"Man's Search for Meaning"....

Everyone is deeply engaged in living their lives - but like fishes swimming in the sea we can never see the water that surrounds us because we are totally immersed in it. In the same way, only some of us ever get to understand the true meaning of our lives, because we only see it in its parts and not its wholes, the meaning of things is rather patchy.

As a mental health nurse this is important to me because I work with people who have lost the meaning of their lives; the definition of being and staying well almost seems to be "knowing what your life means". 

However, my studies tell me that, for the majority of us, that meaning is a received meaning. By that I mean, it is not a meaning that we have had to discover for ourselves. Being "a mum", being "a postman", being "a president", are all titles with roles and actions attached to them, a bit like actors in a play, society has written the script for us in the history of our interactions. 

These words that we use to describe the people that we are, that are supposed to give our lives 'meaning' are actually only generic tokens for specific things. Thus, while I may "love my dog", by calling it "a dog", I relegate it to a class of things, that are infinite in number, that I have no connection to, that I could not love, at least not in the same way that I love this being that I know, and therefore, "my love" ceases to have the same meaning that it had for me before I used language to describe it.   

Language is said to "carve nature at the joints" in the same way that Dad carves up the Turkey at Christmas dinner. It goes for the easy bits first, and makes the incision to break the world up into natural categories of things to make things simple. For instance, it carves the "sexes" up into "girls" and "boys", and conveniently forgets about the problems of "transgendered" and "hermaphrodite" people.

Thus, it is easy to see how language has become the natural repository for ideology, the vehicle for the communication of ideas, for the benefit of some and detriment of others! What is left behind, and is often managed out of the picture by clever editing and production, is the ‘umwelt’ of the embedded and embodied emotions.

Ideology controls others through language. Ideology controls others by having them control their emotions. The more meaningless the emotions are, the less they have value from an ideological point of view, the less they are talked about or even recognised as existing. Like people who do not fit the ideology, they will eventually cease to exist.

But when you do not fit the ideology, and your meaningless emotions are all you have left; when your ideology has been destroyed; when another has destroyed everything that you are; then, you will have no capacity to decode the information of your senses; you will not be able to explain your reactions to events; you will not be able to externalise your emotions; and you will be mad. And you will be outside your own head wondering how you can get back in. And you will wonder if you have ceased to exist. And you will not exist.

Although you will still be deeply engaged in living your life. Some of you will realise that your lives still have meaning, beyond the received meaning, beyond the ideology, beyond the normative assumptions. You will develop a capacity to find meaning. The difference will be in whether others find that meaning with you; and share it with you; and live it with you. Without you. As it were.

Local Elections 2018: Fortress Britain

Interesting set of results last night which are widely being reported by the national media as no change. This translates into the Corbyn bandwagon running out of steam and the Tories not being as badly affected as they might be by their recent bad press over the Windrush generation.

From a coastal Essex town I would say the results are more revealing of the widening political and economic divide behind the haves and have nots in the UK.

The wards that have crept towards more Labour councillors are also those more likely to have properties being converted to flats or houses of multiple occupation (HMOs). This is creating increased pressure on schools, GP surgeries, transport and other public services in these areas that central and local government are slow to respond to. The sort of working class voters UKIP might also have gone after.

The wards that are creeping towards more Independent, Green or Liberal Democrat  councillors are those going through the now familiar "gentrification" process. This is related to young professionals, commuting to and from inner City areas, with good credit histories, large deposits, and assured shorthold tenancies and landlords with large portfolios investing in  property hotspots altogether stimulating a flourishing high street of small independent taders and artisans.

The wards that are creeping back towards Conservative from a flirtation with UKIP or Labour are generally populated by properties that have bought by tenants from landlords in the last 50 years. This would be "Thatchers Generation" of "Basildon Man" - those that bought their council houses at knock down prices as a way out of 'the ghetto'. The same people that Blair tried to appeal to as the aspirational working and left-leaning middle class homeowners. The reason that "Jerusalem" replaced "the Red Flag" as the Labour Party's anthem for a while.

It is no lie to say that there is a homeless person in nearly every shop doorway when I walk through town to get my sandwich at lunchtime. The white beggars seem to be drinking more and chasing the European homeless out of town. 1 in 3 shopfronts is boarded up. The high rise office blocks have been empty for 10 years now. The Tory council have finally agreed for their conversion to residential property. They are being reclad Grenfell style and marketed to young professionals and property investors. There is a policy to disrupt any large public gathering where political descent could become contagious. Car parks are closing in favour of more residential developments. There is a clear political agenda quietly being developed under May's regime.

So this is the future of, what shall we call it, "Fortress Britain" would suit. There is a very British feeling to it: quietly determined and gentile; but ultimately, utterly ruthless. "Doing what we have to do to get the business done. This is what we do. No need to ask why." Chances are you wouldn't get an answer anyway. 

On Corbyn v Berger

A few words on the current row between two highly respected left-wingers. What appears to be behind it is the misapplication and misreading of iconography and stereotypes of a pretty mediocre piece of street graffiti.

The way I see it...

Corbyn's original comments seem to reference the anti-globalisation anti-capitalism movement.

This would be infered from the US dollar symbol that is known as 'God's all seeing eye' that sits atop a pyramid (a piece of iconography normally associated with the largely Christian history of the Freemasons); and a monopoly board (which I think was first designed by a Socialist as an educational tool); being supported on the backs of what appear to be anonymous slaves.

In a hasty tweet Corbyn makes some glib comment about a similar piece of street art depicting Lenin having being threatened with erasure in the same way that this piece is; he makes some claim to political solidarity.

Berger draws attention to the racist stereotypes used in the street art some time later, when Corbyn has become leader of the Party because his tweets have become important news.

Indeed sat round the monopoly board are a number of what might be loosely described as 'Dickensian' stereotypes of a Victorian-era Jewish bourgeois. In terms of narrative there doesn't seem to be any reason for these figures to be there apart from to reinforce a 1930s Nazi style propaganda. That is, as some sort of racial targets for anti-capitalists, which is a highly suspect political message.

So Lucianna is absolutely correct to bring attention to the sinister nature of the message being communicated to those who would not necessarily be able to read its disturbing language and demand an apology from a leader who should know better.

Corbyn apologised for being an artistic 'philistine' and agreed he had misinterpreted the whole thing. End of.

But no. Since then the opportunity to make a massive news story out of a stupid mistake has been too good to miss. Such is politics.

One has to wonder whether who wins from dragging race and religion into politics in such a way but who am I to judge? 

BREXIT!: The End-Game

So Nigel Farage stands up in the European Parliament to defend the right of Catalonians to self-rule and self-determination. In doing so he tries to portray himself as a defender of people’s rights; he is nothing of the sort. On social media I see many people believing in his rhetoric: the great White Knight of Christendom come to rid us of of the Evil (?Arab, etc.) invaders.

His devotees easily ignore the fact that, as leader of the United Kingdon Independence Party (UKIP), he never stood up for the rights of the people of Scotland, Ireland or Wales in their struggle for self-rule and self-determination. His ‘victory’ was their defeat. He never won an election. He is only famous for recruiting a large fascist malitia (from BNP, NF, EDL, etc.) to put down the insurrection of the UK’s break-away states in exactly the same way that he now accuses the Spanish state of doing.

There is no logic or justification to Farage’s actions from a moral or legal point of view; his only logic is the blind fervour of ‘the Patriot’. This, he feels, entitles him to do anything that serves his own interests; he shares the same narcissistic trait as Hitler, he broadly interprets his interests as the interests of ‘the country’, or ‘the (?real) European people’, etc.

In the end, the only interest Nigel Farage has in the internal politics of Spain (apart from a small increase in arms sales) is to create instability in the region, and thereby promote the UK’s claim to the sovereignty of Gibraltar. This is a key negotiating point. He will, of course, be covertly supported in this endeavour by the UK Conservatives, through the exercise of the traditional triumvirate of their military, financial and petroleum assets.

No doubt Boris Johnson is busy briefing his officials in Whitehall on this subject; one assumes that we MUST protect our trade routes to the old British Empire via. the Mediterranean Sea; we MUST never let something like the Suez Crisis happen again; therefore, we MUST sell more arms to Syrian, Egyptian and Kurdish rebels to stem the ISIS infidels; we MUST never let the Freinds of Israel down; and we MAY ALWAYS recite ‘the Road to Manadaly’ without fear of retribution when we visit Buddhist Temples in Burma.

At the same time the Brexit negotiations conducted by the FCO have ground down to their inevitable ‘bureaucratic impasse’; NO DEAL is beginning to look like THE ONLY DEAL we were ever likely to reach with the EU. I can’t think anyone but Nigel Farage is happy about this. The Conservatives have suffered some huge casualties to get this stage of crippling nihilistic inertia; it seems like the trench warfare of the Somme all over again, with Christmas fast approaching.

It is now the time we should be asking ourselves, is this what we voted for in the referendum? Because, however we voted, I think we were voting for a solution to our problems, not more problems. Hopefully we can all now see that there are no solutions lying in the direction that Nigel Farage wants to take us. If we want solutions, rather than creating more intractable problems for each other, we must think again.

Here is a suggestion:

1) the problems we had with the EU were the same problems that all the member states had with the EU;

2) the solutions that we seek are the same solutions that all member states were seeking

3) therefore, the solution is not exiting the EU but reforming the EU using the Brexit negotiations as a tool

4) the main problem with the EU as it was, was the lack of control member states had over taxing the imports of other member states (including the taxing of 'the free-movement' of labour)

5) independent taxation and trading tariffs within the internal market is necessay to balance the different economies of the various member states, based on their political-geography, population needs and ownership of the means of production

6) as an example, look at the USA as a model of a succesful trading block; it has individual member States that share a currency but are still able to set their own trade tariffs (i.e. taxes) on the products of other member states within an internal market

7) this system creates an internal gearing mechanism that enables the internal market to find its own levels between demand and supply chains, in much the same way that having different currencies does, without the hassle and potential conflicts (?over Sovereignty) caused by having different currencies

8) during the financial crisis currency itself became a comodity; the printing of money during 'quantitative easing' effectively reduced its value through increasing the supply of money to meet the demands of those private stakeholders the country was in debt to.

9) This effectively reduced our debt burden but it would have reduced the value of our economic products too, leading to an escalating spiral of inflation, if other currencies had not also been going through the same devaluation, keeping the prices of our products relatively stable.

10) the problems the Euro-zone faced during that time was that it couldn’t find a rate of exchange with external currencies that was suitable for all areas of its internal economy and conflicting political-geographic agendas

11) Therefore, ‘Brexit’ is a direct result of, and political metaphor for, the problems the UK and EU faced during the financial crisis: the relative strength of the GBP within the same internal market as the Euro created a tension that had to be resolved, at some point in the future.

12) the restructuring of the UK economy as a result of Brexit seems to be heading in the direction of a lower-wage, larger manufacturing sector (relative to service sector). It will have less reliance on the financial services sector which will mean a huge loss of taxation revenue. This will necessitate a smaller government with less military power. In addition to calls for Scottish independence within the EU, North Sea oil is running out.

13) Therefore, the UK’s old right-wing triumvirate, that grew through the industrial revolution, created a British Empire that stretched around the globe, and essentially won the Cold-War, will finally be dead. A Russian/German alliance will likely see the rise of a subsequent Euro-centric empire (something like the Austro-Hungarian Empire without its religious hang-ups); but this will inevitably create problems for the other EU member states.

14) The only way the UK can avoid its own demise is to remain in the EU but only if the EU agrees to reform as was suggested above; this would require an EU wide referendum that the UK would also be signatories

15) What would happen if it was rejected by the electorate? In theory, financial services and other large businesses, such as the energy and armaments industries, will relocate to the EU in order to maintain their place within the single market. The UK will be forced to cut taxation even further in order to attract what busineses they can. The UK will get weaker militarily, financially and technologically relative to the EU. Eventually the UK would have to reintegrate with the EU.

16) That's what everyone said before the referendum but it hasn't happened yet? The rebalancing of the UK economy has already begun. Manufacturers are able to export more to the EU given the weakness in the GBP. However, the rising cost of importing the raw materials has squeezed margins. Thus, incomes have remained at their pre-Brexit levels while prices of imported goods (i.e. food) has steadily risen. Consequently, things like property has become more expensive to UK residents, whilst it has become cheaper for international investors. Over a period of time; these disparities are only going to increase.


The above a proposal would clearly require some political maneouvering by all parties involved. It is unlikely to be a final product. However, it is a proposal for an 'End Game' that is notably lacking at the moment. Games that have no-end tend to be parked by politicians in deadlock. The trenches of the first world war were a solution to a similar sort of problem. Thus, although some may consider No Deal is better than Any Deal, I urge all the others to disagree.

The Existence of Nothing?

According to the history books the Arabic numeral 'zero' was invented as a 'place holder', i.e. to indicate the absence of a positive integer in the number base being used; in the decimal system this occurs at 0, 10, 20, ...through 100, 110, 120 etc..

However, the 'full' zero is the number that is the average between +1 and -1.

The full zero is supposed to represent nothing. The absence of anything. This is the same nothing that (Western Humanist?) physicists tell us must have existed prior to the beginning of the Universe and what will exist, when it ceases to exist.

But from a (Buddhist or) psychological perspective, the idea that nothing exists beyond our conscious experience of it seems absurd. You must exist even if I have never met you, after all.

The materialist assumption (that Western Humanism often makes) is that consciousness is coterminous with the experience of material existence. But this is only true if you believe that consciousness is a property of the brain rather than the mind.

This philosophical difference is, I guess, reflected in the popularity of different beliefs regarding Life after Death: either the 'nothingness' of Western materialist humanism or some form of 'reincarnation', 'rebirth' or 'renewel' espoused by various forms of Organised Religion and their associated spiritualities.

So I would like to propose that the full zero does not equate to 'nothing', if it did, it would not exist, because by definition, 'nothing' does not exist.

This seems like a logical contradiction and indeed it is. We often think of 'nothing' as being what is left outside of the boundary if we could enclose 'everything' within a set. There is a polarity here between everything and nothing. If it is not everything it must be nothing. However, as someone who works in mental health I have been taught to be suspicious of such 'black and white', 'dichotomous', 'either/or' or 'binary' thinking.

Bertrand Russell realised there could not be a Set of Everything, because if there was it would have to include itself. If it included itself there would be something outside of it, itself. Thus, Set Theory hit a road block that it could not get passed. In the folklore of science we are told that Russell fell off his bike on the cobbled streets of the University when he realised this. Such is mathematics.

Black and white thinking tends to lie behind the sort of thinking that leads to anxiety and depression: "If I do not get an A grade at A-level then I must be a failure". This creates a cognitive distortion that leads to catastrophizing and the emotional symptoms of hopelessness and helplessness; possibly including some forms of suicidal ideation.

In psychotherapy the solution to these problems is to try and find some 'middle way' or 'gap' between the two opposing poles. Then build some graded alternatives, as a cognitive-affective bridge between them. For instance, "If I can do as well as I am possibly able to in my A-level exams then I will have achieved a success".

So my contention is that if zero cannot signify nothing, because logically nothing does not exist, it must signify the absence of something, and in its place, the presence of something else.

According to this view, even though the 'something else' may indeed be thin air, it is something, it is always something else, never nothing!

This idea is however very unpopular with people who seek to repress or deny parts of their own thinking or being. It creates the possibility that we are more than what we consider the boundary of our living selves to be; because even our absence is the presence of our absence. The moment of our existence can never cease to exist.

Mathematicians argue about this stuff all the time and would require me to prove this assumption using the same rules of logic that they do. I am not a trained mathematician but here is an attempt at a logical proof:

1. If every integer can be a positive or negative number and if 0 is an integer, then, arguably, it is possible to have a +0 and -0.
2. This can create an 'optical illusion' so that when I ask "which is closer to +1, is it -0 or +0?" the sign value fools some part of our minds into suggesting that +0 must be closer to +1 than -0, at least if we think about all three numbers lined up beside each other on a single line or dimension.
3. However, this cannot be the case because, according to the laws of mathematics and our rational minds, both +0 and -0 remain one unit of distance from +1, i.e.: +1 - +0 = +1; and +1 - -0 = +1.
4. Thus, the sign cannot increase the distance between 0 and 1. If it is possible to increase the polarity of 0, this must occur along some other unseen dimension that is 'superimposed' on the integer system.
5. So many people will say 0 cannot be a -0 or a +0; 0 is not an integer like every other integer, it has special rules applied to it that say it cannot carry a positive or negative value to it, only in this way can the general laws of mathematics be maintained.
6. Thus, I say, what we have proved is that 0 is defined as the absence of something, in this case by the absence of any positive or negative value. This does not require any appeal to any external source which is outside the laws of mathematics in the same way that the Set of Nothing appears to be.
7. I surmise, nothing does not exist, what exists is (on any line or dimension) a point at which there is an absence of any positive or negative sign value.

I would go further and suggest that this 'vanishing point' might also be a real mental phenomena; i.e. some physical point on my retina when it comes to my field of vision; or some corresponding point in my hypothalamus that denotes the point of homeostatic equilibrium, i.e. between Sleep and High Arousal; or some point between the hemispheres of my forebrain, like the septum or striatum, that can calculate the sum of all affective values that are attached to an object of thought, i.e. the Self.

These suggestions are based on the overlap between the empirical sciences of neurology and phenomenology. They are based on the assumption that the brain and associated neural structures encode the value of an electrochemical signal and communicate that value, or series of values in the form of a coded message, to its nearest neighbours.

Ultimately the brain, and every neuron within it, must have a resting potential, the homeostatic equilibrium, to which the neuron must return. This 'resting potential' need not be 'zero potential' although it may appear in our minds to be 'nothing' due to the absence of firing; and it may not be the same resting potential for all neurons, although I have never tested this hypothesis.

Thus, at the level of the neuron we find language. We do not really understand that language at the moment. However, it could be argued that the polarity of the positive and negative signs that are attached to the 'phenomenological experiencing of things' at the neural level is, at least partially replicated in the adjectives of our interpersonal languages, e.g.: good/bad; strong/weak; active/passive. These antonymic adjectives have been described by Osgood's 'Semantic Differential' and used to differentiate the relativity of phenomenological experience in various cultures.

In theory, the Semantic Differential is the basis of all the objective measurable qualities of objects, according to which objects can be compared with each other. You can conceive of all objects as being coded according to their location (in space and time) and their affective value; so that either the location or emotional state of the subject would be enough to recall the object from memory.

Mathematically this might look something like the following equation: It states that the subjective probability of noticing an object (X) at a specific time (t) and place (p) is equal to the sum of the probabilities that it is coded positively (X +ve) or negatively (X -ve) at the same time (t) and place (p) by the subject.

p (X t.p) = p (X+ve t.p) + p (X-ve t.p) 

This does not sound like big news. But what it doesn't tell you is that the actual (or objective) probability of the object being in that time and place (p (X t.p)) is indeterminate because it is impossible to predict the probability of an object's existence in the Universe without knowing how many other objects exist in the Universe at that time and place.

Thus, p (X t.p) is subjective in the sense that it is a prediction, or expectation of the subject about the presence, or absence of the object at a certain time or place. It remains an inductive estimate based on a calculation of the affective values (X+ve and X-ve) that an object has for us, or had for us in the past; the inductive estimate can also be based on previous encounters with the object (by changing the equation on the right or left slightly to denote 't' as 't+1' or 't-1', respectively) and has to be constantly updated when new information becomes available about other objects in our Universe.

To fit this in with the previous discussion regarding mental health: In Klienian Object Analysis the encoding of social objects during the development of the child is then said to progress from a dichotomous 'paranoid-schizoid' position (where the world is painted in black and white terms) towards a 'depressive' position (where the world is much less powerfully determined by the affective extremes).

This still means there can be multiple dimensions (of +ve and -ve values) that can be attached to objects that can then be compared with each other according to the same basic integer system. It's just that all such measurement ceases to be 'objective'; because all such measurement is relative to the position of the subject in the Universe; or 'the Subject's developmental trajectory within the developmental trajectory of the Universe' if you like. And the sum of all those values may, or may not, sum to zero.

Sociologists argue about this sort of stuff too. However, for a Sociologist 'the Universe' is the relative confines of the culture they inhabit. For instance, one major battle-front of the feminist movement was that this system of binary oppositions was used to exploit the differences between men and women. The argument was that all powerful or positive adjectives are attached to 'masculine' objects; the subjucation of the 'feminine' objects was seen as a social injustice. Similar arguments were raised within the US Civil Rights movement regarding the negativisation of the word 'black'; other social movements followed.

All these movements made the case for the isomorphism of language and culture; through their struggles they made this isomorphism a social and political fact. As political movements they armed a generation with the intellectual tools to fight oppression. That struggle still continues.  

Coincidentally, the 'zero sum' position of critical analysis is also the basis of scientific objectivity; science must maintain the absence of emotional subjectivity to justify the validity of its 'theology'. Arabic numerals underpinning Western thoughts: There is a strange irony about that. It is not nothing. Nothing, by definition, does not exist. I wonder what else is not nothing?  

Post-Marxist Political Momentum

The 2017 general election may not have ended in a total victory for the Labour Party, but it was in so many ways a huge personal victory for Jeremy Corbyn and a massive personal defeat for Theresa May. Everything the Prime Minister stood for has been put to the sword; she has put the future of her country at risk and she has the lost the respect of her Party. After a successful campaign Corbyn and McDonnell need to take credit for re-founding the Labour Party to the Left; a 'rebranding' the like of which has not been seen since Blair and Brown shifted the Party to the Centre Right. The period has ended which saw Labour wandering aimlessly in the a political vacuum, chasing rainbows, this is indeed the second New Dawn. Gone, are the political science graduates, focus group policy makers, and media moguls; back are the authentic leaders of the British Working Class. New Labour is dead, long live political authenticity.

However, whilst the political momentum is with the Socialists in the field, there are still the Nationalist castles to overcome. True, the UKIP vote has collapsed, but in favour of the Tories by a ratio of 2:1. The Tories now represent the Unionist vote in Scotland and will rely on the Unionist vote in Northern Ireland to govern. According to these facts, for the Nationalist vote, Brexit was less about immigration and more about the Sovereignty of the UK. For Sovereignty, read power; and for power read the triumvirate of war: the oil, arms, and finance industries. In contrast, Corbyn has been unable to avoid his association with Sinn Fein, his pacifist principles and his sympathies for unilateral disarmament. 

So what has attracted voters back to him from UKIP? Arguably it is the Re-Nationalisation of our vital public services.

On immigration Corbyn, along with many other Marxists in the trade union movement, believe that freedom of movement is bad if it involves an increased supply and exploitation of labour that drives UK wages down. Thus, he wants to restrict freedom of movement in the EU, but only in traditional manual labour occupations. On the other hand he is not against the internationalist aspirations of EU University graduates who continue to be net contributors to the UK economy. Thus, Corbyn want a form of 'quota system' and managed migration. Although few commentators have drawn attention to it, this position is not that different to UKIP's position. Both Left and Right wing now seem to agree with the basic Marxist theory, that wealth is created via the exploitation of labor. They simply differ in their moral attitudes towards that fact. 

But the Democratic Socialism espoused by the UK Labour Party, and therefore Corbyn, is not Marxist. After all it is not Marxist to want to eradicate the inequalities between the upper and working classes (and the basis of the Aristocratic/Feudal system) through growing a capital owning Middle Class. It does not entail a proletarian revolution but it does require trade routes to international markets whose security is 'underwritten' by the Nation State. It is not Marxist to want to maintain democracy, educational opportunity and freedom of speech: empowering individuals to question and challenge the abuse of power. It is petit bourgeois, perhaps, but only in the sense that it requires a professionalised Middle Class who carry their capital assets with them in their knowledge, skills, attitudes and languages; these commodities are valuable to the Upper Classes because they have greater evolutionary potential than the people who possess them. Thus, the class consciousness of the Middle Class poses a threat to Feudalism but it could be the bastion of Capitalism. A Middle Class consciousness tends to recognise that it is not accessible to all; and some degree of redistribution of wealth needs to be dictated by government in order to balance the needs of the many with the wealth of the few; but it sees that the level of redistribution has to be set at an acceptable level, that does not extinguish the aspirations of Capitalism. 

Thus, clealry, it is not Marxist to want to grow a macro-economic, international focused, capitalist economy, based on the contradictory forces of individual diversity and economic inequality. But there does appear to be a post-Marxist consensus forming that wants to use those contradictory forces to justify the regulation of the socio-economic gradients. Going forward, I believe this means that all the material assets of the nation state should be held under common, public ownership; with the division between public and private ownership being based on the division between the general needs and specific abilities of its citizens to maintain and increase the sum total of good quality life years. The sum quality adjusted life years is the metric used by the NHS to make its life and death decisions. This should replace GDP as a measure of the success of our modern political-economic system. 

Junk Rock: an Economic Epistemology

I have to admit to having a dirty little habit: I like junk. I like to hang out in car boot sales, charity shops and architectural salvage yards. They are like living, breathing sociological museums to me; a library of anthropological artefacts. When I get a chance I watch programmes about buying and selling junk, there are quite a few: Antiques Roadshow, Antiques Road Trip, Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is, Bargain Hunt, Flog It!, Money for Nothing, French Connection and more. It’s a very popular theme. I suppose this habit started when I was at art school when I had to think about designing stuff that some people might want to buy. Since then I have become fascinated by the market forces that determine the price someone is willing to pay for a piece of 'junk'. I guess this is the only form of economics education I have ever had and I’m taking a moment to reflect on what have I learnt.

We can assume that everything has its price but something is only worth what someone else is willing to pay for it. That much is a given, but it does not help us determine what the price should be. Beyond that the first principle seems to be that ‘quality always sells’. That means that the unique aesthetic, technical skill, knowledge, discipline and labour of ‘the craftsman’ can add a certain value to an object over and above the functional utility of its rivals; either because it gives the object some additional durability or beauty or technological advantage. ‘Provenance’ is also important: the history of the object’s use or possession by significant others along with the narrative regarding its inheritance. That means that the social and cultural meaning of the object along with its authenticity in comparison to others of the same quality can also add to its value. Quality and provenance probably combine to create 'pedigree', as in the genetic thoroughbred.

The next most important determinant is condition. This is problematic in some ways because the finish that comes with age can be valuable, i.e. it has an antique patina, whereas irreversible damage to or tarnishing of an object can render it worthless. This determinant is clealry related to the rarity of an object; the more rare it is the more likely that damage will occur. The sphinx is no less valuable to us because it is damaged; but if someone were to find a perfect undamaged version this would probably become the more prized possession. The question of rarity brings us on to demand and supply. The more collectors there are who want to own an object then the higher the price it will command at an auction. But the level of demand at any one time/place, i.e. the number of people at the auction and the number of competitors who are bidding for the object, is dependent on a number of other factors, like marketting, weather, other things in the sale, and so on. Thus, the value of an object is not solely dependent on the intrinsic qualities of beauty, durability, provenance or condition but also the extrinsic factors of the market on the day. Furthermore, it tends to be the latter that creates the greatest variability in the sale price, confounding the experts the most.

This is all quite interesting from the economic point of view because it relies on an underlying epistemology (theory of knowledge). Not only do the experts have to know what class the object belongs to, they have to guess its intrinsic origins and relative rarity. They also have to be able to judge the current emotional attachment of the market to the object, which is variable within the same class of objects, depending on the unique history of the object, and place a monetary value on that unique relationship. Further, they have to be able to guess the constitution of the market on the day of sale and this depends on a number of environmental circumstances whose interaction is often indeterminate. Expert knowledge is not distributed evenly across the whole of the market on the day of sale and further allowances have to be made by the experts for how much the market will know and whether this is more or less than the experts themselves will know. Thus the epistemology of market economics has many known unknowns that determine the sale price in addition to the many known knowns that determine the expert’s valuation.

In theory, market economics works because it is rational. The buyer distinguishes the good product from the bad and this is reflected, through the demand and supply mechanisms, in the price people are will to pay for the product. But this only works if every buyer (end-user) in the market has perfect knowledge of all the different products they could buy and all the products are all equally available to them and they each make their decisions independently of each other. Clearly, this is far from the case in the real world. Product manufacturers know that these knowledge inequalities exist in the market and the class structures of the capitalist economy; they attempt to exploit them through ‘creative’ media and marketing campaigns. For example, many cold-calling salespeople now start their pitch with ‘I’m not here to sell you anything but…..’ which is, in theory, fraudulent deception. Further, most companies will employ a form of intellectual elitism that hides many contractual details in ‘the small print’. They later rely on these details to refuse a contracted service to the customer and blame the customer for not having read the details. But the point is that the consumer is being fooled into agreeing to pay a direct debt over a number of years to honour a contract that they have less than perfect knowledge of. In theory, this is again fraudulent deception.

To admit these inequalities is to admit the failure of the ‘free-market’ as an ideological enterprise. Arguably, it was the exploitation of inequalities in consumer knowledge by aggressive sales teams that led to the US sub-prime mortgage market crashing in 2008 and the global recession that followed. In the end, markets need to be regulated. By that I mean the financial governance of businesses needs to be policed more closely. In addition, business knowledge regarding any product on the market needs to be produced independently by an impartial government service that has the interest of the market, not the market competitor, at its heart. This means an end to 'creative' media and marketing campaigns, the psychological sciences that feed off them, and the customer services that defend them. Or at least, a restructuring of these industries through legislation in order to deliver a more equitable and safe public service to those customers who need to use them.