowed to it's intellectual dominance, are a poor substitute for political economy of any stripe.

(Illustration: 'Pyschology' by D.Cohen)

Iceland: First Glimpses of Innovative Form of Bank Regulation

The routinely entertaining Weather Report has news of 2000 people (i.e. the equivalent of c 400,000 as a percentage of the British population) gathered for a demo on Monday, Iceland's national day, in conditions described as 'devastatingly cold, subzero temps and windy'.

"....near the end of the last speech someone climbed up the statue of [first settler] Ingólfur Arnarson and hung a picture of Davíð Oddsson [ex-Prime Minster, and current chair of the Central Bank - CM] over his head. ...... the last thing I heard before heading down the hill was “shall we go in and get him?”

And they did.

Apparently a couple hundred people stormed into the lobby of the Central Bank, shouting that they wanted Davíð out. They got past the first set of doors but beyond that was the Viking Squad in full regalia ... who kept their cool and calmly warned THE MOB that they’d use tear gas if they didn’t behave So THE MOB just basically sat down and started singing protest songs."

Then, in a radical break with the country's finest berserker traditions, both sides agreed to go home for dinner if the other side did.

The Weather Report is putting the record straight she says - her purpose is basically to debunk reports of 'a riot'. But it still sounds like a fun way to, ahem, 'bring public concerns to the attention of the financial community' to me.

Three Unconnected Thoughts. (I Hope)

Back in the day, I used to get into arguments about nuclear disarmament. I thought it was a good idea. Still do. But 'wiser' folk that I would trot out a variety of arguments as to why I was being a muddle headed idealist. Eventually, one argument would come up again and again:

"No matter what Britain does with its nuclear weapons, they can't be uninvented so other countries are going to have them anyway...."

But, sometimes, things do get 'uninvented'. Go see Roman Bath and its underfloor central heating. First such heating became uneconomic as the Empire collapsed and then the whole technique was forgotten for centuries.

Why does reading this Wired article about the potential security flaws in the whole internet remind me of these two facts? It ends with the portentous quote ,

"There is no saving the Internet.... There is postponing the inevitable for a little longer."

I can't judge the validity of the article any more than a Roman grandee could have assessed the likelihood of Barbarian attacks on a distant border one day depriving his family of central heating. But I do believe that geeks are like Roman travellers, bringing back 'difficult-to-grasp' stories of exotic lands which, one day, may be more important to the Empire than most of can know at the time.

The Value of Herds

Potlatch - a sociologist of this e-parish - asks:

"How can you distinguish 'herd behaviour' (as the behavioural economists do) when capitalism would be entirely impossible without it?...Without socio-psychological laws inciting us to trust in the shared illusions of modern society, homo economicus would never pluck up the courage to leave the house."

It's a good post, nicely put - the link between policing and financial regulation is apposite, funny and clever all at the same time.

But is it really true that, "...all forms of valuation in a capitalist society are subject to a collective imaginary?"

The Labour Theory of Value may be useless economics - because it can't easily be used to measure the appropriateness of distributing resources in any given way - but surely it still functions as a (sort of) sociological truth? Or at least a viable way of looking for that truth? Perhaps he would agree - if not with the specific Labour Theory of Value of, say, Ricardo or Marx, then perhaps with the general proposition that there are some, conceivable societies where valuation isn't imaginary, collective or otherwise.

What Would Nye Bevan Do? (3 mins 50sec)

H-T this chap, commenting on Crooked Timber

Let A Thousand Flowers Bloom?

This is new - at least for me. Compass are asking all and sundry to propose new policies. People can organise their own meetings to discuss the ideas proposed. It's not a sudden outbreak of unmediated direct democracy however - they still have an 'expert panel' to judge the ideas before Compass members get to vote on them.

No doubt all this is a predictable outgrowth of the Howard Dean and Obama campaigns - and an attempt to link the 'flash mob' phenomenon into the political process. But what interests me is that it seems to be a step on a path to re-imagining what a political party might be in the internet age.

'Modern' political parties are all, in essence, run by their full timers. The only real difference between the Tories and, say, the SWP in this respect is that the Tories' full timers are mainly elected representatives. Much as I dislike the paraphernalia of democratic centralism - the list system, the absurd insistence on defending the line - in strictly sociological or organisational terms all political parties are deeply alike in this respect, however different their ideology, party rules or policy offerings. The membership - even if you call the membership the 'cadre base' - is there to act as a transmission belt of ideas and activities generated from the top. The members are 'amateurs', theoretically in democratic control of the 'professionals' but in reality almost always subservient to them. So being a member ain't much fun unless you're an election/ paper sales junkie - which many of them are - or very keen on endless policy wonkery.

This sort of initiative might well prove to be e-window dressing that still leaves the professionals firmly in control. Indeed, it is likely that many of the proposals submitted will come from other professionals in various campaigns and pressure groups. But I still think it is worth two cautious cheers. Who knows, one or two ideas genuinely originating from amateurs might actually make their way through the process. & in the ossified world of politics that really would be something new.

( Hat-tip Tom P)