The Virtual Rambler

Number twenty: 16^th January 2012

Customer Choice

Self-evidently , we cannot choose who our parents are , no more than we chose the the historical time or nation we were born into. When we are described as choosing our tastes in diet , in music and our partners , these too are more often pre-determined by the circumstances of our birth. Those of us who were fortunate enough to be adolescents in the 1950s were easily seduced by the rock and roll music that decade introduced to us. Its appeal was immediate , as was the cachet afforded by the disapproval it induced in most of our elders. Our choice was framed by the accident of being the age we were then , just as the music we adopted had evolved at that time from its predecessors in the American blues and country traditions. Here was a window of cultural opportunity contemporary with another transient window in educational opportunity. The education I was afforded , so influential for much of my future activity , was prolonged into my mid-20s and it didn't cost my parents a penny. Via scholarships and state sponsorship , it was a package deal available to my generation but withdrawn from later aspirants. Frictionless capitalism became the new sheriff in town , here to re- establish the natural energies of the free market. These had been discredited since the 1930s for their pivotal role in bringing about the economic miseries and political turmoil of that unhappy decade. A now-outdated socialism had conceived 'the public sector' to be those aspects of state affairs best controlled by the people themselves (via their elected governors). That is , public transport , the provision of power to the home and of education and health care outside it. These were subsequently handed back to Business interests which were , so the dogma insisted , better than the state at managing human affairs. The private sector , we were told , brought choice and prosperity to all its customers.

The self-evident truth of this economic flim-flam was one those customers could ponder as they stood nose-to-nose (all seats being taken) in the two-carriage train carrying them to and from work each day. They might otherwise occupy their uncertain travelling time choosing a destination for their elderly parents' looming care home from the plethora of customer guidelines they'd downloaded that very morning. That was after their on-line banking session and before the one-man bus took them to their unmanned local railway station. The fates of the local bank , the bus conductor , the rail ticket office and the extra carriages needed to provide comfortable passage , were matters in which the hapless commuter had no choice whatever. Accountants had deemed them 'uneconomic' and so they had to go , along with the customer's local post office and the resident staff of their local park , now an eyesore by day and a no-go area by night. Choice, it seemed , was extended or withheld on the same hard financial grounds that everything else rested upon. As their train disgorged its passengers at another railway station transformed into a retail shopping centre , there was just enough time to pick up a Starbuck's latte and a cheese-'n'-tuna melt for breakfast. Then off for a long day's staring into a screened vacuum.

For centuries generations of people succeeded one another in an unchanging environment of objects which were longer-lived than they were. Now many generations of objects will follow one upon another at an ever-accelerating pace during a single human lifetime. A disjointed rhythm of incessant updating of previous versions is required of us and if we elect to retain an older version (at the expense of multiple difficulties) we are soon persuaded to replace it. The choices in question are specious. To experience this as 'freedom of choice' is merely being insensible of the fact that it is imposed upon us. Free market choice proved to be a twisted misconception enforced by those who misguidedly believed in it onto those who equally misguidedly never gave it a second's thought whilst choosing the next upgrade on their smart phone broadband provision. Unregulated financial markets proved to be a recipe for declining service and inclining profits , although their devotees chose a policy of denial and invited the public to press one to bail out the investment banks , press two to defer their retirement age , press three to work longer hours or accept redundancy. "Your call is important to us but we are experiencing a high volume of calls right now (i.e. we have reduced the number of reception lines to an economic minimum) so we'll put you on hold until one of our customer care advisors is available ....."

Wig

The Virtual Rambler

Number twenty: 16th January 2012

Customer Choice

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Number twenty: 16^th January 2012