The failure of market driven reform in Australia

John Quiggin is one of a growing number of Australian economists who continue to make the case that the market-based reforms imposed by Federal and State Governments over the last two decades have not delivered the anticipated benefits for consumers and ordinary citizens, and in many cases have been unmitigated failures.

Market led reform assumes that market-based solutions are always best, regardless of the problem.

Other important contrarian economic voices about market driven neoliberal reform championed by mainstream economists and Australian governments of all persuasions can be found on the pages of Dissent, the excellent journal edited by the Age and Sydney Morning Herald economics writer Kenneth Davidson and in the Journal of Australian Political Economy produced out of the University of Sydney. Bloggers such as Billy Blog (Bill Mitchell) also provide important critiques of mainstream economics, as do academic economists and public commentators such as Con and Betty Walker.

In today's Australian Financial Review John Quiggin argues that:

The failure of reform is most dramatically evident in the infrastructure sector, and particularly for utilities such as electricity, telecommunications and water.

Quiggin argues that the benefits of market led reform that were promised by its proponents have not resulted. Whilst there were some benefits in the short term, in the longer term the proposed benefits for consumers and society have not been sustained. Prices have not lowered but increased. Supposedly, allowing the market to rip would bring more choice and better quality of service. Neither have happened.

As Quiggin points out, the privatization of telecommunications and electricity have been unmitigated failures for consumers and society. Electricity price inflation has reached double digit levels and the break up of electricity utilities into separate generation, distribution and retail sectors has created massive new problems.

Quiggin argues that it is time for policy makers, politicians and commentators to accept that the mantra of market led reform has been a complete failure in the infrastructure sector. He writes that:

Faith in reform has proved utterly impervious to contrary evidence. The only answer to the failure of reforms has been to conclude that more reform in needed.

But as John Quiggin notes the lure of market led reform is still all powerful:

Despite this and other failures, the incantation of ‘reform’ retains its magical power. The politically and economically disastrous privatisation program in NSW was justified entirely on the basis that it was needed in order that reform could continue.

It is, perhaps, too much to ask that such an appealing word should be abandoned. But can’t we at least admit that the 1980s reform program has had its day, and look for some reforms more appropriate to the 21st century?

The failure of market driven neoliberal reform in the infrastructure sector (water, telecommunications, utilities, and public infrastructure) and in many other areas of Australian social and economic life, including health, housing, social welfare, retirement incomes, aged care, education, child care, human and community services and the environment and climate change, are core themes in Australian journals such as Dissent and  the Journal of Australian Political Economy, which in each edition document the harm that has been done by market driven neoliberal reform in this country.

More Australians need to support and read the important work done by economists such as John Quiggin, Bill Mitchell, Con and Betty Walker and all those associated with journals such as Dissent and The Australian Journal of Political Economy.

The harm that markets cause: event in Fremantle

Great to see this event The Global Economy and Human Wellbeing  being run by Rob Lambert* at the Edmund Rice Centre for Social Justice in Fremantle this Saturday 4 September, 2010 between 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM.

The event is designed to provide people with a deeper understanding of what global free markets are doing to persons, families and societies;  the nature of corporate restructuring of work, and its social and psychological impacts for families and communities; - basic analytic techniques of ‘political economy’ necessary for understanding these changes; - the values underlying these changes, and how they might be ethically assessed; and - how to envisage (imagine) alternative models of work, and the process of realising such change.

 *Winthrop Professor Rob Lambert is based at the University of Western Australia’s Business School, where he specialises in labour studies. He is co-author of the award-winning book, Grounding Globalization: Labour in the Age of Insecurity (Oxford, Blackwell, 2008),a critique of the free market economy that identifies destructive impacts for the environment, society, families and persons. Rob is the founder and coordinator of the Southern Initiative on Globalization and Trade Union Rights (SIGTUR), founded some 20 years ago. This movement brings together democratic trade unions across 15 countries and four continents in the global south. Rob has a background as a South African activist, and was National Secretary of the South African Young Christian Workers and then advisor to the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference before coming to Perth.

Market logic, disability and euthanasia: A book review

A Book Review
by Gavin Mooney

Book Reviewed:

Erik Leipoldt (2010) Euthanasia and Disability Perspective: An Investigation in The Netherlands and Australia VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft, Saarbrücken

Each of the two central issues in this book - euthanasia and disability - is big in itself. Bringing the two together is a monumental task and especially when this is set in a values framework. The author succeeds in his efforts to do this and in a way which is both accessible and challenging.

The purposes of the study reported in this book were (p39) `to discuss Dutch and Australian disability perspectives towards euthanasia and physician assisted suicide; and to find how the life experiences of the informants [people with quadriplegia] ... may illuminate these perspectives'.

Yet to me the central theme of the book is not euthanasia as such nor indeed disability. What the book questions in debating these themes is what autonomy is and whether it merits being seen as so much of an individualistic phenomenon as it so often is, at least in this neo liberal world in which so many of us live. As Leipoldt argues `individual autonomy is the dominant discourse of our age'.

Without disagreeing I wonder if things are not changing. I have in the past been much struck by the work of the likes of Catriona McKenzie, Diana Meyers and Natale Stoljar [1] on relational autonomy and the idea of `community autonomy'. Despite the efforts of so many economists today (this reviewer is an economist) - particularly market economists - and many liberal philosophers to see us all as free floating atoms, that depiction of human beings just somehow does not ring true. We are social animals, we rely on others to some extent and maybe even take our identities in part from our interactions with others. And the interdependency of peoples across the globe has been heightened yet further by both the Global Financial Crisis and the threat of climate change. OK the impact of these on government policies and in turn on human relationships have not really percolated through yet. But this is one `trickling down' that I am confident will trickle down.

Certainly Rawls' placing of individuals behind his veil of ignorance was simply a philosophical construct to aid understanding. Yet it is so false that one has to question how valuable that device is in reaching any sort of understanding of what it means to be a person. Behind a veil of ignorance or a free floating atom? In an odd sense, much of a muchness and much of an unreality.

So for Leipoldt to look at euthanasia through the eyes of 28 people with quadriplegia in Australia and the Netherlands provides not only a novel view but one that in turn challenges the notion of individual autonomy in a most useful fashion. Whatever else, no one reading this will ever again see autonomy in quite the same way - unless maybe a person with disabilities.

The views of people with quadriplegia on this issue have not been examined before which is a quite startling revelation in itself. Leipoldt suggests (p38): `The perspective of people with disabilities may be able to contribute new ... aspects to the euthanasia debate. Major physical, social and psychological changes and challenges arise for a person who acquires a significant disability like quadriplegia.'

On the question of autonomy and individualism the shift to more of the latter is highlighted by one respondent (p 170): `people are becoming more assertive and demand more. I think that if you look ten years ahead people's autonomy will go further ... I think society will become more and more individualistic.'

The book is insightful on the issue of dependency with one response (p 205) suggesting that `dependency gives a very deep relationship with people and you'. And again (p 209): `How do we look at things like interdependence, that are the bigger issues? Because it doesn't matter how dependent or independent you are if you have people around you and you are part of what's happening and contributing to that then whether you can do it on your own isn't the issue.' Wonderfully for me, issues of reciprocity, mutuality, participation, sharing and caring shriek out from these pages.

There is a sense in which what this book tells us primarily in capturing the views of a group who are in many ways dependent and vulnerable as people with disabilities are two things. First interdependence and dependence are not negative traits; and second in some sense or other to be complete human beings we need to be interdependent and dependent and we need to recognise that need. These are particularly interesting issues in the very specific context of the main thrust for the author of this book i.e. euthanasia and disability. But for me the book shows that worshipping at the altar of individual autonomy or even individualistic autonomy is to bow down before false Gods. Such autonomy is almost certainly not attainable and, even if were, it aint worth attaining.

This is a powerful book at many levels.

Reference
1. C Mackenzie and N Stoljar (eds) 2000. Relational Autonomy. Oxford: OUP.

Books worth reading

"No lasting change has been successful without large numbers of people acting consciously and collectively around human values of solidarity and social justice, not market values. Markets are great ways to do some things, but not to fashion communities of caring and compassion"
Michael Edwards Small Change: Why Business Won't Save the World.

Book Review by Colin Penter

On one of the other blogs on civil society and the NGO world I have published a review of Michael Edwards's latest book, which is one of the best books I have read in 2010. In the book Small Change: Why Business Won't Save the World Michael Edwards questions the wisdom of applying business and corporate thinking in the world of NGOs and civil society.

Small Change is a wise and radical book that challenges many of the taken for granted assumptions that dominate thinking and practice in the world of not-for-profits and civil society. Edwards argues that business and market thinking has too much influence over not-for-profit organisations and civil society groups.

Edwards rejects the role of markets, business and business thinking as solutions for the social ills of society and the challenges facing the not-for-profit and civil society sector. He contends that civil society and NGO groups must turn away from the lures of the market and business and reassert the importance of independent citizen action. He is deeply skeptical about importing business and market approaches into the nonprofit and civil society sector.

You can read the full review here.

Neoliberalism- still well and truly alive and kicking hard

Important program on Radio National's Late Night Live with Phillip Adams talking with David McKnight and Richard Dennis on the topic "Is neo-liberalism Dead in Australia".

The program was built around the new book edited by David McKnight and Robert Manne titled "Goodbye to All That: On the Failure of Neoliberalism and the Urgency of Change".

Richard Denniss from the Australia Institute argued that neo- liberalism is well and truly alive in Australia. His view is that at the level of macro-economic policy there has been a small departure away from neoliberalism, exemplified by the Rudd Government's stimulus package and its willingness to intervene in the economy to respond to the global economic crises. However, Denniss argues that at the level of micro-economic policy the hold of neoliberalism over the Rudd Government is a strong as ever, if not stronger than before the global crises.