Instability

One of the things that bugs me at every election is inane comments from 'business commentators' to the effect that 'the markets don't like instability, and eagerly await a conclusive result from this election.' Note the way in which markets are given human personalities. While amusing in a stomach-churning kind of way, there is a far more serious undertone: the markets don't like elections. Or at the very least they don't like the 'instability' associated with them, and with representative democracy more generally. They would, presumably, have preferred Ruth Richardson to be installed as Supreme Commander for Life circa 1992. The notion that government should be run not by elected representatives, but by technocrats whose ideologies have no public mandate, has resurfaced recently.

But let us suppose that markets really don't like 'instability' - by which I assume those commentators mean 'uncertain outcomes.' Why aren't they, then, speaking out about the climatic instability associated with global warming? Where are business' talking heads on this year's strange hurricane season, for example? I may have missed them, but I suspect not: business might not like democracy, but its distaste for instability doesn't seem to extend to any serious questioning of the effects its goods and services have on the climate.