Paul Mason is gone, but the memory lingers on…just why did the BBC think he was suitable candidate to be their economics editor on Newsnight?
Forever it seems a running dog of Communism he’s rapidly becoming a running joke on this site at least.
Today we bring you yet another example of his dodgy ideology that raises that question again about how he got his foot in the door at the BBC….perhaps it is in fact the answer.
His reply to the last question is all you need to know in order to drill down into the Mason brain…it’s a bit like Stalingrad after a year of intense street fighting, still standing, still in the grip of Stalin but somewhat turned to dust and rubble …
Paul, Perhaps we are just seeing the end of neo-capitalism as opposed to capitalism itself. What’s neo-capitalism? Perhaps it can be summarised as ‘mark-to-market’ capitalism.
I think you could get neo-capitalism – but in two forms: either permanent stagnation, with a jackbooted state to enforce consent; or a genuinely dynamic info-capitalism that would have to solve the question of: what do we do with the suddenly useless monopoly tech companies whose shares are worth nothing, plus the $4trillion stranded assets in the hydrocarbon industry. For this reason i think the most likely outcome – and most benign – is that we redesign the social relations around us to facilitate a tech-enabled world. Markets, states and post-capitalist micro-economies might have to coexist for some time and we can -paradoxically – learn from the best of soviet economics in the 1920s how to conceive of such “transitions” as having their own dynamics.
Does he also teach or lecture? Tell me he doesn’t. God help ’em.
What is this?…’ …we redesign the social relations around us to facilitate a tech-enabled world.’
What does that mean? Aren’t all those techno-wonders like the smart phone meant to facilitate our social lives not the other way around?
And how about that 1920’s Communist economy? Is that the one where they shot the wicked capitalist peasant who greedily kept two cows instead of the state quota of one per family and the economy that starved millions of peasants to death in the name of social progress?
I’m sure we can learn from the dynamics of such economies….they don’t work.
He tries to be too clever by half and often loses the thread by being verbose; he waffles and crams in too many big words when three or four will do. He’s been very poor on Channel 4 News, in my opinion; convoluted, a bit nervous, long-winded, rambling and so on. And, as far as I can see he’s a trained music teacher and not an economist with a wealth of business experience; perhaps I’m wrong and being unfair. From music teacher to economics editor is some career progression.
The marxist left still thinks it can wish a marxist world into being by using incomprehensible jargon and sounding like a car repair manual. Completely idiotic and rather pathetic.
I’d much rather read a car repair manual! May be difficult to understand and a bit dry but I’d know it would ultimately have to make sense and I’d learn something really useful.
I remember reading a lot of academic jargon back in college (I was involved in the visual arts); a lot of bad writing Orwell discussed in his essay on the English language. Even though I was young, I just could never get on board with it and that way of thinking. I think it was part of the reason I didn’t do so well at the end, but today I’m strangely proud of myself for never getting sucked into that mindset. A good number of people did though. The left have a had quite a lot of success shaping the culture and people’s thinking. “Idealogical sheep dip” as someone wrote on a site I was reading recently (could have been this one)
“permanent stagnation” Sounds like Greece “with a jackbooted state to enforce consent” Sounds like the EU.
“what do we do with the suddenly useless monopoly tech companies whose shares are worth nothing” Surely, Mr Receiver would decide what to do.
Anyway, those that are not monopolies, are competitive, and people want their products, so why would they suddenly become useless, valueless and therefore bust?
The man is an idiot.
And “$4trillion stranded assets” Sounds like the Socialist idea of “Fixed Assets” the idiotic idea that you can redistribute wealth or assets, rather than wealth being created from nothing.
Therefore I presume these socialist idiots would think that the reason that the EU is declining in wealth, and China is increasing in wealth, is because of a successful redistribution of wealth by the European Commission in Brussels.
“paradoxically – learn from the best of the soviet economies of the 1920’s”. Paradox or not, is it actually possible to say that with a straight face? It’s quite amazing that anyone can carry this sort of adolescent waffle into adulthood. Yet not quite as amazing as to why this idiot was the economics editor for Newsnight. But then again, perhaps not that amazing at all.
You get it all the time on Peston’s Blog: Money Theory, Modern Monetary Theory (which is anything but truly modern) ‘money out of thin air’, return to the Gold Standard and blah, blah …
I confess I have moaned several times there and also when Steffie was Blogging rather more sensibly about thing economic. My complaint is about macro-economics. I have to say that that may be at the root of Mason’s waffle above. Macro economics tends to drive its practitioners away from the practical, away from reality and then they fall prey to the highly theoretical and the historical, if not the hysterical as well.
Have to also say that I used to have a bit of a regard for Paul Mason some years ago. Can’t help wondering whether having the Beeb give the top job to Pesto, after Steffie’s departure, has turned his head somewhat.
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He tries to be too clever by half and often loses the thread by being verbose; he waffles and crams in too many big words when three or four will do. He’s been very poor on Channel 4 News, in my opinion; convoluted, a bit nervous, long-winded, rambling and so on. And, as far as I can see he’s a trained music teacher and not an economist with a wealth of business experience; perhaps I’m wrong and being unfair. From music teacher to economics editor is some career progression.
Drivel. I remember reading a lot of that kind of stuff in college.
The marxist left still thinks it can wish a marxist world into being by using incomprehensible jargon and sounding like a car repair manual. Completely idiotic and rather pathetic.
I’d much rather read a car repair manual! May be difficult to understand and a bit dry but I’d know it would ultimately have to make sense and I’d learn something really useful.
I remember reading a lot of academic jargon back in college (I was involved in the visual arts); a lot of bad writing Orwell discussed in his essay on the English language. Even though I was young, I just could never get on board with it and that way of thinking. I think it was part of the reason I didn’t do so well at the end, but today I’m strangely proud of myself for never getting sucked into that mindset. A good number of people did though. The left have a had quite a lot of success shaping the culture and people’s thinking. “Idealogical sheep dip” as someone wrote on a site I was reading recently (could have been this one)
“permanent stagnation” Sounds like Greece “with a jackbooted state to enforce consent” Sounds like the EU.
“what do we do with the suddenly useless monopoly tech companies whose shares are worth nothing” Surely, Mr Receiver would decide what to do.
Anyway, those that are not monopolies, are competitive, and people want their products, so why would they suddenly become useless, valueless and therefore bust?
The man is an idiot.
And “$4trillion stranded assets” Sounds like the Socialist idea of “Fixed Assets” the idiotic idea that you can redistribute wealth or assets, rather than wealth being created from nothing.
Therefore I presume these socialist idiots would think that the reason that the EU is declining in wealth, and China is increasing in wealth, is because of a successful redistribution of wealth by the European Commission in Brussels.
I think he has psychological problems and needs help.
No, he just needs to be got rid of!
Siberia ?
Look its simple…………….he didnt mean tech enabled it should have been teak enabled.
Then the wooden top could talk to the trees until all eternity.
“paradoxically – learn from the best of the soviet economies of the 1920’s”. Paradox or not, is it actually possible to say that with a straight face? It’s quite amazing that anyone can carry this sort of adolescent waffle into adulthood. Yet not quite as amazing as to why this idiot was the economics editor for Newsnight. But then again, perhaps not that amazing at all.
You get it all the time on Peston’s Blog: Money Theory, Modern Monetary Theory (which is anything but truly modern) ‘money out of thin air’, return to the Gold Standard and blah, blah …
I confess I have moaned several times there and also when Steffie was Blogging rather more sensibly about thing economic. My complaint is about macro-economics. I have to say that that may be at the root of Mason’s waffle above. Macro economics tends to drive its practitioners away from the practical, away from reality and then they fall prey to the highly theoretical and the historical, if not the hysterical as well.
Have to also say that I used to have a bit of a regard for Paul Mason some years ago. Can’t help wondering whether having the Beeb give the top job to Pesto, after Steffie’s departure, has turned his head somewhat.