A Mug's Game

I was visiting a friend the other day, when the conversation somehow turned from music to money matters, and in particular the pitiful returns on savings accounts. For years the banks have been offering interest rates at around 1.5% p.a. or less, for example, but are now boasting of rates of 4.5%. In other words, and in case you're as bad at mental arithmetic as me, what used to be a risible £1.50 of interest on every £100 invested is now a whole £4.50! Before any tax, that is... It barely seems worth the effort of setting up an account for a pittance like that, does it?

So I mentioned that, in effect, the best annual return I get has actually been from my Premium Bonds, originally bought for me as a child, and which I top up periodically whenever I'm feeling lucky. I don't think I'm very unusual in winning a small prize most years that rivals or exceeds that much-vaunted 4.5%. Indeed, my friend revealed that he had actually won a prize of £10,000 in February, which really is quite some return on the investment. For non-British readers I should explain that Premium Bonds are a venerable, government-backed savings scheme which (a) pays no interest, but (b) guarantees that your money is 100% safe, and (c) enters your bond numbers into a monthly draw, with tax-free prizes ranging from £25 to £1 million. The winners are drawn by a random-number generator, affectionately known as ERNIE. Since 1956, the chance of "winning something on ERNIE" has added a little risk-free fun to millions of mainly working-class lives.

 Doubtless, real financial risk can be even more fun, provided you can afford to spare the cash, and accept the risk of losing it, too. As the usurers banks are obliged to say, "your investment may go down as well as up, and you may get back less than the amount you invested". Then, of course, for those addicted to the buzz of really risky risk there is gambling, pure and simple; not so very different from finance in principle, but a more-or-less guaranteed money loser. Having been brought up in a Baptist household, I have a reflex aversion to gambling in all its forms, not to mention a bone-deep, atavistic fear of "tempting fate" by placing a bet on the outcome of any real-life event. All theological arguments aside, I suppose the core moral objection to gambling is that the real price of your hypothetical jackpot win is paid in the misery and ruin of all the other habitual and guaranteed losers. An addiction to gambling is the same as any other addiction that involves throwing money after short-term thrills. Fine, if you're a well-heeled fool; not so much, if what you're pushing over the bookmaker's counter is this week's rent.

There is also that stiff-necked dissenting-protestant emphasis on the importance of hard work as Route A to happiness and success in life, rather than the pure luck of, say, being born into wealth or winning the lottery, both of which usually turn out to be a curse: those whom the gods wish to destroy... But all of us are subjected to a constant barrage of opportunities for those capricious gods of good fortune to smile on us, even though we know that the chances that they will are vanishingly small. Win this, win that; grab this, grab that... It's unrelenting. There's barely a product on the supermarket shelves that is not offering some sort of prize draw, and it is astonishing how many of the late-night TV adverts are for online gambling. And the hypocrisy is breath-taking: so many of these "come to online Vegas!" ads are dressed up with a pious "always gamble responsibly" message. It's as if snack adverts were to caution, "Hey, you, check out these tempting biscuits... I know! They do look delicious, don't they? But, listen, just one is plenty, Tubs!" [1]  (Oh, and buy just three packs and get a chance to win an all-in holiday in Las Vegas).

But the pervasive message that "life is best when it's a high-stakes gamble" is destructive, especially to the young. Clearly, we have a real problem with providing enough suitable job opportunities for those starting out in life – a problem which AI seems designed precisely to make worse – but this problem has a flip-side: apparently far too many young people will only apply for glamorous jobs for which they are self-evidently unqualified. As I wrote in the post Tides:

Far too much attention is paid to the exceptional: the Premier League footballer, the champion boxer, the TV show host, the popular musical act, and all the other celebrity poster-people for improbable, lottery-scale "success". It's understandable, but nothing constrains social mobility as effectively as the idea that life is an all-or-nothing gamble. The true nature of the systematic, embedded privilege of the well-established, well-placed, and well-to-do is well-hidden behind the attention-grabbing blind of these wild-card outliers. By focussing ambition on flashy careers in broadcasting, music, and sport, too many young lives are doomed to disappointment – "shallows and miseries", indeed – their eyes having been diverted from the true prize: regular places on the ferry that leads from the world of precarious wage-work to solid middle-class professional jobs, secured by pursuing those low-risk, achievable goals, defined by hard work, exam passes, and well-trodden career paths. Boring, but true.

It's a competitive world, of course. But, as I know only too well myself, the usual outcome for anybody who enters any sort of competition – in my case, attempts to get my work seen on a wall somewhere – is rejection, which in the end can begin to feel like Charlie Brown's repeated attempts to kick the ball that Lucy will pull out of the way at the last second, every time. Aaugh! I mean, why bother? I suppose you could say that at least your ego is getting the benefit of a decent work-out from the humility-inducing, hubris-squashing effects of serial rejection: feel the burn! But in the end, as the doctor said, if it hurts when you do that, the best advice is to stop doing it.

Some might also say that, where art is concerned, rejection could be taken as a sort of back-handed compliment: just some blinkered gatekeeper's timorous misjudgement of your obvious merit, a passing over that will one day be rectified by posterity. Remember the Salon des Refusés! Van Gogh didn't sell a single picture in his lifetime! People thought Blake was just a weirdo! Which rectification, in a very few exceptional cases, has indeed turned out to be forthcoming. But most artists and writers have always sunk without trace, even the ones who did get published, exhibited, and even sold well in their day: they may have been good, but they weren't good enough to progress to the final rounds of the grand ongoing art-historical competition.

In the end, that will be the inevitable fate of all of us neverwozzes and also-rans, who have spent far too much time and money playing in the art casino. So, to adapt that cautionary mantra of the banks: "your investment is more likely to go down than up, and you will surely get back less than the amount you invested". It's a mug's game, art, so remember: always make art responsibly... Or maybe think of buying some Premium Bonds instead?

1. I'm reminded of an old friend's story about his Scottish grandmother, who would proffer a plate of biscuits, and say, "Have lots! Have two..."