All You Can Eat

Sometimes small issues give a better insight into the opinions of the masses then grand events. Everyone is becoming increasingly jaded with politics, and most people are so woefully unaware of economic theory (much less reality) that opinions are little better then 'a man in the pub said'. But when some trivial matter comes to the nation's attention there is an unfettered ability to see and hear what people think without any macroeconomic or geopolitical ignorance coming into play.

The issue that caught my eye today was to do with a two men and an 'all you can eat' Mongolian restaurant. The advertised deal was simple; you paid a set amount (£12 I think), and you could then supposedly eat all you wanted from a buffet. By implication it seemed that you could get a jug of water for free but other drinks were charged normally, and that there was a voluntarily 'service fee' some people choose to pay.

This seemed a fairly standard set up, and I've partaken at similar venues throughout my student career and as a 'productive' member of society. It neatly avoids the problem of "who pays what" when the bill comes in large groups, and ensures that you don't go home hungry. The complaint for the two protagonists in this instance though was that they had been asked to leave their 'all you can eat' buffet of choice, and then banned for life, on the basis that they ate too much. In an interview with the owner the reason given was that the restaurant was a business, and it didn't help things when people came in and ate more than everyone else.

Fairly confident that the community feedback from this article was going  to be universal condemnation of a restaurant that offers 'all you can eat' (AYCE) and then kicks people out for eating too much, I was stunned, not to mention slightly nauseated, to find that the actually the main popular opinion coming through was that "people like that (meaning the complainants, and with an unspoken caveat of over-weight people) are a disgrace," various other offenses were laid at their door, including putting other people of their food by eating too much, ruining things for everyone else and so on. Less than half of the comments took the view that a restaurant advertising 'all you can eat' didn't have much of leg to stand on if people ate more than had been budgeted for.

After my initial shock at this response blew over, I have, on reflective consideration, realised I shouldn't be surprised. This is exactly the phenomena I described in the previous post 'Don't Read It, Sign It!' - the fault can't lie with the person/business making an offer they can't honour, it must lie with the person/business that has the audacity to expect that people/businesses stick to their stated agreements.  For future reference I'm going to refer to this concept as Gobian Responsibility (after the restaurant that inspired this).

For definitive purposes;

Gobian Responsibility holds that responsibility for a hurt lies not with the individual or corporate suffering the harm, even when they, in full knowledge and without coercion, agreed or actively undertook the activity or decisions which lead to the harm. Responsibility must therefore lie with a third party, involved in, profiting from, or extraneous to the incident.

Socialist politicians (or at least their Labour and Lib Dem equivalents) have spent a great deal of time and effort to mould a national narrative based on Gobian Responsibility. The matter of AYCE restaurants is a worrying indication that we, the people, are actually starting to buy in to. At least of part of this is no doubt the beguiling simplicity of a system that says nothing bad that happens to you is your fault - it’s always the fault of someone else.

Here are some examples for consideration;

1.) The London Riots
Genuine Cause; Masses of people seeing an opportunity to get something for nothing and deciding to take it, even if it meant stealing from others. Exacerbated by a break down in the credible threat of force offered by the police (this is actually the foundation stone on which every human civilisation going back to the Stone Age is based - lethal violence wielded by some form of rule-setting authority).

Gobian Cause; 'Society' (meaning people who work, earn money to buy things, own shops, houses, cars and so on) not giving enough to those who choose not to work and therefore have less things.

2.) The Credit-Crunch
Genuine Cause; The cost of capital being driven down due to political pressure, at least in part due to the British obsession with home ownership. As a result many people and organisations were able to take on loans or other financial obligations they couldn't, in all honesty, ever hope to honour. When this level of unserviceable debt reached a large enough level it led to financial institutions (banks) either refusing to lend more money to unviable entities, or to call in the collateral securing defaulted loans.

Gobian Cause; Bankers refusing to continue to lend out vast sums of money to zombie-corporations which should have already collapsed so they can pay themselves vast sums in bonus.

*Footnote on this: Banker-bashing is something of a personal hatred of mine since it is exactly the sort of narrow minded political point scoring that ensures economic recovery is all but impossible. To clarify briefly on a few points;
a.) The proposed tax on bonuses is, (optimistically) expected to raise £2 billion. This will cover the costs of social security (pensions, unemployment benefits and so on - excluding health care and education) for 4 days.
b.) The 'we need to make things' myth; it's true that not everyone in the world can sell insurance. This is not the same as saying that no-one in the world should sell insurance, or that insurance and banking do not have a value-adding place in an economy. (The fact that much of banking and insurance infrastructure developed to service the needs of the expanding commercial empires since the Venetians should tell you something).  Given that we now existing as part of a global economy there is no reason at all why a financial services industry operating at a global level is not a sustainable basis for the national economy.
c.) Some banking product isn't "fair" (charges, salaries, overdraft fees etc.); it is still relatively easy in the UK to get a free bank account. Assuming all you want to do is get paid your salary electronically, make various direct debit payments, have somewhere to safeguard your money, use ATMs, pay on debit card at the supermarket, use internet shopping then most major banks will provide this service completely free of charge. Anything other than that almost certainly means you want some form of borrowing (overdraft, credit card, loan, mortgage and so on). This, in all forms, is a contractual obligation in which you get an upfront wad of cash, in exchange for a series of repayments or conditions to which you are fully aware before signing up for anything. You get all the money to begin and the banks take all the risk. If you don't like the conditions, don't get the loan. Remember - you do not have a right to anyone else's money - including a bank's.

3.) National Debt of £2,311 billion
Since I rarely pass up an opportunity to try and express the size of this problem how about this... the British national debt is, at current exchange rates, 198% the combined national output of every country in Africa combined.

We owe nearly double the amount that 14% of the global population earn in a year.

Genuine Cause; a succession of neo-liberal and socialist governments elected since the end of the second world war on a mandate to build, expand and violently oppose reduction in, the 'welfare state,' combined with overwhelming popular support for such activities.

Gobian Cause; The richest not paying enough tax.


As long as the political and social narrative continues to be based on this version of 'responsibility' we will continue to have politicians who break election promises (after all it's not their fault), a criminal justice system designed to help criminals (after all it's not their fault), a social system designed to redistribute wealth away from the successful and to the failing (after all it's not their fault), and all you can eat Chinese restaurants that kick people out who want to eat all they can (after all it's not the restaurant’s fault you thought that advertisement was genuine).

So whose fault is it?

/Z