UKHamlet's Blog

I wrote this article a few years ago when Microsoft  started imposing DRM on everyone. It was meant to be a rant against digital rights, but ended up as a critique of the direction of modern capitalism. At the time, I thought: “This is all going to end in tears….” I’m pretty sure it now has.

Digital Rights Management is more than just a software device to maintain the copyright of published material. It is a reflection of a new philosophy that will ultimately lead to a society in which consumers own nothing, where the nightmare of the dispossessed comes true and corporate bodies own everything. The logical extension of this is: you lose your home, car, all your possessions and everything you own to some vision cooked up in the boardrooms of America. Their vision of the model citizen is someone who is heavily in debt, but owns nothing, who consumes without assuming ownership, and who is powerless to influence the tide of events because the democratic process is meaningless.

The most fundamental premise of capitalism is the concept of ownership. It is the guiding principle that allows everything else in the market economy to work. Ownership is the idea that an individual is able to possess something exclusively, sell it and use the tokens of exchange to buy other things. It is the primary motivational force of incentive. Take away ownership and you take away capitalism. Continue reading

Fred Hoodwink

Sir Fred Goodwin has been demonstrating massive arrogance and is entirely unrepentant about his £693,000 per annum pension from RBS – a company who he led to the biggest single loss in corporate history – an amazing £24 billion. Part of his pension was “optional” – it was also optionally approved by Lord Myers, a minister in HM Guv. Myers is having a wriggle by saying he was told it was contractual, but I think we know the truth, don’t we?

The thing is, this government is characterised by arrogance: something it gets from the bulky, brooding presence of its leader, Gordon Brown. I used to feel sorry for Gordon and though he’d gotten a bad press for being boring. No longer though. For sure, not everyone can have a vibrant, light up the room personality and Gordon certainly doesn’t. He makes you feel uneasy and he’s certainly not the guy you’re going to vote for. Sorry Gordon, you’re dead meat and frankly, you deserve it, because, really Sir Fred is just another reflection of the government of the day. Your Government, Gordon. You made the bastard, so clean up your mess.

Anyway, back to the arrogance. As I said, this government is arrogant, and so is Fred. He is one of the single most destructive forces to have hit British capitalism and he believes he has earned his pension. The problem is: HE IS CORRECT. Let’s wind it back a bit…

Fred got his nickname “The Shred” because he was very good at getting rid of jobs. His entire management system was to merge companies and shred jobs. In the halls of mammon he was almost universally admired for this. Make no mistake; they loved him as the go-to guy when it came to making money, never mind the cost. I love the irony of this: capitalism’s one redeeming feature is that it is supposed to create jobs, but its arch prince was solely adept at destroying them.

So, I owe this bloke an apology. Not because he wasn’t personally responsible for the destruction of thousands of jobs, burying the nation in debt for centuries to come, and presiding over the biggest corporate disaster in British history, because he was – but that doesn’t matter, because in free market capitalist terms, Sir Fred Hoodwink is an enormous success. Massive.

The nay-sayers will deny this and claim that capitalism needs to be remodelled because the link between success and reward has been broken, but they would be wrong. Fred is ace. He has captured the very essence of free market capitalist success. By this I mean he has made a huge amount of money. For himself. And this, after all, is what unfettered market capitalism is all about: get your nose in the trough boys, it stinks, but there’s lots of it. Fred has loads of money; ergo he is a massive success. He has looked after number one.

In so doing he has shattered the myth that capitalism is all about creating jobs for everyone, spreading wealth down to the lowest levels of society and building wealth. It isn’t – it’s about looking after the most important person in the world: you. If you do that well, then you’re a success, just like Sir Fred.