Bill Gates and his new Monopolies

 

Fallacies of Capitalism 7: The Rational Actor Fallacy

How does the "rational economic actor" fallacy overlook the role of cognitive biases, imperfect information, and bounded rationality in decision-making within a capitalist system? 

The "rational economic actor" fallacy assumes that individuals in a capitalist system always make decisions in a perfectly rational and self-interested manner. However, this belief overlooks the influence of cognitive biases, imperfect information, and bounded rationality, which can lead to suboptimal decision-making. Let's understand this concept with simple examples:

1. Cognitive biases: Humans are prone to cognitive biases, which are systematic errors in thinking that affect decision-making. For example, the availability bias occurs when people rely on easily accessible information rather than considering a broader range of data. In a capitalist system, this bias can lead individuals to make decisions based on recent news or vivid examples rather than carefully analyzing all relevant information. This can result in suboptimal choices, such as investing in trendy but risky assets without considering their long-term potential.

2. Imperfect information: In many economic transactions, individuals do not have access to complete and accurate information. For instance, when buying a used car, the seller may withhold information about the vehicle's hidden problems. This information asymmetry can lead to suboptimal decisions. Buyers, lacking complete knowledge, may overpay for a faulty car. In a capitalist system, imperfect information can distort market outcomes and hinder individuals from making fully rational choices.

3. Bounded rationality: Bounded rationality recognizes that individuals have limited cognitive abilities to process information and make complex decisions. People often rely on simplifying heuristics and rules of thumb instead of undertaking thorough analysis. For example, when choosing a product, individuals may rely on brand reputation rather than researching all available options. In a capitalist system, bounded rationality can lead individuals to make decisions based on incomplete information or superficial analysis, resulting in suboptimal outcomes.

4. Emotional influences: Human decision-making is also influenced by emotions, which can deviate from strict rationality. For example, investors may be driven by fear or greed during market fluctuations, leading to irrational investment decisions. In a capitalist system, emotional biases can contribute to market volatility and inefficient allocation of resources.

5. Social influences: People's decisions are often influenced by social factors, such as peer pressure or social norms, which may override individual rationality. For instance, individuals may conform to popular trends or engage in conspicuous consumption to fit into a particular social group. In a capitalist system, social influences can drive individuals to make choices that prioritize social acceptance over their own best interests.

In summary, the "rational economic actor" fallacy overlooks the role of cognitive biases, imperfect information, bounded rationality, emotional influences, and social factors in decision-making within a capitalist system. Recognizing these limitations is crucial for understanding that individuals do not always act in perfectly rational and self-interested ways. Policymakers and market participants should consider these factors to design regulations, incentives, and interventions that account for the complexity of human decision-making and promote better outcomes in the capitalist system.

FBI & MI5 Chiefs speak up, call China bigger threat than Russia, flag threat to business & technology

 

What's Focal is Causal: How to Get People to Say Yes: A Psychology Professor Explains the Science of Persuasion

 

The science of influencing people: six ways to win an argument

Hidebound views on subjects such as the climate crisis and Brexit are the norm – but the appliance of science may sway stubborn opinions writes David Robson in The Guardian 

 

Illustration: Getty Images/Observer Design


“I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters of religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s,” wrote Mark Twain.

Having written a book about our most common reasoning errors, I would argue that Twain was being rather uncharitable – to monkeys. Whether we are discussing Trump, Brexit, or the Tory leadership, we have all come across people who appear to have next to no understanding of world events – but who talk with the utmost confidence and conviction. And the latest psychological research can now help us to understand why.

Consider the “illusion of explanatory depth”. When asked about government policies and their consequences, most people believe that they could explain their workings in great detail. If put to the test, however, their explanations are vague and incoherent. The problem is that we confuse a shallow familiarity with general concepts for real, in-depth knowledge.

Besides being less substantial than we think, our knowledge is also highly selective: we conveniently remember facts that support our beliefs and forget others. When it comes to understanding the EU, for instance, Brexiters will know the overall costs of membership, while remainers will cite its numerous advantages. Although the overall level of knowledge is equal on both sides, there is little overlap in the details.

Simply asking why people support or oppose a policy is pointless. You need to ask how something works to have an effect

Politics can also scramble our critical thinking skills. Psychological studies show that people fail to notice the logical fallacies in an argument if the conclusion supports their viewpoint; if they are shown contrary evidence, however, they will be far more critical of the tiniest hole in the argument. This phenomenon is known as “motivated reasoning”.

A high standard of education doesn’t necessarily protect us from these flaws. Graduates, for instance, often overestimate their understanding of their degree subject: although they remember the general content, they have forgotten the details. “People confuse their current level of understanding with their peak knowledge,” Prof Matthew Fisher of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, says. That false sense of expertise can, in turn, lead them to feel that they have the licence to be more closed-minded in their political views – an attitude known as “earned dogmatism”.

Little wonder that discussions about politics can leave us feeling that we are banging our heads against a brick wall – even when talking to people we might otherwise respect. Fortunately, recent psychological research also offers evidence-based ways towards achieving more fruitful discussions.

Ask ‘how’ rather than ‘why’
Thanks to the illusion of explanatory depth, many political arguments will be based on false premises, spoken with great confidence but with a minimal understanding of the issues at hand. For this reason, a simple but powerful way of deflating someone’s argument is to ask for more detail. “You need to get the ‘other side’ focusing on how something would play itself out, in a step by step fashion”, says Prof Dan Johnson at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. By revealing the shallowness of their existing knowledge, this prompts a more moderate and humble attitude.

FacebookTwitterPinterest Anti-Brexit protester Steve Bray and a pro-Brexit protester face off outside parliament earlier this year. Photograph: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

In 2013, Prof Philip Fernbach at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and colleagues asked participants in cap-and-trade schemes – designed to limit companies’ carbon emissions – to describe in depth how they worked. Subjects initially took strongly polarised views but after the limits of their knowledge were exposed, their attitudes became more moderate and less biased.

It’s important to note that simply asking why people supported or opposed the policy – without requiring them to explain how it works – had no effect, since those reasons could be shallower (“It helps the environment”) with little detail. You need to ask how something works to get the effect.

If you are debating the merits of a no-deal Brexit, you might ask someone to describe exactly how the UK’s international trade would change under WTO terms. If you are challenging a climate emergency denier, you might ask them to describe exactly how their alternative theories can explain the recent rise in temperatures. It’s a strategy that the broadcaster James O’Brien employs on his LBC talk show – to powerful effect.

Fill their knowledge gap with a convincing story
If you are trying to debunk a particular falsehood – like a conspiracy theory or fake news – you should make sure that your explanation offers a convincing, coherent narrative that fills all the gaps left in the other person’s understanding.

Consider the following experiment by Prof Brendan Nyhan of the University of Michigan and Prof Jason Reifler of the University of Exeter. Subjects read stories about a fictional senator allegedly under investigation for bribery who had subsequently resigned from his post. Written evidence – a letter from prosecutors confirming his innocence – did little to change the participants’ suspicions of his guilt. But when offered an alternative explanation for his resignation – to take on another role – participants changed their minds. The same can be seen in murder trials: people are more likely to accept someone’s innocence if another suspect has also been accused, since that fills the biggest gap in the story: whodunnit.

FacebookTwitterPinterest Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, Sajid Javid and Rory Stewart taking part in a BBC TV debate earlier this month. Photograph: Jeff Overs/BBC/PA

The persuasive power of well-constructed narratives means that it’s often useful to discuss the sources of misinformation, so that the person can understand why they were being misled in the first place. Anti-vaxxers, for instance, may believe a medical conspiracy to cover up the supposed dangers of vaccines. You are more likely to change minds if you replace that narrative with an equally cohesive and convincing story – such as Andrew Wakefield’s scientific fraud, and the fact that he was set to profit from his paper linking autism to MMR vaccines. Just stating the scientific evidence will not be as persuasive.

Reframe the issue
Each of our beliefs is deeply rooted in a much broader and more complex political ideology. Climate crisis denial, for instance, is now inextricably linked to beliefs in free trade, capitalism and the dangers of environmental regulation.

Attacking one issue may therefore threaten to unravel someone’s whole worldview – a feeling that triggers emotionally charged motivated reasoning. It is for this reason that highly educated Republicans in the US deny the overwhelming evidence.

You are not going to alter someone’s whole political ideology in one discussion, so a better strategy is to disentangle the issue at hand from their broader beliefs, or to explain how the facts can still be accommodated into their worldview. A free-market capitalist who denies global warming might be far more receptive to the evidence if you explain that the development of renewable energies could lead to technological breakthroughs and generate economic growth.

Appeal to an alternative identity
If the attempt to reframe the issue fails, you might have more success by appealing to another part of the person’s identity entirely.

Someone’s political affiliation will never completely define them, after all. Besides being a conservative or a socialist, a Brexiter or a remainer, we associate ourselves with other traits and values – things like our profession, or our role as a parent. We might see ourselves as a particularly honest person, or someone who is especially creative. “All people have multiple identities,” says Prof Jay Van Bavel at New York University, who studies the neuroscience of the “partisan brain”. “These identities can become active at any given time, depending on the circumstances.”

You are more likely to achieve your aims by arguing gently and kindly. You will also come across better to onlookers

It’s natural that when talking about politics, the salient identity will be our support for a particular party or movement. But when people are asked to first reflect on their other, nonpolitical values, they tend to become more objective in discussion on highly partisan issues, as they stop viewing facts through their ideological lens.

You could try to use this to your advantage during a heated conversation, with subtle flattery that appeals to another identity and its set of values; if you are talking to a science teacher, you might try to emphasise their capacity to appraise evidence even-handedly. The aim is to help them recognise that they can change their mind on certain issues while staying true to other important elements of their personality.

Persuade them to take an outside perspective
Another simple strategy to encourage a more detached and rational mindset is to ask your conversation partner to imagine the argument from the viewpoint of someone from another country. How, for example, would someone in Australia or Iceland view Boris Johnson as our new prime minister?

Prof Ethan Kross at the University of Michigan, and Prof Igor Grossmann at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, have shown that this strategy increases “psychological distance” from the issue at hand and cools emotionally charged reasoning so that you can see things more objectively. During the US presidential elections, for instance, their participants were asked to consider how someone in Iceland would view the candidates. They were subsequently more willing to accept the limits of their knowledge and to listen to alternative viewpoints; after the experiment, they were even more likely to join a bipartisan discussion group.

FacebookTwitterPinterest The front pages of two New York newspapers on Friday 2 June 2017, as Donald Trump pledged to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement. Photograph: Richard B Levine/Alamy

This is only one way to increase someone’s psychological distance, and there are many others. If you are considering policies with potentially long-term consequences, you could ask them to imagine viewing the situation through the eyes of someone in the future. However you do it, encouraging this shift in perspective should make your friend or relative more receptive to the facts you are presenting, rather than simply reacting with knee-jerk dismissals.

Be kind
Here’s a lesson that certain polemicists in the media might do well to remember – people are generally much more rational in their arguments, and more willing to own up to the limits of their knowledge and understanding, if they are treated with respect and compassion. Aggression, by contrast, leads them to feel that their identity is threatened, which in turn can make them closed-minded.

Assuming that the purpose of your argument is to change minds, rather than to signal your own superiority, you are much more likely to achieve your aims by arguing gently and kindly rather than belligerently, and affirming your respect for the person, even if you are telling them some hard truths. As a bonus, you will also come across better to onlookers. “There’s a lot of work showing that third-party observers always attribute high levels of competence when the person is conducting themselves with more civility,” says Dr Joe Vitriol, a psychologist at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. As Lady Mary Wortley Montagu put it in the 18th century: “Civility costs nothing and buys everything.”

Is Marx still relevant 200 years later?

Amartya Sen in The Indian Express







How should we think about Karl Marx on his 200th birthday? His big influence on the politics of the world is universally acknowledged, though people would differ on how good or bad that influence has been. But going beyond that, there can be little doubt that the intellectual world has been transformed by the reflective departures Marx generated, from class analysis as an essential part of social understanding, to the explication of the profound contrast between needs and hard work as conflicting foundations of people’s moral entitlements. Some of the influences have been so pervasive, with such strong impact on the concepts and connection we look for in our day-to-day analysis, that we may not be fully aware where the influences came from. In reading some classic works of Marx, we are often placed in the uncomfortable position of the theatre-goer who loved Hamlet as a play, but wondered why it was so full of quotations.

Marxian analysis remains important today not just because of Marx’s own original work, but also because of the extraordinary contributions made in that tradition by many leading historians, social scientists and creative artists — from Antonio Gramsci, Rosa Luxemburg, Jean-Paul Sartre and Bertolt Brecht to Piero Sraffa, Maurice Dobb and Eric Hobsbawm (to mention just a few names). We do not have to be a Marxist to make use of the richness of Marx’s insights — just as one does not have to be an Aristotelian to learn from Aristotle.

There are ideas in Marx’s corpus of work that remain under-explored. I would place among the relatively neglected ideas Marx’s highly original concept of “objective illusion,” and related to that, his discussion of “false consciousness”. An objective illusion may arise from what we can see from our particular position — how things look from there (no matter how misleading). Consider the relative sizes of the sun and the moon, and the fact that from the earth they look to be about the same size (Satyajit Ray offered some interesting conversations on this phenomenon in his film, Agantuk). But to conclude from this observation that the sun and the moon are in fact of the same size in terms of mass or volume would be mistaken, and yet to deny that they do look to be about the same size from the earth would be a mistake too. Marx’s investigation of objective illusion — of “the outer form of things” — is a pioneering contribution to understanding the implications of positional dependence of observations.

The phenomenon of objective illusion helps to explain the widespread tendency of workers in an exploitative society to fail to see that there is any exploitation going on — an example that Marx did much to investigate, in the form of “false consciousness”. The idea can have many applications going beyond Marx’s own use of it. Powerful use can be made of the notion of objective illusion to understand, for example, how women, and indeed men, in strongly sexist societies may not see clearly enough — in the absence of informed political agitation — that there are huge elements of gender inequality in what look like family-oriented just societies, as bastions of role-based fairness.

There is, however, a danger in seeing Marx in narrowly formulaic terms — for example, in seeing him as a “materialist” who allegedly understood the world in terms of the importance of material conditions, denying the significance of ideas and beliefs. This is not only a serious misreading of Marx, who emphasised two-way relations between ideas and material conditions, but also a seriously missed opportunity to see the far-reaching role of ideas on which Marx threw such important light.

Let me illustrate the point with a debate on the discipline of historical explanation that was quite widespread in our own time. In one of Eric Hobsbawm’s lesser known essays, called “Where Are British Historians Going?”, published in the Marxist Quarterly in 1955, he discussed how the Marxist pointer to the two-way relationship between ideas and material conditions offers very different lessons in the contemporary world than it had in the intellectual world that Marx himself saw around him, where the prevailing focus — for example by Hegel and Hegelians — was very much on highlighting the influence of ideas on material conditions.

In contrast, the tendency of dominant schools of history in the mid-twentieth century — Hobsbawm cited here the hugely influential historical works of Lewis Bernstein Namier — had come to embrace a type of materialism that saw human action as being almost entirely motivated by a simple kind of material interest, in particular narrowly defined self-interest. Given this completely different kind of bias (very far removed from the idealist traditions of Hegel and other influential thinkers in Marx’s own time), Hobsbawm argued that a balanced two-way view must demand that analysis in Marxian lines today must particularly emphasise the importance of ideas and their influence on material conditions.

For example, it is crucial to recognise that Edmund Burke’s hugely influential criticism of Warren Hastings’s misbehaviour in India — in the famous Impeachment hearings — was directly related to Burke’s strongly held ideas of justice and fairness, whereas the self-interest-obsessed materialist historians, such as Namier, saw no more in Burke’s discontent than the influence of his [Burke’s] profit-seeking concerns which had suffered because of the policies pursued by Hastings. The overreliance on materialism — in fact of a particularly narrow kind — needed serious correction, argued Hobsbawm: “In the pre-Namier days, Marxists regarded it as one of their chief historical duties to draw attention to the material basis of politics. But since bourgeois historians have adopted what is a particular form of vulgar materialism, Marxists had to remind them that history is the struggle of men for ideas, as well as a reflection of their material environment. Mr Trevor-Roper [a famous right-wing historian] is not merely mistaken in believing that the English Revolution was the reflection of the declining fortunes of country gentlemen, but also in his belief that Puritanism was simply a reflection of their impending bankruptcies.”

To Hobsbawm’s critique, it could be added that the so-called “rational choice theory” (so dominant in recent years in large parts of mainstream economics and political analysis) thrives on a single-minded focus on self-interest as the sole human motivation, thereby missing comprehensively the balance that Marx had argued for. A rational choice theorist can, in fact, learn a great deal from reading Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts and The German Ideology. While this would be a very different lesson from what Marx wanted Hegelians to consider, a commitment to doing justice to the two-way relations characterises both parts of Marx’s capacious pedagogy. What has to be avoided is the narrowing of Marx’s thoughts through simple formulas respectfully distributed in his name.

In remembering Marx on his 200th birthday, we not only celebrate a great intellectual, but also one whose critical analyses and investigations have many insights to offer to us today. Paying attention to Marx may be more important than paying him respect.

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Slavoj Zizek in The Independent


There is a delicious old Soviet joke about Radio Yerevan: a listener asks: “Is it true that Rabinovitch won a new car in the lottery?”, and the radio presenter answers: “In principle yes, it’s true, only it wasn’t a new car but an old bicycle, and he didn’t win it but it was stolen from him.”

Does exactly the same not hold for Marx’s legacy today? Let’s ask Radio Yerevan: “Is Marx’s theory still relevant today?” We can guess the answer: in principle yes, he describes wonderfully the mad dance of capitalist dynamics which only reached its peak today, more than a century and a half later, but… Gerald A Cohen enumerated the four features of the classic Marxist notion of the working class: (1) it constitutes the majority of society; (2) it produces the wealth of society; (3) it consists of the exploited members of society; and (4) its members are the needy people in society. When these four features are combined, they generate two further features: (5) the working class has nothing to lose from revolution; and (6) it can and will engage in a revolutionary transformation of society.

None of the first four features applies to today’s working class, which is why features (5) and (6) cannot be generated. Even if some of the features continue to apply to parts of today’s society, they are no longer united in a single agent: the needy people in society are no longer the workers, and so on.

But let’s dig into this question of relevance and appropriateness further. Not only is Marx’s critique of political economy and his outline of the capitalist dynamics still fully relevant, but one could even take a step further and claim that it is only today, with global capitalism, that it is fully relevant.

However, at the moment of triumph is one of defeat. After overcoming external obstacles the new threat comes from within. In other words, Marx was not simply wrong, he was often right – but more literally than he himself expected to be.

For example, Marx couldn’t have imagined that the capitalist dynamics of dissolving all particular identities would translate into ethnic identities as well. Today’s celebration of “minorities” and “marginals” is the predominant majority position – alt-rightists who complain about the terror of “political correctness” take advantage of this by presenting themselves as protectors of an endangered minority, attempting to mirror campaigns on the other side.

And then there’s the case of “commodity fetishism”. Recall the classic joke about a man who believes himself to be a grain of seed and is taken to a mental institution where the doctors do their best to finally convince him that he is not a grain but a man. When he is cured (convinced that he is not a grain of seed but a man) and allowed to leave the hospital, he immediately comes back trembling. There is a chicken outside the door and he is afraid that it will eat him.

“Dear fellow,” says his doctor, “you know very well that you are not a grain of seed but a man.”

“Of course I know that,” replies the patient, “but does the chicken know it?”

So how does this apply to the notion of commodity fetishism? Note the very beginning of the subchapter on commodity fetishism in Marx’s Das Kapital: “A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.”

Commodity fetishism (our belief that commodities are magic objects, endowed with an inherent metaphysical power) is not located in our mind, in the way we (mis)perceive reality, but in our social reality itself. We may know the truth, but we act as if we don’t know it – in our real life, we act like the chicken from the joke.

Niels Bohr, who already gave the right answer to Einstein’s “God doesn’t play dice“(“Don’t tell God what to do!”), also provided the perfect example of how a fetishist disavowal of belief works. Seeing a horseshoe on his door, a surprised visitor commented that he didn’t think Bohr believed superstitious ideas about horseshoes bringing good luck to people. Bohr snapped back: “I also do not believe in it; I have it there because I was told that it works whether one believes in it or not!”

This is how ideology works in our cynical era: we don’t have to believe in it. Nobody takes democracy or justice seriously, we are all aware of their corruption, but we practice them – in other words, we display our belief in them – because we assume they work even if we do not believe in them.

With regard to religion, we no longer “really believe”, we just follow (some of the) religious rituals and mores as part of the respect for the “lifestyle” of the community to which we belong (non-believing Jews obeying kosher rules “out of respect for tradition”, for example).

“I do not really believe in it, it is just part of my culture” seems to be the predominant mode of the displaced belief, characteristic of our times. “Culture” is the name for all those things we practice without really believing in them, without taking them quite seriously.

This is why we dismiss fundamentalist believers as “barbarians” or “primitive”, as anti-cultural, as a threat to culture – they dare to take seriously their beliefs. The cynical era in which we live would have no surprises for Marx.

Marx’s theories are thus not simply alive: Marx is a ghost who continues to haunt us – and the only way to keep him alive is to focus on those of his insights which are today more true than in his own time.

MCC: the greatest anachronism of English cricket

by Maxie Allen in The Full Toss • March 16, 2012

There’s been an outbreak of egg-and-bacon-striped handbags at dawn. Sir John Major’s resignation from the Main Committee of the MCC, in a row about redevelopment plans at Lord’s, has triggered a furious war of words in St John’s Wood.

Put simply, the former prime minister took umbrage at the process by which the MCC decided to downgrade the project. He then claimed that Phillip Hodson, the club’s president, publicly misrepresented his reasons for resigning, and in response Sir John wrote an open letter to set the record straight, in scathing terms.

The saga has been all over the cricket press, and even beyond, in recent weeks – underlining the anomalously prominent role the MCC continues to maintain within the eccentric geography of English cricket.

To this observer it’s both puzzling and slightly troubling that the people who run cricket, and the mainstream media who report on it, remain so reverentially fascinated by an organisation whose function has so little resonance for the vast majority of people who follow the game in this country.

Virtually anything the Marylebone Cricket Club do or say is news – and more importantly, cricket’s opinion-formers and decision-makers attach great weight to its actions and utterances. Whenever Jonathan Agnew interviews an MCC bigwig during the TMS tea-break – which is often – you’d think from the style and manner of the questioning that he had the prime minister or Archbishop of Canterbury in the chair.

Too many people at the apex of cricket’s hierarchy buy unthinkingly into the mythology of the MCC. Their belief in it borders on the religious. A divine provenance and mystique are ascribed to everything symbolised by the red and yellow iconography.  The club’s leaders are regarded as high priests, their significance beyond question.

The reality is rather more prosaic. The MCC is a private club, and nothing more. It exists to cater for the wishes of its 18,000 members, which are twofold: to run Lord’s to their comfort and satisfaction, and to promote their influence within cricket both in England and abroad. The MCC retains several powerful roles in the game – of which more in a moment.

You can’t just walk up to the Grace Gates and join the MCC. Membership is an exclusive business. To be accepted, you must secure the endorsement of four existing members, of whom one must hold a senior rank, and then wait for twenty years. Only four hundred new members are admitted each year. But if you’re a VIP, or have influential friends in the right places, you can usually contrive to jump the queue.

Much of the MCC’s clout derives from its ownership of Lord’s, which the club incessantly proclaims to be ‘the home of cricket’. This assertion involves a distorting simplification of cricket’s early history. Lord’s was certainly one of the most important grounds in the development of cricket from rural pastime to national sport, but far from the only one. The vast majority of pioneering cricketers never played there – partly because only some of them were based in London.

Neither the first test match in England, not the first test match of all, were played at Lord’s. The latter distinction belongs to the MCG, which to my mind entitles it to an equal claim for history’s bragging rights.

The obsession with the status of Lord’s is rather unfair to England’s other long-established test grounds, all of whom have a rich heritage. If you were to list the most epic events of our nation’s test and county history, you’d find that only a few of them took place at Lord’s. Headingley provided the stage for the 1981 miracle, for Bradman in 1930, and many others beside. The Oval is where test series usually reach their climax. In 2005, Edgbaston witnessed the greatest match of all time.

Lord’s is only relevant if you are within easy reach of London. And personally, as a spectator, the place leaves me cold. I just don’t feel the magic. Lord’s is too corporate, too lacking in atmosphere, and too full of people who are there purely for the social scene, not to watch the cricket.

Nevertheless, Lord’s gives the MCC influence, which is manifested in two main ways. Firstly, the club has a permanent seat on the fourteen-member ECB Board – the most senior decision-making tier of English cricket. In other words, a private club – both unaccountable to, and exclusive from, the general cricketing public – has a direct say in the way our game is run. No other organisation of its kind enjoys this privilege. The MCC is not elected to this position – neither you nor I have any say in the matter – which it is free to use in furtherance of its own interests.

It was widely reported that, in April 2007, MCC’s then chief executive Keith Bradshaw played a leading part in the removal of Duncan Fletcher as England coach. If so, why? What business was it of his?

The MCC is cricket’s version of a hereditary peer – less an accident of history, but a convenient political arrangement between the elite powerbrokers of the English game. The reasoning goes like this: because once upon a time the MCC used to run everything, well, it wouldn’t really do to keep them out completely, would it? Especially as they’re such damn good chaps.

Why should the MCC alone enjoy so special a status, and no other of the thousands of cricket clubs in England? What’s so virtuous about it, compared to the club you or I belong to – which is almost certainly easier to join and more accessible.

What’s even more eccentric about the MCC’s place on the ECB board is that the entire county game only has three representatives. In the ECB’s reckoning, therefore, one private cricket club (which competes in no first-class competitions) deserves to have one-third of the power allocated to all eighteen counties and their supporters in their entirety.

The second stratum of MCC’s power lies in its role as custodian of the Laws of Cricket. The club decides – for the whole world – how the game shall be played, and what the rules are. From Dhaka to Bridgetown, every cricketer across the globe must conform to a code laid down in St John’s Wood, and – sorry to keep repeating this point, but it’s integral – by a private organisation in which they have no say.

Admittedly, the ICC is now also  involved in any revisions to the Laws, but the MCC have the final say, and own the copyright.

You could make a strong argument for the wisdom of delegating such a sensitive matter as cricket’s Laws to – in the form of MCC – a disinterested body with no sectional interests but the werewithal to muster huge expertise. That’s far better, the argument goes, than leaving it to the squabbling politicians of the ICC, who will act only in the selfish interests of their own nations.

But that said, the arrangement still feels peculiar, in an uncomfortable way. The ICC, and its constituent national boards, may be deeply flawed, but they are at least notionally accountable, and in some senses democratic. You could join a county club tomorrow and in theory rise up the ranks to ECB chairman. The ICC and the boards could be reformed without changing the concept underpinning their existence. None of these are true of the MCC.

Why does this one private club – and no others – enjoy such remarkable privileges? The answer lies in an interpretation of English cricket history which although blindly accepted by the establishment – and fed to us, almost as propaganda – is rather misleading.

History, as they often say, is written by the winners, and this is certainly true in cricket. From the early nineteenth century the MCC used its power, wealth and connections to take control of the game of cricket – first in England, and then the world. No one asked the club to do this, nor did they consult the public or hold a ballot. They simply, and unilaterally, assumed power, in the manner of an autocrat, and inspired by a similar sense of entitlement to that which built the British empire.

This private club, with its exclusive membership, ran test and domestic English cricket, almost on its own, until 1968. Then the Test and County Cricket Board was formed, in which the MCC maintained a hefty role until the creation of the ECB in 1997. The England team continued to play in MCC colours when overseas until the 1990s. Internationally, the MCC oversaw the ICC until as recently as 1993.

All through these near two centuries of quasi-monarchical rule, the MCC believed it was their divine right to govern. They knew best. Their role was entirely self-appointed, with the collusion of England’s social and political elite. At no stage did they claim to represent the general cricketing public, nor allow the public to participate in their processes.

The considerable authority the MCC still enjoys today derives not from its inherent virtues, or any popular mandate, but from its history. Because it has always had a leadership role, it will always be entitled to one.

The other bulwark of the MCC’s authority is predicated on the widespread assumption that the club virtually invented cricket, single-handedly. It was certainly one of the most influential clubs in the evolution of the game, and its codification in Victorian times, but far from the only one, and by no means the first. Neither did the MCC pioneer cricket’s Laws – their own first version was the fifth in all.

Hundreds of cricket clubs, across huge swathes of England, all contributed to the development of cricket into its modern form. The cast of cricket’s history is varied and complex – from the gambling aristocrats, to the wily promoters, the public schools, and the nascent county sides who invented the professional game as we know it now. Tens of thousands of individuals were involved, almost of all whom never went to Lord’s or had anything to thank the MCC for.

And that’s before you even start considering the countless Indians, West Indians, South Africans and especially Australians who all helped shape the dynamics, traditions and culture of our sport.

And yet it was the egg-and-bacon wearers who took all the credit. They appointed themselves leaders, and succeeded in doing so – due to the wealth, power and social connections of their membership. And because the winners write the history, the history says that MCC gave us cricket. It is this mythology which underpins their retention of power in the twenty first century.

Just to get things into perspective – I’m not suggesting we gather outside the Grace Gates at dawn, brandishing flaming torches. This is not an exhortation to storm the MCC’s ramparts and tear down the rose-red pavilion brick by brick until we secure the overthrow of these villainous tyrants.

In many ways the MCC is a force for good. It funds coaching and access schemes, gives aspiring young players opportunities on the ground staff, promotes the Spirit Of Cricket initiative, organises tours to remote cricketing nations, and engages in many charitable enterprises.

Their members may wear hideous ties and blazers, and usually conform to their snobbish and fusty stereotype, but no harm comes of that. As a private club, the MCC can act as it pleases, and do whatever it wants with Lord’s, which is its property.

But the MCC should have no say or involvement whatsoever in the running of English cricket. The club’s powers were never justifiable in the first place, and certainly not in the year 2012. The club must lose its place on the ECB Board. That is beyond argument.

As for the Laws, the MCC should bring their expertise to bear as consultants. But surely now the ultimate decisions should rest with the ICC.

Unpalatable though it may seem to hand over something so precious to so Byzantine an organisation, it is no longer fair or logical to expect every cricketer from Mumbai to Harare to dance to a St John’s Wood tune. This is an age in which Ireland and Afghanistan are playing serious cricket, and even China are laying the foundations. The process must be transparent, global, and participatory.

Cricket is both the beneficiary and victim of its history. No other game has a richer or more fascinating heritage, and ours has bequeathed a value system, international context, cherished rivalries, and an endless source of intrigue and delight.

But history is to be selected from with care – you maintain the traditions which still have value and relevance, and update or discard those which don’t. The role of the MCC is the apotheosis of this principle within cricket. For this private and morally remote club to still wield power in 2012 is as anachronistic as two stumps, a curved bat, and underarm bowling.

At last, a politician has been arrested

Mark Steel in The Independent

At last, a politician has been arrested.

The one they’ve taken in is Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, because of all the lousy things you can remember politicians doing in recent years, have any been as filthy as what she did this week, standing in a field with a placard?

Some MPs, such as Stephen Byers and others, were filmed promising to use their status to offer access to ministers, if you paid them between £3,000 and £5,000 a day. That could be seen, if you were picky about morals, as abusing your position slightly, but he only needed a mild caution, because at least he didn’t bring the good name of Parliament into disrepute by standing in front of a tree protesting about fracking.

If Caroline Lucas had any decency, instead of writing a slogan about protecting the environment on that placard, she’d have sold the space for advertising. She could still have had “Stop Climate Change” in one corner, but the rest of it would have been sold for £3,000 to £5,000 to someone reputable such as British Aerospace, and say something like “There’ll be sod-all to frack after our bombs attack”, and the reputation of our government would be intact.

Countless MPs seem to be involved in the process of lobbying, so much that it’s now an industry in which companies employ specialists to butter up politicians to influence policy, or secure the odd million-pound contract. But Caroline Lucas has taken it too far, using her position to meet a bloke with dreadlocks who lives up trees.

When Tony Blair was Prime Minister he used his post only to meet people of vital importance to the nation, like Cliff Richard and President Assad of Syria, but that Lucas woman has spent her time hobnobbing with an angry farmer and a couple who haven’t worn shoes since 1973.

Then there were all those MPs who seemed to be competing with each other to file the most imaginative claim for expenses. One of them must have thought he’d won when it was revealed he’d claimed public money to have his moat cleaned, but then must have been horrified and yelled, “Oh no, some bastard’s trumped me by claiming for a duck island.”

One or two of these were arrested, but most of them weren’t, including those who claimed tens of thousands for unnecessary second homes. Because, as they all pointed out, they weren’t breaking any rules, not like Caroline Lucas who stood only a few hundred yards from a giant drilling machine, intimidating it so much it now needs counselling at a specialist therapy unit for bullied industrial equipment.

And none of the MPs who were caught claiming all this money could possibly have been doing it for personal gain. But protesting in a Sussex village opens up so many business opportunities, lucrative sponsorship deals and chat show appearances it’s only right such selfish behaviour is what the authorities crack down on.

It could also be argued that telling a blatant lie in order to get elected could be a breach of the electoral system. To pick an example at random, if you, let’s say, won votes by pledging to abolish tuition fees but once you were elected you trebled them instead, that may bring democracy mildly into disrepute. But no one gets arrested for that, because it’s a trifle compared to the deception of Caroline Lucas, who stood for the Green Party, and then betrayed all those who voted for her by protesting in defence of the environment, a policy no one could be expected to be associated with the Green Party in any way.

Or imagine if you’d insisted, throughout an election campaign, that you would absolutely not under any circumstances raise VAT to 20 per cent, and then a week after the election you raised VAT to 20 per cent. Could that, if you were to examine it carefully, be seen to contain a hidden mistruth? Maybe, but not as much as someone who pledges to oppose fracking, and then once elected opposes fracking. Such behaviour makes a mockery of our constitution; is it any wonder politicians aren’t trusted?

Another issue that might have resulted in a small arrest could have been the politicians who led the country into a war on a premise that turned out to be a pile of nonsense. As this is a week for locking people up if they’ve jeopardised our national security, maybe that jeopardised it a bit, as it appears to have angered some people in the Middle East. But across that region the local population will be yelling, “Thank God the British have finally arrested one of their politicians. Because the one who ruined everything was that Green Party woman from Brighton. Every time she waved that placard it caused another of our buildings to collapse. Now she is arrested at last we may sleep in peace.”

Her arrest, along with the other protesters, according to a police spokesman, was due to the fact she was “disrupting the life of the village”. So now they’ll be able to carry on with their tranquil lives, enjoying the sweet morning coo of a 25-ton boring drill clacking into the earth to extract gas in a process likely to cause underground tremors, without it being spoilt by the racket of a Sussex MP standing in the mud.