Tim Worstall

Will Hutton’s Nonsense.

Amazing, quite amazing that this man is actually thought of as one of the Great and the Good, available for quango duty at the drop of a taxpayer’s cheque.

Britain is being sold off at a rate unprecedented in modern times. If
the foreign takeover bids announced or hinted at over the past few
months all go through, airports, ships, banks, gas pipelines, stock
exchanges, chemical plants and glass factories will fall into foreign
ownership. Yet there is no debate; scarcely an eyebrow is raised. In
any other country, there would be uproar.
….
To complain is to be cast as a protectionist and not to see that
companies are just bargain lots, in effect to be on permanent auction.
But companies are more than that. They are communities of human beings
with a shared purpose; that’s why they tick. Sometimes, it makes sense
to merge and be taken over. But the notion that every penny of £60bn of
takeovers is rational for Britain and the companies concerned is
free-market hogwash – good for the investment bankers, bad news for the
rest of us.

Here’s a little newsflash for Mr. Hutton. Those companies are not owned by Britain. Nor are they owned by themselves. They are owned by shareholders. Individuals and their pension and insurance funds (and many of them, in this, the most international of stock markets, are themselves not British. I also rather love his ignorance or ignoring of the fact that half of his examples are exactly what he is complaining about. Multi-nationals who own significant chunks of other people’s economies.). The test is not whether something is good for "Britain", not whether it provides, oooh, say, opportunities for the great and the good to get their feet under the boardroom table, but whether it is, in the mind of each individual shareholder, good for that specific owner of the capital at that specific moment. That’s why we call our system capitalism, see?

You can argue that you don’t like that system, that private property is indeed not the way that we want to organise our society and good luck to you. The 20th century provided a pretty good controlled experiment, one of the best we’ve had in economics, as to where that leads.

In

4 responses

  1. Mike D Avatar
    Mike D

    [ The 20th century provided a pretty good controlled experiment, one of the best we’ve had in economics, as to where that leads. ]
    Don’t be absurd – public interference in the private sector may not be a very good idea, but it doesn’t lead straight to the gulag.
    Tim adds: I was referring rather to poverty.

    Reply
  2. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    “whether it is, in the mind of each individual shareholder, good for that specific owner of the capital at that specific moment”
    If all the world thought like that, then maybe so. But clearly in other countries there remains significant government intervention (including, particularly on foreign ownership, the United States). So you may find that your weapons supplier stops supplying, or the multi-national prefers to keep Congress happy and so closes UK overseas branches.
    These provisions are often abused, for sure, but would you be so relaxed if it was found out that the Chinese government had taken controlling stakes in many British companies?
    tim adds: Sure.

    Reply
  3. David Gillies Avatar
    David Gillies

    Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to mildly injure people like Hutton without sanction? Nothing really serious, mind. I’m just thinking of a good shiner, maybe some loose teeth. He could go to one of his quango meetings and they’d be all, “what happened to you?” And he could say, “someone smacked me in the face with a cluebat.”
    I kid, of course. But it is truly depressing that anyone outside the Senior Common Room of an erstwhile Polytechnic Sociology department still thinks this way, let alone someone that people actually take seriously. Whatever happened to ‘attracting inward investment’? He’s sufficiently retarded to use the Royal Bank of Scotland as one of his examples as to why his drooling brand of neo-protectionaism is the way forward. That would, presumably, be the same RBoS that bought NatWest and has since leveraged itself into one of the top five MULTINATIONAL banking entities on the planet? Jesus, Hutton, give it a rest. Gringos buying our banks willy-nilly: bad. Us buying theirs: good. What a frickin’ maroon.

    Reply
  4. Rob Read Avatar
    Rob Read

    If only it was easier to identify those people made poorer or unemployed by idiot protectionism.

    Reply

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