Years ago, before the Great Forgetting, economists knew that people's preferences often did not originate with themselves but were instead cultivated by producers themselves.
Inspired by Vance Packard's best-selling 1957 book, The Hidden Persuaders, J.K. Galbraith wrote:
Production fills only a void that it has itself created...That wants are in fact the fruit of production wll now be denied by few serious scholars...The even more direct link between production and wants is provided by the institutions of modern advertising and salesmanship. These cannto be reconciled with the notion of independently determined desires, for their central function is to create desires - to bring into being wants that previously did not exist. (The Affluent Society, p 132-3)
This, he wrote, brings into doubt the question of why we should satisfy those preferences:
The individual who urges the importance of production to satisfy these wants is precisely in the position of the onlooker who applauds the efforts of the squirrel to keep abreast of the wheel that is propelled by his own efforts...The fact that wants can be synthesised by advertising, catalysed by salesmanship and shaped by the discreet manipulations of the persuaders shows that they are not very urgent. A man who is hungry need never be told of his need for food. (p132,35)
Not that Galbraith's point was new. Aesop's fable of the fox and the grapes made precisely the point that our wants are shaped by what we believe to be available. As G.K. Chesterton said: "no man demands what he desires; each man demands what he fancies he can get" - a point developed in Jon Elster's superb book.
Nor are our wants shaped only by others' deliberate acts - as Aesop recognised. They are also determined by our peer group as Robert Frank has shown, or by our moods - unhappy people spend more and save less - or even by the weather; in the summer prices of houses with swimming pools and convertible cars are higher.
All of which has led psychologists to fear that what we want is a poor guide to what will make us happy. "People are systematically prone to make a variety of serious errors in the pursuit of happiness" says Daniel Haybron. And Christopher Hsee and Reid Hastie write:
People systematically fail to predict or choose what maximizes their happiness...These findings challenge a fundamental assumption that underlies popular support for consumer sovereignty...namely, the assumption that people are able to make choices in their own best interests.
This poses a question: might a similar thing be true in politics? Certainly, some of Galbraith's near-contemporaries thought so. Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz argued (pdf) that one aspect of political power was that "some issues are organized into politics while others are organized out":
Of course power is exercised when A participates in the making of decisions that affect B. But power is also exercised when A devotes his energies to creating or reinforcing social and political values and institutional practices that limit the scope of the political process to public consideration of only those issues which are comparatively innocuous to A.
Brexit is an example of this. Before 2015, less than ten per cent of voters thought the EU was the most important political issue, whereas after 2016 half did so. This change was the product of political activity: the people we now call Brexiteers successfully agitated to organize Brexit into politics. The demand to leave the EU was catalysed by salesmanship and shaped by the not-so discreet manipulations of the persuaders.
Such activity might also explain the oft-noted paradox that hostility to immigration is (with some exceptions) greater in areas of low migration. It's because such hostility is manufactured, whilst those with actual lived experience of it can see it to be much less worrisome.
We might be seeing the same thing now. Politicians tell us it is possible to "stop the boats" but don't tell us it's possible to have economic democracy. Is it a surprise, therefore, that voters want one but not the other? It wouldn't be to Aesop, Chesterton, Galbraith or Elster.
In fact, we have stronger reasons to question political preferences than consumer ones. In our everyday shopping we at least sometimes learn from experience whereas in politics this is harder because political issues are sometimes new, and certainly arise in different contexts. Yes some regret voting for Brexit, but - unlike consumer goods - you can't take it back to the shop. And, of course, if we buy shoddy goods we lose money ourselves whereas with a bad vote the costs are spread across everybody, thus diluting our incentives to think carefully.
What's more, there's a powerful emergent process which shapes political preferences - that of adaptation. As Amartya Sen put it:
The deprived people tend to come to terms with their deprivation because of the sheer necessity of survival, and they may, as a result, lack the courage to demand any radical change, and may even adjust their desires and expectations to what they unambitiously see as feasible (Development as Freedom, p62-63)
Kris-Stella Trump has shown how this is true of inequality: the higher is inequality, she shows, the more likely people are to regard greater equality as legitimate. A plan to cut the post-tax incomes of the richest 1% by, say, one-third would seem very radical today - even though it would leave them better off relative to the rest of us than they were in the mid-80s. Such resignation to inequality means there is less demand for redistribution, even without any work by the media.
The converse of this is also true. The rich get an over-inflated sense of entitlement and so their minor peeves - such as not getting the precise type of Brexit they imagine in their fevered dreams - come to dominate political discourse.
So, yes, Galbraith's point does apply to politics. Why then should we make a fetish of what the public wants? Suella Braverman says "the British people want us to stop the boats". But why is this a reason for doing so?
For some thinkers, it's not. Daniel Hausman has argued that it is only rarely the case that there is a good ethical reason to satisfy preferences, and thinkers such as Byan Caplan and Jason Brennan have argued for restricting democracy.
Such a view isn't as radical as it seems. When Margaret Thatcher described referenda as "a device of dictators and demagogues" she was (deliberately) echoing Clement Attlee and Roy Jenkins. Parliamentary sovereignty is a different thing from popular sovereignty.
Thatcher, like her contemporaries in all parties, thought the job of politicians was not so much to sheepishly follow public opinion as to shape it. In her 1975 speech opposing the EU referendum, she approvingly cited a letter to the Evening Standard pointing out that if it had been left to the will of the people. "we would have no Race Relations Act, immigration would have been stopped, abortions would still be illegal and hanging still be in force."
But why have politicians lost that conception of politics and replaced it with the "customer is king" approach?
The mere fact that they seem unaware of these contrasting positions is itself confirmation of Bachrach and Baratz's point, that some questions are excluded from politics.
One possible answer is that we are indeed living in the dystopia described by Alasdair MacIntyre at the start of After Virtue: we've lost the ability to reason about moral and political issues because all we have are fragments of different, contradictory frameworks and traditions.
But there's another possibility. It lies in the fact that our political system is failing. Politicians are regarded with contempt, not least because they have no coherent answers to the failures of British capitalism. In light of this, "parliamentary sovereignty" has lost its appeal. Why not, then, invoke the will of the people?
But of course, the likes of Braverman are selective in their love of this will, being much keener to cut migration than to tax the rich or nationalize utilities. That's of course no surprise: the Tory party exists to support inequality and the status quo. What should concern us is that the Labour party also does so.
"Parliamentary sovereignty is a different thing from popular sovereignty."
Yes, because whoever you vote for, some things are a UniParty must-have.
So mass immigration (eg wage suppression), house price inflation, rent inflation, plentiful credit, foreign wars, special status for minorities/women/LBLTQRERTYIOP are UniParty policies.
Think of all those dumb Red Wall voters who put Boris in power! Do you think they were voting for two years of record net immigration?
Posted by: Laban | May 16, 2023 at 07:02 PM
"It lies in the fact that our political system is failing."
That's a symptom not a cause, just like Brexit was. The malaise is much, much wider than just our political system, although it is most apparent there - having said that, sewage rendering rivers ecologically dead probably runs it pretty close, but things like that are currently very isolated examples.
It's the boiling frog but the question that has yet to be tested in modern times is whether or not we will eventually jump out of the pan (like an actual frog actually would.)
Posted by: Scurra | May 16, 2023 at 07:49 PM
We’re we to have referenda on the various Race Relations Acts, immigration acts, abortion acts and hanging they would be a lot livelier than the Brexit one.
I guess that proves your point. But it also proves the reactionary’s point: a lot of the recent social change has been inflicted on the public without its approval yet the politicians think the lack of apparent disagreement shows it was right to do so.
Posted by: Peter Briffa | May 17, 2023 at 08:20 AM
A government should never try to legislate somtething against a majority in the people, said the great 19th century Swedish Liberal statesman Louis De Geer, by historians considered the wisest politician of his age. For then politics willl become erratic; just look at France with all its revolutions and counterrevolutions.
Posted by: Jan Wiklund | May 17, 2023 at 03:21 PM
https://mainly macro.blogspot.com/2023/05/why-is-there-asymmetry-in-how-insurgent.html
May 16, 2023
Why is there asymmetry in how insurgent political voices on the left and right are treated by the two main parties in the UK?
The attitude of the two main parties to those further to the right (for the Conservatives) or the left (for Labour) is very different. In the case of the Conservatives since Cameron, until very recently at least, the best word to use would be appeasement. We left the EU as a result. The attitude of Labour leaders (with the obvious exception of when Corbyn was leader) can be characterised as exclusion.
-- Simon Wren-Lewis
Posted by: ltr | May 17, 2023 at 10:54 PM
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/18/business/stellantis-uk-auto-industry-cars.html
May 18, 2023
An Automaker Has a Stark Warning for the U.K. Car Industry
Stellantis said post-Brexit export rules and the lack of a domestic battery manufacturer could force it to close its plants in Britain.
By Stanley Reed
[ After Britain developing and thriving with a global focus, the British elite decided to withdraw from the EU and become wildly antagonistic to China and somehow this is being tolerated so far by voters. ]
Posted by: ltr | May 18, 2023 at 07:02 PM
...the Tory party exists to support inequality and the status quo. What should concern us is that the Labour party also does so.
[ The essay is brilliant, beginning to end. What a sad, sad political-economic time we are passing through. ]
Posted by: ltr | May 19, 2023 at 12:12 PM
«Thatcher, like her contemporaries in all parties, thought the job of politicians was not so much to sheepishly follow public opinion as to shape it.»
For example:
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/ukraine-s-ex-president-petro-poroshenko-the-army-is-like-my-child-1.4885308
«The idea of Nato was “not very popular in Ukraine” to start, Poroshenko says, with just 16 per cent of Ukrainians supporting integration to Nato in 2013 right before he was elected president – but by the time he finished his term, 61 per cent did.»
«In her 1975 speech opposing the EU referendum, she approvingly cited a letter to the Evening Standard pointing out that if it had been left to the will of the people. "we would have no Race Relations Act, immigration would have been stopped, abortions would still be illegal and hanging still be in force."»
A very principled schoolteacherly argument that true democracy has "guardrails" set by enlightened wykehamist philopher-kings who know right from wrong, and within which "deplorables" should make their freee choices. :-)
«But why have politicians lost that conception of politics and replaced it with the "customer is king" approach?»
Because the customers that matter are middle class property owners and they think that their interests are aligned with the upper class "sponsors" of those politicians...
«But there's another possibility. It lies in the fact that our political system is failing. Politicians are regarded with contempt, not least because they have no coherent answers to the failures of British capitalism.»
Well over a dozen million voters and their families are quite happy about a political system and a capitalist economy that have delivered to them such huge riches, work-free and largely tax-free, entirely redistributed from lower class losers.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jun/29/how-right-to-buy-ruined-british-housing"
My usual example of a 79-year-old retired carpenter in Cornwall: «who bought his council house in Devon in the early 80s for £17,000. When it was valued at £80,000 in 1989, he sold up and used the equity to put towards a £135,000 fisherman’s cottage in St Mawes. Now it’s valued at £1.1m. “I was very grateful to Margaret Thatcher,” he said.»
Posted by: Blissex | May 19, 2023 at 08:53 PM
«the Tory party exists to support inequality and the status quo. What should concern us is that the Labour party also does so.»
A repentant neoliberal, Brad Delong, has observed that reaganism/thatcherism were supported by many people who demanded more inequality, in their favour of course.
Posted by: Blissex | May 19, 2023 at 08:57 PM
My usual example of a 79-year-old retired carpenter in Cornwall...
[ This is a fine example, but the example cannot be duplicated now and in future without a growth base for the economy. Italy stopped growing in per capita terms entirely in 2000. Absent growth, property values will be quite limited from here.
The Cornwell carpenter needs to have a sense of and pride in nationality. ]
Posted by: ltr | May 19, 2023 at 11:30 PM
Great article. Thank you for sharing this information.
Posted by: Denny Thomas Vattakunnel | May 20, 2023 at 10:26 AM
“My usual example of a 79-year-old retired carpenter in Cornwall...”
«the example cannot be duplicated now»
It can, for another 10-20 years at least: doubling-up works like magic. People who live in 1 bedroom can share it with someone else. those who share it can put in 2 bunk beds and share it with 3 other people, and so on until each bunk gets rented by half day, as in the good old victorian times, and "coffin houses" and "rope houses" come back. There are many cases of that happening in London.
Every time 1 bedroom turns into a 2 beds room, or a 2 beds room becomes a 2 bunk beds room, the rentable and sale value of that bedroom nearly doubles,
«and in future without a growth base for the economy»
Currently property interests have a big majority of seats in the House of Commons, growth is not needed for that to stay the same, just the protection of the interests of incumbents. The number of incumbents will shrink because property ownership will become more concentrated, but slowly. It is simply a question of political power and will, and the UK ruling classes have made their choice.
Posted by: Blissex | May 20, 2023 at 08:24 PM
“My usual example of a 79-year-old retired carpenter in Cornwall...”
«the example cannot be duplicated now»
It can, for another 10-20 years at least: doubling-up works like magic....
[ Really fine response, to which I have no counter. This is surely discouraging. ]
Posted by: ltr | May 20, 2023 at 09:40 PM
Just as Jeremy Corbyn was successfully used as a scapegoat by Tory and Labour elite, so now China is to be used by Tory elite:
https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/1660213843476332549
The Spectator Index @spectatorindex
United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says that China poses the 'biggest challenge of our age to global security and prosperity'.
5:20 AM · May 21, 2023
Posted by: ltr | May 21, 2023 at 05:08 PM
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=T3lH
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China and United Kingdom, 1977-2021
(Percent change)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=T3lJ
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for China and United Kingdom, 1977-2021
(Indexed to 1977)
Posted by: ltr | May 21, 2023 at 05:10 PM
Blissex, May 19, 8.53:
Yes, the redistribution since the 80s has greatly favoured the old, provided they have invested in real estate, as Chris Dillow so often has written.
The losers are the young.
Posted by: Jan Wiklund | May 21, 2023 at 08:46 PM
«Yes, the redistribution since the 80s has greatly favoured the old, provided they have invested in real estate, [...] The losers are the young.»
That's mostly right but also a common misperception based on generalizing too much with "old" and "young", even if "old" is qualified by "invested in real estate":
* Relatively young people get a "leg up" if their parents can afford to re-mortgage to give them a deposit and help them with paying the mortgage, when they don't buy outright a property as gift to their children.
* A lot of old people could not afford to buy housing in a "good" area or even lost theirs because of many rounds of sackings, too low wages, whole areas losing their jobs, etc.
Thatcherite England is a "meritocracy" and only those with merit of having made all the right choices in their life have won big from property: the choice to be born in the right decades, or to parents who made that choice, the choice to belong an affluent family, and a family in an area where governments have spent fantastic sums of public money to attract well paying jobs.
Incumbency is the supreme value of english society, and the governments of the past 40 years have competed to reward incumbency, regardless of age.
Indeed often that's people who are older southern middle class rentiers, but their younger heirs expect to do well too.
Posted by: Blissex | May 21, 2023 at 09:53 PM
Sure. And i suppose that a lot of people would answer Yes to the question "would you like to free-ride, in such a way that you never can be ferreted out?".
But not all can do it. And thatcherism isn't meritocratic, because - according to Branko Milanovic - if you earn more than most people, it's 80 % luck. Merits figure very little. However, it seems that most people are optimists and think they will lave luck.
But should we appeal to politicians to protect us from our own follies? No, that will make us too vulnerable. Better is to organize deliberatively democratic milieus, like the traditional trade unions, with the power to keep politicians in check.
Posted by: Jan Wiklund | May 22, 2023 at 12:23 PM
But should we appeal to politicians to protect us from our own follies? No, that will make us too vulnerable. Better is to organize deliberatively democratic milieus, like the traditional trade unions, with the power to keep politicians in check.
[ Really nice response. Do you have the reference for Milanovic? ]
Posted by: ltr | May 22, 2023 at 07:16 PM
«If you earn more than most people, it's 80 % luck. Merits figure very little»
Them merits of having chosen to be born in the right decades, in good families, in booming areas, are quite thatcherite. People who made those clever choices are winner, those who did not make those choices are losers :-).
Posted by: Blissex | May 22, 2023 at 11:32 PM
«Them merits of having chosen to be born in the right decades, in good families, in booming areas, are quite thatcherite.»
The problem with the fantasy of the "rawlsian veil" is that it is mere fantasy, a lot of people already know how the cookie crumbled and vote accordingly:
* Young people who have been born in good affluent families.
* Older people who already got theirs.
They are two fairly big blocks...
Posted by: Blissex | May 22, 2023 at 11:35 PM
«organize deliberatively democratic milieus, like the traditional trade unions, with the power to keep politicians in check.»
The Conservative and New Labour parties are the trade unions of the property and finance rentiers, they are (or would like to be) well organized as marketing machines, and the last thing they want to to keep "their" politicians in check. They just want more, more, more self-dealing.
Posted by: Blissex | May 22, 2023 at 11:38 PM