It might have been Mr Hotchin and his $30 million vulgarity on Paritai Drive, or perhaps the Republicans attacking socialised health care on behalf of some of the wealthiest vested interests in the world, or perhaps Robert Wade’s lecture, in which he indicated the vast and increasing disparities between rewards for those in the financial sector, and other, lesser, mortals, but I’ve been dogged by an image of the Ancien Regime for days.
Two dimensions of that failure struck me – the failure of a dominant economic theory (that of the Physiocrats) and the collapse of feudal reciprocity. In the former, their focus on agriculture as the source of wealth, and the consequent dismissal of industry and trade as having any serious economic significance, was compounded by their belief in a natural order, leading to all sorts of strange views on population, consumption, the role of the cities, conspicuous consumption etc etc..
In the latter, the millennium-long arrangements in the rural sector, in which a framework of reciprocal arrangements between peasants, non-peasants and landowners broadly balanced out social relations, collapsed in the face of economic stagnation, falling incomes, increased taxation and misery.
It all added up to tumbrils and the Place de la Revolution. Basically, the Ancien Regime (or Russia prior to 1917, or China before 1911, or England before 1640 and so on) tells us that, at some stage, the mass of people will not accept a dominant order that is so distanced from ‘normal’ life, so introverted around its own consumption behaviours, so dismissive of the basic needs of an orderly society, so certain of its inalienable rights to excessive consumption and political power, that it cannot engage with the broad base of society. When Mr Hotchin builds a house for himself at about the equivalent of 830 of the current median annual wages, I begin to think that the fabric of accommodation is now stretched very tight indeed.
Thinking of Russia, I remember reading once that Baccarat, the very up-market French crystal glassware maker, had, in the late 19th century, over 2000 workers working solely on the making of stemware for Russia,. Apparently, the Tsar could only use a glass once because of his station, so it was smashed. The wider aristocracy followed suit, imitating the extravagance of the Court. One remembers what happened to that tradition and wonders, as Mr Madoff’s belongings are sold off, how far we can be from similar consequences.
