Larry Eliot’s excellent piece on how David Cameron has moved from fascination with Thaler’s ‘nudge’ economics to an infatuation with the less-than-extraordinary insights of Taleb (largely summed up by the notion that ’shit happens’) makes me wonder if this kind of scenario - a Brazil Tuttle/Buttle confusion for the internet age – has been enacted recently at Cameron HQ:
DC: George, stop flipping your homes and come over here a second, will you, old man? Now, I’m getting a bit bored with this Phillip Blond chap. Damn fellow keeps ringing me up asking for information about housing and such like. How am I supposed to konw that kind of thing? He’s ever so serious about stuff, and he keeps going on and on about assets for the poor and such like. You know, the poor, George - you remember them? They’re the ones taking the rap for the little problems we’ve been having with the economy and all that rot. You made a little speech about how unfortunate it all was for them.
GO: Yes, yes, I know the chap. Met him at the pile the other weekend. Frightful bore. God-botherer of some sort.
DC: Yes, well, I’ll have him taken off the list, you know, that list of interlex, interleckial, how do you say it, clever so ‘n so’s who can tell us what to think. Now, who was that fellow before him? You know, the one with the name a bit like a curry dish. the nudge, nudge, wink, wink chap – frightfully funny. Didn’t understand a blasted word he was on about, but his G&Ts were out of this world.
GO: Yes, yes, I’ve got the one. American chap. Thal.. something or other.
DC: Yes, him. Let’s get him back. He’s much more fun. Good to stay in with the Americans, as well, don’t you know?
Heh you, backroom chappie. Get that Thali chap in here, would you? Tell him we need some more interlex, no sorry, can’t get that one – tell him we need a bit of his boffinry again. You know, throw him the line – we’re having all these problems with Dan over the health thingumigiggy, spilling the beans and all that, and need to look serious again. You know the kind of thing.
Nervous backroom chappie (googling quickly): Yes sir, got him sir, name’s Taleb, sir, the Wall Steet trader-turned-philosopher.
DC: Yes, that’ll be the cove. Get on to him now, would you?
Do you never think it strange that every academic, theorist or “think tank” associated with Cameron suddenly becomes his latest “guru” or “think tank of choice” according to the media? I mean, either Cameron is awash with “gurus”, or he’s simply picking up (and equally discarding) ideas as he goes along, but then the latter has far less ring for an opinion piece.
I’ve levelled the same kind criticisms at Labour figures for their appropriation of the latest ‘du jour’ philosophy which happens to suit their operational code e.g. Amartya Sen. What Larry Eliot points out about Cameron though is that the views of Thaler and Taleb are, to some extent at least, in opposition, and it’s worrying that Cameron is championing both within such a short space of time.
Anyway, it was only a bit of totally party political biased fun
Montague Norman, when he was governor of the Bank of England, got right the relationship between intellectuals and power. He once (allegedly) said to a Bank of England economist: “Your job is not to tell us what we should do. It’s to explain to us why we’ve done what we have.”
Chris
Yes, indeed. I think there’s a blogpost in there about the relatonship between what Alex a Yorksranter calls the ‘operational code’ and the ideology as made explicit (and how this has changed the operational code has changed so completely for the Conservatives that whatever the ’softer’ profile, the hard bits always stick through.