Critical Criminology Today by Vincenzo Ruggiero

Author:Vincenzo Ruggiero [Ruggiero, Vincenzo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781032022215
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2021-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

Efficiency

Another causative variable emerges when the trajectory of Barclays is observed. With the shift to investment bank, Barclays came to be operated by people who lived for the next bonus (Augar, 2018). Inefficiencies were replaced by the ruthless pursuit of profit, prudence gave way to opportunism, while honesty was superseded by efficiency. This was possible because strict codes of conduct gave way to a logic of ‘anything goes’. Strict codes ensure cohesion and maintain collective order; ‘anything goes’ is more innovative and offers opportunities for adaptation, along with safety valves in critical moments (Gelfand, 2018). Such opportunities may lead to fraud when innovative behaviour takes place outside the ordinary field of vision, namely in those blind spots built into the system that only become visible when collapse is engendered (Bullough, 2018; Pettifor, 2018).

The overwhelming emphasis on efficiency triggers new perceptions so that causal relations are obscured and narrative linearity is lost. One's conduct ceases to be precisely linked to the effects it causes, while the ensuing disorientation prevents from grasping the importance of events. ‘The consequence is a pushing and shoving of images, events and information, which makes any lingering contemplation impossible. Thus, one zaps through the world’ (Han, 2017: 41). In this sense, efficiency requires never ‘dwelling’ anywhere, as the production of wealth requires haste, the type of speed necessary in a race. As Virilio and Lotringer (2002) would put it, financial power is primarily “dromocratic” (from dromos, race). Efficiency aided by haste, moreover, does not allow for our moral imagination to keep pace, increasing the fragmentation of our experience and the depersonalization of our relations.

In brief, the 2007 financial crisis was conceived outside the field of vision of ordinary people and experts, in pursuit of efficiency and speed, through codes of conduct aimed at innovation and with misconduct as a form of safety valve (Chancellor, 1999; Leach, 2018). In this respect, one important economic thinker comes to mind, particularly his notion of the ‘secular’ decline of profits. David Ricardo (1992) asserted that, in the long run, the general level of profits within an economy would be equated with the rate of profits earned in the least favourably situated, or marginal, sector. He feared that, with demographic expansion, the labouring class will have to pay an increasing price for its ‘necessaries’ and, as a consequence will be forced to demand higher wages. This will determine a decline in profits. In response, first, entrepreneurs will have to find new, if unorthodox, ways of engaging in business. Second, risk has to be displaced, moved away from enterprise and directed towards others. Third, deviant innovation will constitute a viable, if not inevitable, alternative to stagnating profits. Let us see how these concepts can help us analyse Ricardo's thought from a criminological perspective.

The decline of the rate of profits may prompt the adoption of creative, unpredictable, but in particular, efficient conducts. Some criminologists, as we have seen, would turn this proposition into the concept that business constructs an environment where violation of the law is not only likely but also necessary.

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