September 30, 2010
Changing the Law…but Changing Nothing
There is no requirement for letting and estate agents in Britain to be part of a regulatory body. This means any cowboy who chooses can set up shop. And many do.
Since 2007, however, tenants have in theory gained peace of mind. It is now illegal for letting agents not to register tenancy deposits in a licensed Deposit Protection Scheme (DPS). Failure to do this entitles tenants to a compensatory sum of three times the original deposit, should this a) not be returned at the end of a tenancy and b) not have been placed in a DPS.
Has this prevented dodgy letting agents from continuing that age-old practice of stealing tenant’s original deposits?
Not exactly.
Imagine you leave a property – without causing any damage – and apply to your letting agent for a return of your original deposit. Imagine they refuse. Imagine you then ask for proof that they registered your deposit in a DPS. Imagine they can’t do this, because they didn’t. Imagine they persistently refuse to return your money nonetheless.
What happens next? Do you assume you’ll be able to straightforwardly take the agent to County Court, getting both your money and legally-entitled compensation in due course?
Think again.
To try and get your money back you must start by sending a claim form to county court, explaining that your agent has breached both your original contract and also the obligations of the Housing Act (2004). The Court then writes to the agent.
But imagine the agent opens the court’s letters, re-seals the envelopes, writes “gone away” on the front, and returns the documentation pretending the business has folded. When you go to the agent and try and serve them a claim form in person, they refuse to accept it from you.
What next?
Sensibly, you press for a county court hearing to rule on your dispute with the agent, which is granted. But the agent doesn’t turn up to the hearing. So you win the judgement by default. The agent now owes you three times your original deposit value – a sum likely to be in the thousands. Will you get your money now?
Not likely.
The Court sends the agent an order demanding that they pay you the money that is now legally yours. But imagine the agent sends this order back, again writing “gone away” on the envelope (which is a lie, because they are still trading). At this point you might expect the court to take matters into its own hands so as to extract the money owed.
You’d be wrong.
There are now three options. 1) You can send in bailiffs to take the agent’s property up to the value you are owed. However bailiffs cannot take property essential to the business’ operations, so if you’re dealing with a shoe-string agency (as is likely) the bailiffs will be able to take very little and almost certainly nowhere near the sum you are owed.
2) You can file to have the business declared bankrupt. The problem with this is that it is likely to be expensive, and if anybody else is owed more money by the agent than you are, they will get paid first (and as you’re dealing with a dodgy letting agent this is quite likely).
3) You can attempt a third party debt order, whereby an income stream intended for the business is diverted into your bank account instead of theirs.
Let’s say you (sensibly) try to pursue option 3). However you can only do this if you secure key information, such as the businesses’ bank account details. The only way you can get this is by having the business attend court for questioning. To make that happen, you need to serve a notice-to-attend-court to the manager of the business personally, and then swear an affidavit to the court that you did so.
Now imagine that the manager avoids you for several weeks. Imagine that bailiffs are no use because they cannot track down the manager personally, and the papers have to be served that way. But imagine you eventually pin-down the manager at work one day, give him the papers, then swear an affidavit accordingly. Are you any closer to getting your money?
No.
Because now imagine the agent writes to the court and lies, saying that the manager has left forever. The court (somewhat reassuringly) says this is not acceptable, and the court date for questioning goes ahead regardless. But the manager (unsurprisingly) doesn’t turn up. A judge then issues a Suspended Committal Order. This means that if the manager does not turn up to a second hearing, a warrant will be issued for his arrest.
Is the process over? Is your money on the way?
No, because you have to serve the Suspended Committal Order to the manger, personally. The Court won’t help you do this. But the manager knows who you are, and isn’t going to let you do that. So are you going to get your money back? It really doesn’t look like it.
Imagine over a year has now passed. Imagine you are an Oxbridge educated British citizens whose first language is English and whose current flat mate just qualified as a solicitor. Would you conclude that the much-touted Deposit Protection Scheme has done anything whatsoever to rebalance power between tenants and dodgy letting agents? Do you think that vulnerable people with limited resources, who may struggle with reading English and legal documents – i.e. the worse-off, who are most likely to be at the mercy of dodgy letting agents – are better protected than before, let-alone the highly educated and better-resourced?
I think the evidence speaks for itself.
But there’s a wider lesson here, too: for those (like me) with faith in the power of the state to improve society, we must nonetheless remember that simply changing laws does not necessarily guarantee the good consequences we desire.
September 29, 2010
How to think about…vegetarianism
Self-indulgent long philosophy post of the week. My super-long-term readers have seen this argument before, at my old (now deleted) blog. I am unrepentant in my recycling.
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The other day Andrew wanted to know why I gave up vegetarianism. And as it happens, I was recently listening to Jeff McMahan claiming that we should all be vegetarians. I’ll therefore use McMahan as a stalking horse, by way of answering Andrew.
***
I’m prepared to go easy on McMahan. I won’t make any controversial claims that animal suffering is not necessarily bad (as McMahan simply assumes it to be). So I’ll leave out quasi-Nietzschean thoughts about the suffering of animals enhancing the reasons to eat them.
I’ll also abstain from calling into question some of McMahan’s question-begging manoeuvres. Like assuming that the enjoyment animals experience is straightforwardly commensurable with that of humans.
I’ll even leave off snarking too hard on McMahan’s bizarre remark that his children have been vegetarian since birth “by choice”.
Instead, I’ll focus on a simple argument I take to be final in these matters.
It is a brute fact that the vegetarianism of any individual neither saves any animal lives, nor stops any animal suffering. This is because – given the scales of production involved in modern meat-rearing and processing – the decisions of any single consumer have no appreciable impact on market demand. This demand is so large, being constituted by so many thousands of individual consumers, that the removal of one specific consumer has no appreciable reduction for the net demand for meat, and thus no consequent reduction in supply will follow.
Simple vegetarianism – i.e. abstaining from meat purchase/consumption, but doing nothing else – does not save animal lives (or prevent their suffering). If you want to make a difference in terms of consequences to animals themselves, then do something practically useful. Like buying a herd of cows, putting them in your field, and feeding them until they die of old age. That sort of action affects animal lives. Abstaining from meat in a modern mass-consumer economy does not.
Of course, what we have here is a nasty little Sorites Paradox. If everybody acted in concert to give up meat, then market demand would fall, supply would contract, and fewer animals would be killed or experience suffering (largely because many would never be born in the first place). But here’s another brute fact: any individual considering going vegetarian must face the truth that the vast majority of others won’t follow suit. A mass vegetarian revolution is simply not a realistic prospect. As a consequence, any individual’s decision to abstain from meat can have no appreciable impact on market demand, meaning no fewer animals suffer and die. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles.
But this isn’t the end of the matter. Integrity is also important for moral agents.
People like McMahan are appalled by the meat industry. The mass suffering – and as they see it, exploitation and murder – of animals is to their minds indefensible. In turn, such people may decide they want to have no association with such an evil (as they see it) industry. They do not want to benefit from, or even enjoy, the products of such processes. Nor do they want to be (even symbolically) complicit in them, say by handing over money for flesh. To do otherwise would cast a stain on their moral character – and they want their characters to be clean.
For people who reason this way, vegetarianism will probably be the right option, insofar as it guarantees of their own personal integrity. But not everybody needs to end-up at that decision.
Let’s grant that what is done to animals, via the meat industry, is highly unpleasant. Animals die and suffer for our pleasure, and yet most of us tend to think that suffering is prima facie a bad thing. However it doesn’t follow that everyone must give up eating meat, even if they condemn animal suffering as morally wrong.
For people like me, the “clean hands”/“not in my name”/“I don’t want to be a beneficiary of nasty processes” type thoughts simply don’t have decisive motivational purchase. Other thoughts carry more weight. Like knowing that life as a vegetarian is considerably more difficult than one as an omnivore. Or believing that being the beneficiary of a process which would go on regardless of whether or not one abstained is no particularly bad thing. Or even just liking the taste of meat more than worrying (with somewhat pointless futility) about how it arrived on one’s plate.
Accordingly, because I don’t feel that my personal integrity is compromised by meat-consumption, there’s simply no reason that I should give it up. Indeed, because my giving-up meat would have no consequences for any animals’ lives, even if I think killing animals (or making them suffer) is wrong, it doesn’t follow that I must go vegetarian.*
McMahan, of course, may disagree. He may find he can’t sleep at night if he eats sentient beings. But that will be a decision for him, about his integrity. The philosophical rub, however, is that vegetarianism turns out to be rather less about the animals, and rather more about McMahan.
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*Note: if I were to fear that others might view my meat-eating as callous and so hold me in disregard, that might be a reason for me to go vegetarian. But what would be doing the motivational work would be a desire to avoid the disapprobation of others, not a concern for the lives and well-being of animals.
September 28, 2010
Listen In
If all goes to plan I’ll be on BBC Radio 4′s You and Yours this lunchtime, discussing the topic of whether “Oxbridge” has too much influence in society.
Tune in from 12 noon, as I try talking at a normal pace whilst also not making an idiot of myself. Given that the room is currently spinning and I feel decidedly iffy, this is going to be even more of a challenge than usual.
Ed and Ideas
For those believing ideas to be powerful forces, the fallout from Ed Miliband’s leadership victory is fascinating.
Yesterday on this blog, several people expressed their distaste with Labour’s electoral college system; that some Labour members could have up to 12 votes appalled them. But I confess to being bemused, and fear they are too-quickly applying a general rule – “fair elections are always one person, one vote” – where it may not apply.
In something like a general election “one person, one vote” is a very sound principle. For a start, it enshrines the desirable equality of citizens in possibly the most important decision-making-process of a sovereign state. National democracy – especially following histories of exclusion on class and gender grounds – (probably) requires absolute voting equality if fairness is to be secured.
But the Labour Party is not a sovereign state. It is a private club where some trusted affiliates are allowed to partake at key moments. It is thus not – at least, prima facie – unreasonable that those who are more deeply invested in the Party (e.g. by being paid members of Labour and of politically affiliated groups) should get more of a say in its big leadership decisions than others.
I therefore do not find the fact that some Labour people get more votes offensive. But to others the electoral college’s structure calls into question the legitimacy of the system, and by extension Ed Miliband’s victory. Differing ideas of (electoral) legitimacy thus produce different political judgements.
Consider next the much-heard claim that it was the unions wot won it for Ed. A major objection to this claim is that it’s not really true – or at least, no more true than other “what if” scenarios. Example: if 6 Labour MPs had used their second preferences differently, David would have been triumphant.
To those who complain that former Brown bully-boy Charlie Wheelan pressured key MPs into voting in a Union-approved way – I struggle to see the problem, if it’s intended as one sticking specifically to Ed Miliband. Lobbying is part and parcel of politics, within and without parties. I’m sure Wheelan tried to turn the screws. But nobody seriously believes that back-door deals and threats weren’t made in securing David Cameron’s 2005 victory as leader of the Tory Party.
People are complaining about “union influence”. Yet when Cameron secured a huge chunk of initial support by treating Tory MPs to a lavish champagne launch party (a trick picked up no doubt at the Oxford Union, where quasi-bribery is the electoral norm), this attracted no comparable opprobrium. The mass preferences of organised workers – long-time supporters and fund-raisers of the Labour Party – are a No-No. But wining and dining MPs, to out-shine a less-well financed David Davis, is by contrast, OK.
Now, this may be the right way of thinking about things. I’m not saying one way or the other. The point is, thinking about things this way around casts a shadow on Ed, but not on Dave. Again, ideas of legitimate conduct matter.
But to stick at this Union question, it’s remarkable the extent to which commentators and the right are using it as a stick to beat Miliband Jnr with. Rather than being the legal organised representation of 7 million British workers, you’d be forgiven for thinking “trades union” is a term synonymous with “international paedophile network”.
The fact Unions have received relatively little from the Labour leadership since 1997 – instead being treated to PFI, attempts to privatise the Post Office, and zero efforts to roll-back anti-Union legislation – and yet have loyally funded the Party regardless, is widely ignored. Contrary to the accepted media angle, I’d be inclined to say that the very least Labour should do is give affiliated Unions some extra voting power, so as to recognise the Unions’ enormous, on-going support for the Party.
And if critics complain that “the real problem is that Unions hold the purse-strings”, I’ll offer two words back: Michael Ashcroft. Labour are painted as being in the pocket of sinister vested interests, but the Tories are not. Despite much Conservative finance and organisation – especially for campaign funds in marginal seats – being dependent on one very influential man.
But it’s not hard to see the root of such divergence. The Unions lost the culture wars of the 1980s, as well as the ones fought on picket lines. In the national psyche, the Unions are a force of darkness which needed to be crushed before good times could shine – and which must be held in deep suspicion in case their demands for fair working wages and responsible work-place legislation plunge Britain back into some economic darkage.
This, of course, is a simplified and misleading account of history. But it has been propagated especially in media organs owned by politically manipulative billionaires. The kinds of billionaires who, unsurprisingly, are this week turning on the representatives of organised labour – their natural political and economic enemies. Yet these media organisations have in the past largely stayed quiet about the power and influence of a fellow billionaire, who just happens to pull the levers of the Tory Party. A party which, it just-so-happens, is also an enemy of the trades unions too.
Aren’t these political co-incidences simply remarkable?
There may well be something rotten at the heart of how Labour elects its leaders – I don’t want to rule that out. But equally much distaste at the outcome of the contest may in fact be a function of ideas which, upon closer examination, turn out not to be as straightforward – or as innocent – as they might first seem.
September 27, 2010
Some lessons for Ed
The idea that it was “the Sun wot won it” for the Conservatives in 1992 is common. But it’s almost certainly false. Most political scientists believe that whilst newspapers are very good at telling voters what to think about, they do not exercise a decisive influence in telling people what, exactly, to think.
And the decline of the print media means the influence of newspapers is likely to be decreasing further. Although The Sun crowed that by backing Cameron in 2010 it was making a game-changing intervention, it’s far more likely that widespread dislike of Gordon Brown and a build-up of resentments against New Labour sealed the electoral fate.
With this in mind, Ed Miliband should look to his own recent election experience and draw some valuable lessons. Except for the basically irrelevant The People, not a single national newspaper backed Ed over David. Whilst New Statesman magazine picked the younger Miliband , The Guardian, Observer, Mirror, Economist and Times all came out for his brother.
Now, you can complain that David actually “won” on first preference votes, and that the electoral college system rewarded Ed in a way that could not be replicated in a First Past the Post (or even AV) British general election. There may be some merit in that argument. But consider also this.
If newspapers have a significant influence on how, exactly, voters cast their ballots (as opposed to what sort of things they’re likely to be thinking about in the run up to an election) then why did the Lib Dems fail to take Islington South last May? Labour was defending a majority of just 484 in Guardianista Islington. And yet it held the seat despite The Guardian coming out strongly for the Lib Dems.
Of course one case study is not enough to be decisive. But if anywhere has a strong claim for being the ideal test-case for whether or not a newspaper endorsement can influence key swing voters Islington South was surely it. And yet the impact there was non-existent.
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The New Labour years were characterised by an obsession with newspaper – and especially tabloid – headlines. By the belief that if desirable headlines could be secured then voters could be mechanically manipulated as a function of media control. But it seems this simplistic view is just false.
It remains that newspapers can tell people what to think about. So the media (obviously) can’t be ignored. But what the past 15 years have shown is that on many traditionally “right wing” issues – crime, immigration, defence – the right-wing press will not jump to a government tune, no matter how reactionary. Newspapers will not be conveniently controlled, and will instead pump-out dogmatic mantras regardless. Mantras happily used to attack a Labour government if that’s what sells copy.
This is one reason why New Labour attempts to outflank the Tories on the right did not work, and just ceded ground to a right-wing agenda where the Tories could always hit harder.
***
Ed Miliband and his “new generation” should draw some basic lessons. Firstly, that newspapers don’t decide elections. The Labour party need not cower in fear of Murdoch headlines. Secondly, that even if newspapers shape what people think about, the way to deal with that is not by attempting to manipulate headlines (which ultimately doesn’t work anyway).
It’s far better to engage with people at a grass-roots level, find out what the specifics of their concerns are (rather than those of Daily Express subeditors or lunatics hanging around in the Westminster village), and work out local solutions to those concerns. If Labour builds viable grass-root engagement and concrete problem-solving mechanisms, the content of the latest Mail editorial will become even more of an increasing irrelevance than it already is.
September 26, 2010
Existing for a Reason
Andrew Rawnsley recently noted:
It is one of the easiest cries in opposition to shout: “Cull the quangos.” That is proving hard to do even for such reflexive quango-cullers as Tories. One Conservative minister says: “At first glance, you think: that can go. Then you take another look and you find that a lot of these organisations exist for a purpose.”
If Coalition plans to axe the Environment Agency (EA) go ahead, the truth of those words will be displayed across rural and urban Britain.
I’ll confess to being a big fan of the EA. As a regular angler I frequently see the invaluable work it does on English and Welsh waterways. You might think that rivers, canals and backdrains look after themselves – but you’d be sorely wrong. The pressures of agriculture, industry and a growing population mean our waterways are under constant un-natural pressures. They need to be carefully looked after to prevent them turning into stagnant ditches.
40 years ago many of Britain’s rivers – particularly near urban areas – were so polluted that no life could survive in them. But there has been an environmental renaissance across the land, as waterways are restored to flourishing health. Previously toxic rivers and canals now support thriving ecosystems of insects, amphibians, fish and birds. In large part, the continuation of this renaissance is down to the care and management of the EA.
Take the River Alt, a minor waterway that runs through Merseyside. When I was a child this was little more than a stagnant repository for waste and agricultural chemical run-off. But the EA transformed it, and it is now a thriving habitat with successful fish populations as a result of a concerted re-stocking programme. The enormous success of the now life-sustaining River Mersey – formally one of the most polluted rivers in Europe – is testament to the power of good waterway management.
As well as rebuilding and sustaining Britain’s waters – providing a shared resource for anglers, bird watchers and ramblers – the EA acts as an environmental police force. One of its key remits is to regulate the use of waterways, ensuring that rivers are not abused and turned into chemical dumping grounds (particularly in cities). The EA plays a vital role in bringing offenders to justice, and ensuring that fines are imposed to compensate for clean-up operations.
The EA is also central to flood management and prevention. Even those ecological philistines who don’t care about environmental conservation ought to be concerned about the impact of unmanaged waterways in urban areas increasingly subject to flood risk.
If the EA goes, the impact will be very visible. The lie will also be given to the Conservative’s cover story that Quangos can simply be replaced by voluntary organisations. A dubious claim at the best of times (voluntary groups generally need funding to be effective) the idea is hopeless when applied to the EA.
Britain’s waterways are a common public treasure, but the infamous tragedy of the commons now threatens. Take away the EA, and individuals and voluntary groups will lack the co-ordination and resources to act concertedly on the large scale required to protect and sustain our waterways. Voluntarism cannot fill this gap. Take another look at the EA and you will see that this organisation very much “exists for a purpose”.
Andrew Rawnsley recently noted:
It is one of the easiest cries in opposition to shout: “Cull the quangos.” That is proving hard to do even for such reflexive quango-cullers as Tories. One Conservative minister says: “At first glance, you think: that can go. Then you take another look and you find that a lot of these organisations exist for a purpose.”
If Coalition plans to axe the Environment Agency (EA) go ahead, the truth of those words will be displayed across rural and urban Britain.
I’ll confess to being a big fan of the EA. As a regular angler I frequently see the invaluable work it does on English and Welsh waterways. You might think that rivers, canals and backdrains look after themselves – but you’d be sorely wrong. The pressures of agriculture, industry and a growing population mean our waterways are under constant un-natural pressures. They need to be carefully looked after to prevent them turning into stagnant ditches.
40 years ago many of Britain’s rivers – particularly near urban areas – were so polluted that no life could survive in them. But there has been an environmental renaissance across the land, as waterways are restored to flourishing health. Previously toxic rivers and canals now support thriving ecosystems of insects, amphibians, fish and birds. In large part, the continuation of this renaissance is down to the care and management of the EA.
Take the River Alt, a minor waterway that runs through Merseyside. When I was a child this was little more than a stagnant repository for waste and agricultural chemical run-off. But the EA transformed it, and it is now a thriving habitat with successful fish populations as a result of a concerted re-stocking programme. The enormous success of the now life-sustaining River Mersey – formally one of the most polluted rivers in Europe – is testament to the power of good waterway management.
As well as rebuilding and sustaining Britain’s waters – providing a shared resource for anglers, bird watchers and ramblers – the EA acts as an environmental police force. One of its key remits is to regulate the use of waterways, ensuring that rivers are not abused and turned into chemical dumping grounds (particularly in cities). The EA plays a vital role in bringing offenders to justice, and ensuring that fines are imposed to compensate for clean-up operations.
The EA is also central to flood management and prevention. Even those ecological philistines who don’t care about environmental conservation ought to be concerned about the impact of unmanaged waterways in urban areas increasingly subject to flood risk.
If the EA goes, the impact will be very visibl
Andrew Rawnsley recently noted:
It is one of the easiest cries in opposition to shout: “Cull the quangos.” That is proving hard to do even for such reflexive quango-cullers as Tories. One Conservative minister says: “At first glance, you think: that can go. Then you take another look and you find that a lot of these organisations exist for a purpose.”
If Coalition plans to axe the Environment Agency (EA) go ahead, the truth of those words will be displayed across rural and urban Britain.
I’ll confess to being a big fan of the EA. As a regular angler I frequently see the invaluable work it does on English and Welsh waterways. You might think that rivers, canals and backdrains look after themselves – but you’d be sorely wrong. The pressures of agriculture, industry and a growing population mean our waterways are under constant un-natural pressures. They need to be carefully looked after to prevent them turning into stagnant ditches.
40 years ago many of Britain’s rivers – particularly near urban areas – were so polluted that no life could survive in them. But there has been an environmental renaissance across the land, as waterways are restored to flourishing health. Previously toxic rivers and canals now support thriving ecosystems of insects, amphibians, fish and birds. In large part, the continuation of this renaissance is down to the care and management of the EA.
Take the River Alt, a minor waterway that runs through Merseyside. When I was a child this was little more than a stagnant repository for waste and agricultural chemical run-off. But the EA transformed it, and it is now a thriving habitat with successful fish populations as a result of a concerted re-stocking programme. The enormous success of the now life-sustaining River Mersey – formally one of the most polluted rivers in Europe – is testament to the power of good waterway management.
As well as rebuilding and sustaining Britain’s waters – providing a shared resource for anglers, bird watchers and ramblers – the EA acts as an environmental police force. One of its key remits is to regulate the use of waterways, ensuring that rivers are not abused and turned into chemical dumping grounds (particularly in cities). The EA plays a vital role in bringing offenders to justice, and ensuring that fines are imposed to compensate for clean-up operations.
The EA is also central to flood management and prevention. Even those ecological philistines who don’t care about environmental conservation ought to be concerned about the impact of unmanaged waterways in urban areas increasingly subject to flood risk.
If the EA goes, the impact will be very visible. The lie will also be given to the Conservative’s cover story that Quangos can simply be replaced by voluntary organisations. A dubious claim at the best of times (voluntary groups generally need funding to be effective) the idea is hopeless when applied to the EA.
Britain’s waterways are a common public treasure, but the infamous tragedy of the commons now threatens. Take away the EA, and individuals and voluntary groups will lack the co-ordination and resources to act concertedly on the large scale required to protect and sustain our waterways. Voluntarism cannot fill this gap. Take another look at the EA and you will see that this organisation very much “exists for a purpose”.
e. The lie will also be given to the Conservative’s cover story that Quangos can simply be replaced by voluntary organisations. A dubious claim at the best of times (voluntary groups generally need funding to be effective) the idea is hopeless when applied to the EA.
Britain’s waterways are a common public treasure, but the infamous tragedy of the commons now threatens. Take away the EA, and individuals and voluntary groups will lack the co-ordination and resources to act concertedly on the large scale required to protect and sustain our waterways. Voluntarism cannot fill this gap. Take another look at the EA and you will see that this organisation very much “exists for a purpose”.
September 25, 2010
The French Physiocrats Institute
There was a rather silly post up at the Adam Smith Institute blog recently. ASI founder Eamonn Butler’s argument (such as it constituted one) basically went: market competition has all sorts of good consequences; free-market capitalism guarantees such competition; state regulation always strangles such competition; this is what Adam Smith thought and so Vince Cable was wrong to cite him in support.
The first premise is fine. The rest is silly (though admittedly Butler’s post is confused – and confusing – so it’s not clear whether he fully endorses this silly argument or even recognises it to be silly).
Pace Dillow we know that markets, left to themselves, do not always produce and sustain competition quidquid evenit. Situations which start out as competitive may evolve into ones in which one or more businesses corner enough of the market to establish oligopolistic or monopolistic dominance. At which point competition is strangled, and its myriad benefits – efficiency, innovation, etc – are lost.
Regulation, whilst sometimes reducing competition (e.g. when big business and state forces collude) can also generate or sustain it. That, after all, is why the economic regulatory structures of most western democracies include competition laws whose purpose is to prevent oligopolistic or monopolistic consolidation.
Unsurprisingly, Adam Smith wasn’t so dumb as to subscribe to the crude reasoning Butler attributes to him (“Business people would love to rig the market in their favour. But it is only the power of governments that enables them to do this”). Butler alludes to this famous Smith quote:
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
And he then says that if you read the “following paragraphs” you see that Smith believes “that it is regulation that brings on these cartel meetings and makes the conspiracy stick.” Technically, this is correct. But as presented by Butler the nature of Smith’s position is quite severely distorted.
Smith notes that by forcing (what we would now call) entrepreneurs to be publicly registered, you may alert them to each other and provide them with the knowledge required to start colluding anti-competitively. And he says that “though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.”
But then, this is just common sense. Smith is merely pointing out that magistrates should bear in mind the possibility of unintended consequences. A laudably-motivated piece of regulation may actually have adverse unintended effects, but legislators shouldn’t impose reforms that actually make things worse (e.g. supplying information to merchants hell-bent on skullduggery). So sometimes regulation is indeed a bad idea. But equally, government intervention may sometimes be required (for example, to restore the system of “natural liberty” when monopolies have been established). If the benefits of regulation outweigh the likely negative consequences, then government action may be acceptable. But how often this turns out to be the case is an empirical question, and cannot be settled in advance by the sort of a priori dogma Butler goes in for.
Moving further afield from these few brief paragraphs, it is stonkingly clear that Smith thought the state could intervene in market affairs in desirable ways, improving upon pure free-market outcomes. Over at the Telegraph, David Green makes the point well:
In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith often condemned “projectors”, as speculators were called in his own time. For example, he favoured a legally-imposed maximum interest rate of 5 per cent at a time when the market rate was about 4 per cent. If the legal rate of interest went up to 8 per cent, he said, then more money would be lent to “prodigals and projectors”, who alone would be willing to pay that much. “Sober people”, he argued, would only pay rates that would allow them to make a profit from solid ventures. Without a maximum of about 5 per cent money would be thrown into the hands of people who “were most likely to waste and destroy it”. With a legal maximum “the capital of the country is thus thrown into the hands in which it is most likely to be employed with advantage.”
Contrary to Butler, Green is right to note that “Adam Smith was making the very same point as Vince Cable.”
Now, ASI partisans might want to complain that Smith got it wrong. Which is fine, they are entitled to do that. But what they cannot do is both have their cake and eat it. If it is admitted that Smith advocated market interventions incompatible with the laissez-faire economic policies pushed by the ASI, it is by-the-by whether or not he got those things right. The point now is that Smith wasn’t the poster-boy of Thatcherite market liberalism the ASI like to claim. Which simply raises the question of what on earth is Adam Smith about this institute.
I’ve explained before that the simplistic free-market zealotary at the ASI has more in common with the French Physiocrats than Adam Smith – the former being the latter’s great intellectual opponents. Smith was a theorist primarily of political economy; economic theory was of value only when filtered through the prism of real-world politics and its inevitable distorting impacts upon applied economic policy. The theory-heavy market liberal dogma of the ASI stands a long way from The Wealth of Nations.
If this organisation were really a think-tank, rather than a vehicle of partisan Thatcherite politics, I’d suggest a name-change in the spirit of intellectual honesty: ‘The French Physiocrats Institute’ would be a most appropriate re-branding.
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Seen as we’re talking about Smith, academic readers of this blog should be aware of this:
September 24, 2010
Cable’s Calling
For many, Vince Cable has gone from saint to sinner. The former hammer of the Banks and scourge of Osborne now finds himself kowtowing to high finance and dancing to the tune of Boy George.
Last night’s Question Time showed that anger at the Lib Dems is mounting. As reflected in falling polls, the Lib Dems are seen as Tory-enablers deeply complicit in the most vicious programme of spending cuts in living memory. For the first half of last night’s broadcast, Cable repeatedly got it in the neck.
But rather than seeing Cable as a traitor, I would urge a little more nuance. There has been no Jekyll and Hyde transformation. The same exceptionally laudable politician remains – but circumstances dictate he play the devil.
Let’s assume – as seems most likely – that Cable meant all he said pre-May 2010. Like most Lib Dems he assumed he’d never get near power and so could say whatever he liked. Including the truth, something mostly off-limits to those expecting a hand in government. All that stuff about controlling banks, protecting the economy from over-zealous cuts, the myth of pain-free “efficiency savings”, clamping down on tax avoiders and evaders? He almost certainly meant it all.*
But now Cable finds himself not only in government, but subordinated to a dominant Tory party that is acting just as manically as it promised before being elected. A Tory party demanding exactly the opposite of much of what Cable previously advocated.
And at this point, questions of personal integrity arise: should Cable – as a man of purported decency and integrity – consent to working with a rabid Tory party inflicting cuts that will cause widespread social and economic pain?
The answer, I think, is “yes”. Certainly, Cable himself might prefer not to be doing this. That he’d rather have “clean hands” and not be personally responsible for any of the Coalition’s overly-vicious cuts. But the fact is, whatever Cable does now his hands can never be clean.
If Cable were to walk from the Coalition, there would still be consequences pinned to him. For a start, he is the only high-profile non-Conservative member of the Coalition apart from Nick Clegg (now so close to Cameron as to be effectively Tory). Without Cable, the Lib Dems would likely lose even the paltry influence within the Government they currently possess.
Although Cable is labouring under the dictates of Osborne’s Treasury, he is attempting to fight his corner as Business Secretary. Given his experience and public standing, it is extremely unlikely any lesser Lib Dem could do a better job – let alone a Tory. And if Cable abandoned the Government now, the public blow to the Lib Dems would likely be fatal.
Given what we know about Cable pre-2010, we can safely assume he is deeply unhappy with the role he is personally playing in the Coalition’s austerity programme. And yet, he continues. Not, I would suggest, because of any lust for power. But because Cable exhibits Max Weber’s “calling for politics”.
Cable realises that to try and do some good, he must consciously do bad; that he must pursue policies he personally opposes. And judging from his body language last night, he knows the gravity of the situation. But “here he stands, he can do no other”.
That is the marking of a “truly moving” politician, who has the “calling for politics”. There is nothing impressive about Tory ideologues cutting spending with glee, complete with disregard for the pain this will cause. There is, however, something tragically moving about Cable’s position. He deserves your personal respect, even if your political condemnation flows regardless.
I predict that this experience will break Cable; that he will leave office disillusioned and wracked with guilt about what he’s found himself complicit in. And therein lies another tragedy: that apart from the self-pityingly vainglorious, there is a way in which politics can only break good people.
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*In fact I know he did (and here’s a disclaimer) because I did a little bit of work for his office during my 2009 Parliamentary researcher odyssey.
September 23, 2010
On The Philosophy of Murdering Hamsters
Should I be imprisoned for 9 weeks, the sentence applied retrospectively for a crime committed when I was 13 years old? I speak of the death-by-neglect of my two Russian Dwarf hamsters.
As a somewhat self-involved teenager (la plus ca change, eh?) the pressing concerns of school life commanded my utmost attentions. I correspondingly neglected to notice that the animals in my care had run out of drinking water – until it was too late.
This week, Anthony Parker was jailed for nine weeks after he microwaved his girlfriend’s Syrian hamster during a drunken row. I don’t expect the RSPCA will kick my door down after this post goes up. But in a consistent world, should they?
In his Tanner Lectures [PDF] Jonathan Bennett explored the philosophical foundations of what is known as the acting/omitting (or sometimes: killing/letting die) distinction. A common thought – and one sanctified in, for example, much Catholic teaching – is that it is morally worse to actively kill than to passively let die; that positive action to bring about some end is morally worse than sitting on one’s hands and doing nothing even if the exact same end comes about in either case.
An illustration: imagine there is a microwave that automatically starts when a weight of 100 grammes+ is present inside it, and the door of which closes automatically when the weight-sensor is activated. Now imagine two scenarios:
1. I take Bobby the Hamster, who weighs 150g, and put him inside the microwave (knowing that it will start and he will die).
2. I observe Bobby the Hamster walking into the microwave (knowing that it will start and he will die) and do nothing to stop him even though I could.
Most people want to say that 1) is worse than 2). But Bennett explodes this distinction. When you get down to the philosophical nitty-gritty, so long as everything else is kept constant there is no morally relevant difference between acting to bring about a consequence, and omitting to act when one knows that so-omitting will yield the exact same consequence.*
This is counter-intuitive to many. But Bennett’s reasoning is impeccable; the challenge is to explain why we have collectively developed the acting/omitting distinction and employ it in so much of our intuitive moral thinking even though it is a deep conceptual mistake. We need an error-theory of this common moral practice.
But as it happens, none of this touches the question of whether I should be in jail. Because there is a very important difference between myself and Anthony Parker: whereas he intended to fry Suzie the Hamster, I did not intend for my pets to die. If somebody had said to me “give the poor things some water, you idiot” I would have done so immediately. Telling Parker that Suzie was going to experience her own little Hiroshima would not have stopped him, because that was exactly what he intended to bring about.
Thus, the two cases are asymmetrical: I caused death by negligence but without intention, Parker caused death by design and with intention. That difference of intention – or specifically, the different motivations underlying those different intentions – is what does the moral work here, not any acting/omitting distinction.
Certainly, negligence is morally reprehensible; that’s whynegligence of children by parents can rightly end in criminal prosecution. Negligence reveals a defect of moral motivations insofar as adequate concern for other (dependent) living creatures is lacking. But such callous, overly-self-regarding motivations are of a less heinous order than a cruelty-seeking motivation which issues in the wilful murder-by-microwave of innocent hamsters.
I am a bad and guilty man. But I am not as bad, or guilty, as Anthony Parker. All of which, of course, comes as no surprise to those who’ve been wise enough to read their Hume:
“`Tis evident, that when we praise any actions, we regard only the motives that produced them, and consider the actions as signs or indications of certain principles in the mind and temper. The external performance has no merit. We must look within to find the moral quality. This we cannot do directly; and therefore fix our attention on actions, as on external signs. But these actions are still considered as signs; and the ultimate object of our praise and approbation is the motive, that produc’d them.”
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* Actually, the acting/omitting terminology is itself hopelessly confused at a philosophical level, and Bennett junks it accordingly. I’ve retained it here for ease of exposition.
September 22, 2010
Dire Non
Although I self-identify as British – because I’ve always lived here – I have dual nationality and could enjoy the benefits of French citizenship should I choose to demand them. Until recently I’ve never thought there was any tension between my British and French sides; that I could quite happily live in either country.
I don’t think that’s true any more.
There is something deeply wrong with France, and I fear it is getting worse. To put the point bluntly: French politics is becoming so racialised – and so tense and aggressive in its racialisation – that deep concern about where this is heading must follow.
That statement needs some qualification. French politics has very different starting points, as well as history, to that of Britain. Whereas (to oversimplify helpfully) British citizenship revolves around the basic conditions of obeying the law, paying taxes and getting on with a productive but ultimately private existence, French citizenship is rooted in a republican tradition born of revolution, and periodic social upheaval. French citizenship – at least, in the eyes of many French themselves – places more of a burden on the individual. One must conform to certain core values of the Republic, which itself provides the freedom and protection enabling citizens to be citizens (precisely as oppose to subjects). But French citizens are not just citizens, they are French.
Coupled with this there is a very specific French historical experience, stretching back to 1789 and the revolutionary break with the Ancien Regime. Of particular importance is the (at least in theory) strict separation of church and state, meaning that a commitment to France requires a subordinating of religion. But more important is the experience of post-war decolonialisation. Whilst Britain may have undergone long-lasting post-Imperial anxiety, the French experience of decolonialisation was positively traumatic. The loss of Algeria in particular – after a brutal and bloody civil war – has still not been fully accepted. And large communities of north-African Arab Muslims (amongst whom unemployment and crime are statistically much higher) stand as a permanent internal reminder of France’s post-colonial humiliation and decline.
Yet these essential background points in place, the extent to which racial politics has gone mainstream in France remains profoundly worrying. As most will know, last week French government policy of “voluntarily” deporting Roma communities hit international headlines. President Sarkozy and his ministers did not take kindly to the EU comparing France’s actions with the Vichy Regime’s deportation of Jews to Nazi gas chambers. But this was partly because extensive denial about responsibility for France’s 1940s Nazi-colluding, fascist government is an important feature of France’s psychological post-war reconstruction.
But the deportation of the Roma is shocking, precisely because it is an official government policy. The Sarkozy administration has long been adept at deflecting domestic criticism and bumping falling polls by opening fire on any unpopular minority group – as Muslims and Arabs will readily attest. But that official deportation of peoples on racial grounds, just 70 years after French complicity in the holocaust, should prove a broadly successful policy for an otherwise unpopular rightwing government should set alarm bells ringing.
Yet the removal of the Roma is but the latest development in the mainstreaming of racial politics in France. This graffiti – scrawled in the Paris Metro system – summarises well:
[Translated: Deportation/persecution of Roma = Fascism/ Yesterday the youth of the estates/Then those without papers/Today the Roma/Tomorrow, who? You? Say no.]
The youth of the “banlieue” refers to the 2005 riot which broke out after police chased two Parisian youths into an electricity substation, where they were both electrocuted. In a city where police brutality against French-Arabs is notorious, the revelation that the boys were North African lit the powder keg – coming so soon after then Interior Minister Sarkozy’s aggressive dismisal of disatisfied Parisian youths as a “rabble”.
Yet the post-2007 Sarkozy government has responded to racial tensions by stepping-up its right-wing racial policies, many of them effectively borrowed from the fascist Front National. This summer’s ban on the full Muslim face-veil was very much a dog-whistle attack on minority Arab communities, dressed-up in the fig leaves of a tradition of French secularism. But the normalisation of racial discourse in France is troubling in a different direction. It is apparently completely acceptable in polite company for leftist opponents of Sarkozy’s policies to attempt to refute the claim that Muslims are not adequately “integrated” by comparing them with allegedly non-integrated Jews. I cannot imagine acceptable political conversation in England claiming that Jews “run everything”, “only marry each other and exclude everyone else by looking after their own”, “and are not ‘integrated’ but enjoy special privileges because so many powerful figures are Jewish”. Even if such remarks are made in attempt to show that government attacks on Muslims have nothing to do with French secular assimilation and everything to do with racism, the normalisation of such racial discourse in the shadow of the holocaust is profoundly troubling.
It’s important not to become hysterical. France is not 30 seconds from racial Armageddon. But these are unsettling times. Already experiencing unemployment rates of 10%, with much higher figures for the young and those of ethnic minority background, France knows economic difficulty already. Like other developed countries, the French economy is likely to experience severe constraints in the near future, which can only heighten social tensions.
History shows that the politics of the far right is not defeated by pandering to its adherents. Emulate far-right policies, and far-right parties justifiably tell voters to cut-out the middle men as the politics of hate and division become normalised. France has previously seen fascist leader Jean Marie le Pen make it to the final head-to-head round of the Presidential election (in 2002). But it’s the mainstream right-wing Sarkozy government deporting unwanted ethnic populations, and unashamedly demonising the ethnic Arab community for very real political capital.
Where does it stop?
Dire non.
