Monopolies

Note: I had planned to post this yesterday, but unfortunately couldn't due to WiFi issues. So I'm posting it now.

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The good thing about travelling is that it leaves you plenty of time to think – if you're at least travelling by slow methods such as a train or a coach, as we are. This is also what puts me in favour of what I suppose I should call a new Grand Tour, although that's a topic for another time.

I spent four hours on a coach yesterday travelling from Prague to Vienna on a bit of a bumpy road, winding between hills and mountains and lakes trillions of trees. Certainly this would inspire anyone to good thoughts – Kristy and I had a very clever conversation over dinner yesterday about the global economic crisis.

I have before cited Lon Fuller's notion that the most basic of all human duties is the maintaining of channels of communication – certainly I am still very much taken with his ideas of the Morality of Duty vs the Morality of Aspiration. Today, I wish to elaborate a bit more on why I am so taken with the idea that the basic duty is communication.

I have also been reading Crime and Economics, which is a wildly fascinating book that explains that crime is indeed just behaviour that turns out to be criminal, and that there is long-term utility and short-term utility, and that what makes people decide which one to do is will-power. As with most economic terms, 'will-power' is slightly undefined – as is 'utility' – but it makes for a wonderfully useful concept to think with.

What I find interesting is the idea that government has the 'monopoly to violence', or is the only party that can legally, justifiably actively use violence – if certain conditions are met. We citizens are only justified in using violence in self-defence. So I've been running with that idea, too, taking it to an abstract level – if certain parties have certain rights and privileges that other parties do not, those parties have, to some extent, a monopoly*.

As, if I remember correctly, game theory, or at least industrial economics dictates, monopolies are inherently unstable – as the rights and benefits (profits) are usually appealing to other parties as well, these other parties will try to get a slice of that pie too, which leads to all sorts of strategies on the part of the monopolists until the monopoly collapses – in political terms, revolution. Unless, of course, the other parties consent to the monopoly, in which case they will not challenge it – I suppose this must then be part of the social contract.

This is where I believe communication comes in. And why arts and humanities are important. Governments have, as we know, been trying to cut funding to arts and humanities research, claiming it is not important as it does not lead to the betterment of humanity, like science does – of course, biomedical science cures cancer and engineering invents cleverer hoovers and chemistry creates better shampoos and astrophysics – well, astrophysics is just really, really cool.

And if people's only argument in favour of arts and humanities is that is makes life prettier, that's not very convincing.

Of course, life would be horribly bland if we all lived in utilitarian grey concrete flats and ate only pills that held all vitamins and minerals and drank only water and spent the ideal part of the day working and the rest resting in perfectly engineered beds and all lived healthily to be 165. Quite dystopian. So I suppose the aesthetic value of arts and humanities is not to be underestimated.

But there is also value in the communicative side of humanities. What use would perfectly engineered computers and mobile phones have if we did not use them to communicate?

And then what is the use of communication?

Negotiation. All of it.

Negotiating what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad, what is beautiful and what is dreadfully ugly – which is, in the first case, of course what law is for, but also fairy tales and Hollywood blockbusters and literature. See a Renaissance painting with sinners being punished in Hell? Negotiating what was wrong in that era – what was considered sinful. Dante writes that he came across classic authors in Hell's ante-chamber – they weren't evil people, according to him, but they were still wrong in not being Christians. J.K. Rowling makes Voldemort the villain – he is hateful, angry, delights in killing people and thinks all non-magic and non-pureblood-magic people are lesser people.

By extension, these are also our channels to communicate who has a right to what monopoly – or who has a right to what, anyway. How Twitter led to the Arab Spring is of course a very clear and explicit example of this negotiation, but other less explicit works negotiate the rights of powerful groups – such as governments – just as well.

Think of my favourite novel, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. People were outraged over it – of course they were, Dorian spends the majority of the time being a hedonist and delighting in all sorts of “immoral” pleasures, not in line with, to steal a line from Alfred Doolittle in My Fair Lady - “middle class morality” (which is precisely why it's my favourite). But yet Dorian still dies at the end.

And arts and humanities research is important in uncovering these negotiations. Sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. Which is why I have taken such a liking to Linguistics and Stylistics, I suppose, because it helps uncover what texts say.

But I'm afraid that this could just as well be a reason to cut funding for humanities, as funding is usually done by the wealthier and thus more powerful parties, who'd I'm sure gladly stay in charge, as it is a reason to increase funding, as in the end I do believe it would lead to fairer distributions of just about every commodity, as it would destabilize most monopolies. Short-term utility vs long-term utility.

In the end, I think this is the more philosophical reason why I like my dissertation topic. Why I like corporate, white-collar and organised crime. These are Sutherland's Crimes of the Powerful, and by researching how these are constructed textually, such monopolies can be discovered and perhaps eventually be re-negotiated. But that's the idealist in me, my long-term utility – my other reason is that it's just really very exciting, and that's very short-term indeed.

In any case, I suppose I should read more philosophy, I'm sure there's plenty of ideas there already that say what I've just said, or that can introduce to me a new angle to think about. For now, however, I'll stick to researching whether Starbucks not paying UK corporation tax is bad or really really very evil.




*In strict economic terms, a monopoly is when one company or one party has an almost absolute control over the supply of a certain good or service. My use of the word 'monopoly' is slightly wider, to indicate a majority control over a certain commodity or privilege, not just by one party but by a certain group – a cartel, if you will.