‘The market’, what a quaint term, is good at coming to a collective conclusion. Like a Chinese vase that’s maybe worth a couple of grand, or maybe £10m, the market may not be the truth nor the arbiter of truth, but it is an effective way to achieve consensus on the value of things.

Global free market economics sounds like a good idea.

You just wind it up and let it run. And like a sort of fiscal gyroscope, it always stays pretty much upright and never falls over because when it looks like it will, someone jumps in and pushes it back in a process of buying low and selling high.

The theory is, if you surround ‘the free market gyroscope’ with people who all want to make money, they will keep it nicely spinning, never lose control, and never let it topple off the pavement and into the gutter.

People stand in front of the Bank of England, in the financial district of The City of London, Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2022. The pound sank against the dollar early Wednesday after the Bank of England governor confirmed the bank won't extend an emergency debt-buying plan introduced last month to stabilise financial markets.(AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)

Something like that. And mostly they are ‘right’.

Right as in correct, the gyroscope will wobble but not fall down, like those weeble toys toddlers had before everything became an app.

Certainly not right as in ‘righteous’ or ‘good’ or ‘humane’, because the name of the game is spin the top, keep the gyroscope going, and the millions of people dependent on a different kind of giro altogether have no part in this game and indeed, if they were to literally freeze or starve or sicken to death due to the game, that would be bad for them but completely within the rules and totally outside the remit of care to be given by those who spin.

In practice, a tiny few spin, and everyone else rides the gyroscope hoping they don’t have to find and pay an extra £300 a month on their mortgage.

It’s like democracy. It’s the worst form of fiscal management, except all the others.

Lovers of free market economic theory argue the only time it goes bad is when Governments intervene and insert artificial rules.

Actually it’s only this intervention that prevents the biggest boy picking up the gyroscope and hitting the other boys in the face with it before throwing it into the river and walking off home.

There is of course another way the gyroscope doesn’t play fair. That’s when a group of the boys, and it’s always boys isn't it, decide that the game isn’t to keep it stable. The game is to destabilise it and make the other boys cry. What you might call ‘bad actors’.

No, not the cast of Rings of Power. Other bad actors, even worse ones.

And this is where we are now. Which is why, for example, granting a hundred new oil licenses in the North Sea won’t make the gyroscope spin better. And nor will giving tax cuts, and nor will taking back said tax cuts a week later. It’s quite possible that actually, nothing will.

Because there are bad actors. Boys who want to spoil the game for everyone. Most of these boys like oil and gas, and some of them like war as well. All of them like power and control. And none of them would ever consider giving up that power and control for anything in this world or the next.

So, it’s a bit of a pickle. One response might be to take certain things out of the remit of the free market altogether. Things like energy, water, stuff we rely on to live. That way, when the bad boys don’t play nicely, we don’t have to mind so much. Just a thought. And here’s another thought. The ideologists who ‘believe in the free market’ haven’t considered the inevitable problem. And the problem is, as always, people. They are not good.

Bird Lovegod is MD of EthicalMuch

Why 'free market economics' needs to be reined in - Bird Lovegod