Let's not let politicians get away with crying 'immoral' to justify their prejudices

It is always a worry when politicians start invoking morality in the promotion of their particular policy or prejudice. It doesn't matter much which side you're on, the objective is always to try and make out that those who support what you oppose are bad people. This applies as much to William Hague going on about the moral case for low taxation as it does to the latest piece of moralising from Labour's 'business spokesperson', Rebecca Long-Bailey:

Ms Long-Bailey told Today: "I don't personally use Uber because I don't feel that it is morally acceptable but that's not to say they can't reform their practices."

She added: "I don't want to see companies model their operations on the Uber model."

The objective here is to make you feel bad when you choose to use Uber - or, by implication, any other business using the 'gig economy' model. Obviously, Ms Long-Bailey has every right to choose the (usually) more expensive option of a hackney carriage or traditional private hire, but when she claims this makes her morally superior she is changing the argument entirely. Where we had an argument about working conditions and business models, we now have one based on making people who don't agree with Ms Long-Bailey feel bad.

Morality is a tricky area for politicians - after all arguments based on morality kept homosexuality illegal, brought in prohibition in the USA, helped keep women out of the workforce, and resulted in the unwarranted stigma of illegitimacy. In this case the appeal to morality is based on an assumption that Ms Long-Bailey knows precisely the minds and motivations of those people who drive for Uber.

The thing is that we know one thing that makes Ms Long-Bailey's argument false - no-one is forcing anyone to be an Uber driver. More to the point, the employment basis of most taxi and private hire drivers is pretty much identical to that of Uber drivers - they are self-employed. And Uber across most of the UK is licensed in the same manner as a private hire vehicle. This company is no more exploitative of its drivers than the typical Leeds, Bradford or Manchester private hire business.

What Labour and Ms Long-Bailey are saying is that it is morally wrong for a new business employing people on pretty much the same basis as the businesses it competes with to charge less money. This is about is protecting the local authority taxi monopoly and the excess rents earned by that monopoly and its employees - this is not about morality but about competition and the desire to protect one section of the market. All at the expense of the consumer - you and me.

Labour are entitled to make the argument for this protectionism using grounds such as safety, tradition, market stability and so forth. I think these sorts of arguments are wrong but that's an opinion. What is wrong here is that Ms Long-Bailey wants to make out that my opposition to her position on the technological disruption of public transport is somehow immoral. It clearly isn't.

This approach represents an unhealthy trend in recent left wing politics. It used to be the conservative right that would invoke morality as justification for policy but today we find this moral imperative used by socialists like Ms Long-Bailey. Whether it's the defence industry, disruptive digital technology, online distribution or Brexit, elements of the left turn quickly to an argument based on morals. We see this starkly with Ms Long-Bailey's unjustified attack on Uber but it's familiar to those who've witnessed arguments for 'ethical' procurement or investment, arguments based not on a real moral code but on the translation of political credo into an ethical platform. If I oppose 'Fairtrade', fossil fuel disinvestment or bans on tobacco advertising then I am a bad person because such policies are 'ethical' - opposing them makes me, in effect 'unethical'.

We need to start kicking back. Using Uber is not immoral, the 'gig economy' business model is not unethical, and to say so is to corrupt the meaning of ethics and morality by twisting it to serve a political ideology. Ms Long-Bailey's argument cannot be allowed to stand there without challenge, to become the presumed truth about self-employment in the UK because it is simply not true that it is immoral to use Uber, it misrepresents the business model and rather insults the folk who earn a decent crust driving for that company.

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On the moral rightness of markets

This quotation comes, via Cafe Hayek, from Pope John Paul II's encyclical Centesimus Annus from 1991:

In this expanding economic community, the pope observed, a market system encourages the virtues of “diligence, industriousness, prudence in undertaking reasonable risks, reliability and fidelity in interpersonal relationships, as well as courage in carrying out decisions which are difficult and painful but necessary, both for the overall working of a business and in meeting possible set-backs.”

Too many people spend too much time trying to tell us that markets are some sort of moral vacuum and that, for all their usefulness, markets are essentially a necessary evil. Or even that they don't exist at all.

Truth be told markets are, as Pope John Paul II recognised, one way in which humans interact and for most exchanges in most markets the principle of the handshake applies. I recall a friend who provided legal support for the Showman's Guild describing a land deal between two showmen and how the seller, having spat on his hand and shaken with the buyer, would not even meet with another man who wanted to offer more money.

When I think of all the transactions and exchanges - whether or not money is involved - that rely on a high degree of trust in the other party (trust taken on faith not through some lawyer's contract), it seems to me that the market is a powerful force for goodness, for those virtues the late pope named. There are billions of exchanges and transactions every year, all taking place in a market, and a vanishingly small proportion of those events are corrupt, exploitative or unethical. It is, perhaps, this truth that we should focus on rather then the dry, utilitarian benefits of the market the economics text books speak of.

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Banning political campaigns with public funds - it's because it's not your money

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The government has told public bodies that they can't use procurement as a tool of political campaigning. There has been the predictable outcry from those who want to use public money to promote a geopolitical agenda, usually wrapped up in the now almost meaningless word "ethical":

“The Government’s decision to ban councils and other public bodies from divesting from trade or investments they regard as unethical is an attack on local democracy.

“People have the right to elect local representatives able to make decisions free of central government political control. That includes withdrawal of investments or procurement on ethical and human rights grounds."

I'm afraid not. For the very simple reason that it's not your money, it's not there for you to conduct political campaigns. In the case of the budgets for local government, NHS Trusts and other public bodies the money is there to deliver the services for which those organisations exist none of which is remotely connected to foreign policy. To use that money - at a cost to local people - to seek to change the policies of a government far, far away is truly unethical unlike the make-believe 'unethical' of the political campaigners.

And for those pension funds that these supposedly 'ethical' campaigners want to use for political purposes - that's completely unethical if not downright immoral. It really, really isn't your money - it's the pensions of millions of public servants and you've no right at all to compromise those people's future wellbeing for the sake of your political campaigns.

So the government is absolutely right to take it very seriously when local councils or other public bodies seek to prosecute their foreign policy using public money - especially when it runs counter to that government's foreign policy and to treaty obligations in respect of international trade.

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Ad-blockers may be convenient but they're not ethical - or unethical for that matter

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It had to happen didn't it. I mean the extension of the long war against commercial communication - advertising to you and I - into some sort of moral/ethical dimension. With the assumption that advertising is, by dint of its very existence and purpose, 'unethical'.

A new ad-blocking tool out today ensures that everyone can consume their favorite content while remaining on solid moral footing. The Ethical Ad Blocker Chrome extension, developed by internet artist Darius Kazemi, will block any webpage that contains ads, replacing it with a crude text page telling users to check out a list of auto-generating websites and non-profit organizations that give stuff away for free.

And the 'crude text page' says this:

Now it looks like Darius Kazemi is making a point that stuff really ain't for free but the reader might not get this. I'm sure most won't understand how looking at sites paid for through advertising without looking at the ads might be unethical.  Now I've no objection to ad blockers - lots of people use them, mostly because they find advertising annoying and intrusive rather than because they want to kid themselves they're living in some cool, hipster, 'no logo' ethical wonderland.

We know there is a free rider problem with ad blockers (by getting the content without advertising you are, in effect, avoiding the fee for using that content) but this is a problem for the advertising business rather than something essentially unethical. And it is the case that some websites - especially news websites - are simply overloaded with advertising making the reader experience unpleasant.

Advertising - and we're celebrating (if that's the right word) 60 years of UK TV ads - is a central part of our culture. I consider that protecting rights to advertise is no different in its essence to protecting individual rights to speak. Of course, just as with speech, I don't have to listen to the adverts and I'm entitled to tune them out (consider how you read a newspaper or magazine to appreciate this 'tuning out'). And we retain the power to punish liars, cheats and con-men.

There is a great deal of ignorance about advertising - from the misplaced idea that advertising increases aggregate demand through to the persistent belief that there is a thing called 'subliminal advertising' that makes us buy stuff we don't want to buy. Plus of course that Nancy Klein rubbish about 'no logo' designed to make wealthy westerners feel righteous while suggesting that none of the world's problems are their fault - rather we get to blame 'corporations' (and particularly the ones we don't work for who own big shiny brands).

It's perfectly possible for an advert to be unethical - it might misinform, mislead or exploit - but this doesn't make advertising unethical. The 'Dark Patterns' site discusses practices that are, at best, sharp and, worst, deeply exploitative (as an aside very few of these practices that have only developed since the web became widespread - but then web marketing is mostly just direct marketing on steriods) reminding us that the process of selling is fraught. And that we should pay attention when we're spending our money.

Advertising is essential. Not just because it pays for news, entertainment and so forth (there are, after all, other models here) but because without it we have no information about what we're buying. We are faced with product choice - unless, of course, your anti-ad stance leads us to Soviet-style empty shelves - but no information allowing us to make that choice. Without advertising our modern world simply doesn't work.

The problem (not the free rider thing this time) advertisers face is how to get information to you when you are a reluctant recipient of that information. Partly because, as you keep saying, too much of the advertising isn't relevant. So advertisers take two approaches - either they seek out new media to get their message, a general message, across or else they try to target that message to the consumers they know are interested in that information. Good practice in the first case leads to the ubiquity of styles, symbols and images linked to a given product - it's brand. And those brands are very much part of the wallpaper of western society: instantly recognisable, friendly and comfortable.

In the second case, good practice focuses on how well we target, screen and interact with the consumer. The idea is that we don't want to talk to people who don't want to buy our product so we try to screen them out. The problem is that there are a load of techniques we know raise response (if you want to learn about these read 'The Solid Gold Mailbox') and some are exploitative, even unethical. And while there are advertising rules plus a self-regulatory body, it still rests with us as consumers to pay attention when we respond to something.

The free rider problem on-the web (which this ethical ad blocker highlights) is a problem for the businesses that operate on the web - if there's no revenue who pays for those achingly cool loft offices and provides the pay allowing the workers in those offices to buy extravagantly priced beard grooming products or designer water. Long-term it's a problem for user - for you and me - because, as we all know, nothing much comes for free. If we beat down advertising the result ('be careful what you wish for') is likely to be less choice, more expensive products and an infinitely duller world.

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Morals, ethics and the matter of paying taxes

As is the case with much of our national political discourse, the recent tit-for-tat over taxation is more notable for its sound and fury than for due consideration of the principles and issues being discussed. However, at the heart of all this is a very confused debate about the morality, ethics and practicality of paying and collecting taxes. A confused debate because these three things - morals, ethics and practical administration - are all muddled up in people's minds.

Part of the muddle is deliberate. Some on the left want to make the paying (or not paying) of taxes into a moral issue - indeed something of a moral crusade. In Bradford, we recently joined lots of other local councils by signing up to something called "Towns Against Tax-dodging" - a futile piece of political posturing but one that warms the cockles of some Labour councillors' hearts. Collectively we were 'sticking it to the man', sternly disapproving of those nameless, faceless plutocrats running tax-dodging businesses and pointing out that if they all paid loads more tax then we'd have no austerity. Or something like that.

And these moral crusaders have a point. Not one I agree with but a point nonetheless - these righteous folk believe that taxation is a moral issue. Such people believe collecting taxes isn't simply a practical thing, the means by which government gets the cash to do the things government does. For the true progressive believer tax is the means by which the wrongs of inequality are righted and the sins of capitalism mitigated or removed.

So when these bushy-tailed campaigners come across people who take a different view of tax from them, seeing it as, at best, a necessary evil, their instinct is to point and shout about their moral position. How dare such people - especially the ones with plenty of money - how dare they try to avoid paying taxes. Do they not realise how immoral such acts are, how they deny governments the cash to right wrongs and mitigate the corrupt world of those rich folk.

The problem is that this debate about morality is contested. Some people - quite a lot of people in truth - take a different (and equally valid) moral stance in believing that high rates of taxation, whoever they are levied on, are essentially immoral and that governments have a moral duty to keep levels of tax to a minimum. I know that the true progressives don't get this - or recognise it as a legitimate moral stance - but it is central to why the framing of our debate about taxation is misleading and unhelpful.

The place for resolving this debate about the morality of taxation, the role of taxation in society and the need (or not) for redistribution is in parliaments. Our political process exists precisely to resolve such disputes. And, given the nature of the system, we can expect the emphasis in taxation to swing backwards and forwards between tax as a tool for social betterment and tax as primarily a means to secure government revenues. None of this is about the specific behaviour of individuals engaging with the tax system.

Such individual behaviour is a matter of ethics rather than morals. And ethics tells us that our responsibility is to comply with the rules - essentially the morals - of the system. We make a distinction between the matter of keeping what we pay in tax to a minimum (avoidance) and not paying taxes we should have paid (evasion). In simple terms it is perfectly ethical to do the former and unethical (not to mention illegal) to do the latter.

The problem comes in the fairly extensive grey area between avoidance and evasion - what some now refer to as 'aggressive avoidance'. It's one thing, we might say, to make appropriate arrangements so as not to pay tax we don't have to pay. In my self-employed days I fully expected that the money I paid my accountant to complete my tax return would be more than covered by the money he was able to save me on my tax bill. But somehow this isn't quite in the same box as joining some complicated scheme so as to reduce tax - knowing full well that the only purpose of the scheme is to reduce that tax.

Such practices might be frowned upon - those true progressives who feel paying taxes is a matter of morality will be most frowny here - but, in strict terms, they are not unethical. Yet we have leapt on those using such schemes as if they were great sinners rather than people who, for whatever reason (probably the fine one of self-interest) choose to take a different moral stance on paying taxes. Some may not like - may even feel cheated in some way - by the schemes but the problem is the framing of tax rules not the ethics of the person legally reducing his tax liability. So the criticism should rest with the government or governments responsible for the rules of the tax game not those who make creative use of flaws in those rules (and the more rules there are the more holes and the more flaws).

There are two ways to deal with this problem. The first is to reduce the level of taxation - not just because it is morally right to do this but for the practical reason that lower taxes will mean less incentive to avoid paying those taxes. The second is to make tax rules less complicated, to cut out the reliefs, differential rates and other well meant (but exploited) elements of the tax code - with a simple uncomplicated tax the opportunity for avoidance is reduced.

In  the end we need to be rather more relaxed about the problem. Rather than point fingers at all the bad people who selfishly want to keep more of the money they're earned for their own uses, what we should be doing is trying to work out how to match those folks selfishness with our interests. That way everybody wins. For sure there's a moral debate about tax but, in truth, it's a pretty practical business that should be determined by the reality of Colbert's observation that “the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.”

Right now there's a lot of hissing which suggests we might have got the balance wrong.

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Why don't people complain about bad public services?

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Perhaps it's the futility of the exercise?

Nearly half of people who complained about problems with a public service in the past year felt their complaint was ignored, according to new research from Which?

The research also found that a third of people who experienced problems with public services did not complain, with most saying it was not worth the effort. Of those that did complain, 39% said they were unhappy with the outcome.

I don't know about my councillor colleagues but these findings are something of a damning statement about our councils' services (not to mention other public agencies services). Not that we get stuff wrong and generate complaints but that the public - or a whole lot of them - don't think complaining is worth while and, when they do complain, the response from the offending public service isn't good enough.

We spend a lot of time (well I don't but lots of officers and councillors do) pontificating about 'public sector ethos' and sneeringly referring to the private sector as a place of wickedness and ethical inadequacy. What this Which survey tells us is that all this grand talk of public sector moral superiority is just a load of wibble when is comes to the very basics of service.

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Cooperative chutzpah..

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It makes me smile to hear the Coop justify its bail out and fire sale:

“Lets remember that the bank has always been a PLC and it always has had the ownership structure of a mutual organisation around that. That remains.

“We still have the majority stake in our bank and that provides us with the opportunity to lead our bank in an ethical, community-based, responsible way and that is a core part of our business plan going forward.”

The sort of ethical and responsible way that leads you to bad due diligence and the calling in of 7,000 ordinary folks' savings? The sort of 'ethical' that thinks it fine to rob the pensions of ordinary, risk-averse people who thought the Co-op a righteous safe haven for their cash?  That sort of ethical, the sort of ethical we'd only see from a mutual! Or are they just like all the other banks?

Such chutzpah is a delight.

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Lawyers - the world's most unethical marketers?

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Over the past fortnight or so we have be somewhat plagued by telephone calls seeking to flog us something. And the thing that connects most of these calls is that they all link in some way or another to the legal profession and its agents.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people who reacts to marketing calls by calling for bans or controls or the evisceration of the caller. Indeed, direct marketing was my business a while back and its principles still matter - more and more in this age of direct response, internet marketing and e-commerce.

But can someone explain why that most self-important of businesses - the law - has rushed headlong into the least ethical forms of marketing. We've had automated calls, spam texts, calls from people with English names but very thick foreign accents and a torrent of e-mails. This is all well and good (although the automated calls are probably illegal as may be much of the spam texts) but the lack of ethics in our legal brethren extends to the brief given to the caller. Here's a typical conversation:

Caller: "Can I speak to Mr Toldendo" (note: these is no person with this name but there is a Ms Toledano)

Me: "Who are you calling from?"

Caller: "We're calling about your recent accident"

Me: "And where did you get this information from?" (note: there has been no recent accident)

Caller: "From the national database."

Me: "There is no such national database. Where did you get the information?"

Caller: "It's the insurance companies..."

Me: "No you didn;t, they don't give out that information."

And so on - you get the gist. Yet the main beneficiaries of this sort of scam are lawyers - they're the ones who reap the big rewards. I recall seeing details of a successful claim against an employer. The employee with white finger got about £5,000. And the lawyers? They got over £20,000. Which I guess is why they can afford to fund these unethical marketing campaigns.

I can think of no other profession or area of business - not even home improvements - that has indulged in such an avalanche of invasive and deceptive marketing. Quite frankly the legal profession - especially given its penchant for lecturing the rest of us about ethics - has won the prize for the least ethical approach to sales and marketing.

It may be that lawyers are the world's most unethical marketers?

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Enough of the moralising - people avoid taxes because they are too high.

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There is no point at which paying or not paying taxes is a matter of morals. There may be some ethical questions involved – complying with the law, for example – but tax is not a moral issue. Here is the legal bit from Lord Clyde in the 1929 case of Ayrshire v Inland Revenue:

"No man in the country is under the smallest obligation, moral or other, so to arrange his legal relations to his business or property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest possible shovel in his stores. The Inland Revenue is not slow, and quite rightly, to take every advantage which is open to it under the Taxing Statutes for the purposes of depleting the taxpayer's pocket. And the taxpayer is in like manner entitled to be astute to prevent, so far as he honestly can, the depletion of his means by the Inland Revenue"

See folks even lawyers and judge think taxes are about rules not morals. So what frothing demon has possessed the Treasury Minister, David Gauke:

"When a tradesman says, 'Here's a 10%, a 20% discount on your bill if you pay me cash in hand' that is facilitating the hidden economy. That's as big a problem in terms of loss to the Exchequer as tax avoidance. Revenue is not being paid as it should be paid."

Is it? Can Mr Gauke be so sure that receiving cash means avoiding VAT or non-declaration of income? I suspect that he cannot and, more to the point, so what? The rules about taxes are pretty simple – if they are low, easily understood and hard to dodge people pay them. Under every other system people try to avoid them.

More to the point, the reason for the tradesman offering discount for cash isn’t known to me. The plumber or electrician doesn’t say “because that means I won’t put it through the books” or “otherwise you’ll have to pay VAT” – he just says; “I’d prefer cash, guv!”

And what about the sweet shop or the bakers where I always pay cash – “that’ll be £3.47 thanks”, I’m going to pay that by cheque!

Or better still there’s the informal time-banking approach – I do your website/books/leaflets and you fix my boiler. No cash changes hand but everybody receives the service. Perhaps Mr Gauke might like to think about taxing barter.

I am mighty fed up with this newly found penchant for wagging the moral finger – I fear that it is the sign of a government that has rather lost its way. One day we hear ministers threatening to name and same celebrities (however defined) for some presumed moral infraction rather than any actual tax dodging. And the next the idiot minister is telling us we are moral lepers for paying the ironing lady in cash.

All I can say is that I intend to go on paying in cash where the supplier wants cash and especially where I get a lower price. And if that means the government gets a little less income to waste on stupid nuclear missiles, dozens of “special advisors” and a host of grand projects designed merely to make some minister look good then so much the better.

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On corporate social responsiblity...

I’ve always had something of a problem with “corporate social responsibility” – the idea that business has a wider duty beyond its purpose as a business. I have a still bigger problem with the confusing of this concept with “ethical behaviour”. Here’s Ken Costa, the man charged with finding a form of “ethical capitalism”:

“The present duty – on all boards to maximise shareholder value as the sole criteria for satisfying the return to shareholders – cannot continue... I am aware that this is a big change that will need detailed discussion, but we need to start with big ideas.  For some time and particularly during the exuberant irrationality of the last few decades, the market economy has shifted from its moral foundations with disastrous consequences. I cannot recall when public feeling worldwide has run so high, and even if only a minority takes its anger on to the streets, no one should imagine that the majority is indifferent to their cause.”

Now there’s a place for shareholders to discuss their expectations from Boards of Directors – those they appoint to represent their interests as owners of the business. It’s called the Annual General Meeting and, at that meeting, shareholders can appoint a board or directors that can take a different view that maximising the return on the investment those shareholders make. I’m pretty sure it won’t happen because the reason why shareholders invest is to secure a return on that investment – and we expect it to be the maximum possible.

The point I’m making here is that the corporation exists to serve the purposes of its owners and investors and that such activity is entirely ethical and moral. Indeed, were Directors to take it on themselves to reduce the returns to investors because of some other purpose – some wider “social responsibility” – they would be acting unethically. This is the dilemma of corporate social responsibility – if it is more than trading honestly and complying with the law, then it must be against the interests of the shareholders unless it is merely a marketing strategy or corporate positioning.

In all of this bear in mind that the owners of a business (or to be accurate 50% plus 1 of those owners) can do what they wish – including reducing financial returns in the interests of a wider social purpose.  But it would be wrong if directors acted without the approval of shareholders in taking such a course.

Ken Costa is right that many people are angry about a system they feel led to the problems the world faces right now. However, I am sure that the duty to secure returns for shareholders wasn’t the cause of those problems or the creator of some crisis in capitalism. What is central to all this debate is for us to rediscover the joy of the marketplace and to recognise that, for markets to work, people have to behave (in the strict sense of the word rather than its modern corruption) ethically. Ken Costa gets close to this concept:

Our task is thus to build up trust, both within and beyond the financial world, a slow, bottom-up, trade-by-trade business. It is to rebalance the equilibrium between risk, responsibility and reward. It is to re-embed the financial spirit, our drive to do well, with the moral spirit, our desire to do good. Above all it is to reconnect the various different silos of our humanity – economic, moral and spiritual – so that we live as whole people all the time and not simply as money-makers on weekdays and morally concerned citizens at the weekend.

For me the question is how do we have a system where the right behaviour – moral, ethical or whatever – secures the greatest reward. This isn’t about corporations or institutions but about people changing their behaviour. We cannot legislate for morality but we can educate people so moral and ethical behaviour is second nature.

Finally, we must stop seeking to condemn people for their success, good fortune or wealth – the “bash a banker” or “pillory a politician” approach. Nor should we turn our back on the idea or markets, enterprise and trade – these are fundamental elements of our humanity not some creation of mankind. Rejecting them would be as immoral as was their corrupting through the hubris that was the end to boom and bust.

Above all we must not place on corporations duties we do not place on ourselves – which is what “corporate social responsibility” means and it why it is wrong.

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Does research funding make scientists unethical?

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Today’s Times makes a mountain from the wholly unsurprising news that big oil companies have funded research organisations and lobbyists. And that part of this funding relates to the debate around anthropogenic climate change. Apparently such funding is officially a bad thing – at least so far as the media are concerned. Presumably this is done on the “whoever pays the piper calls the tune” principle – or rather the jaundiced belief that intelligent, ethical scientific researchers would never take money from wicked bad business. Only nasty corrupt scientists would do that.

All this, of course, puts us at the heart of the debate about the funding of scientific research, the impact such funding has on the integrity of the researchers and whether the funder really does call the tune in terms of research findings. Others are more able than I to answer these questions but there is a further point relating to state and NGO funded research.

It seems to me that, if the cynics are right and private sector funded research is compromised by the agenda and/or objectives of the funder then we must ask the same questions of research funded from public and charitable sources. After all these organisations (and those who manage them) have an ‘agenda’ – a set of aims and objectives – and would not be too happy if the findings of the research compromised or undermined those objectives. What would happen, for example, if research funded by the Department for Energy & Climate Change or by WWF raised serious doubts about anthropogenic global warming? The little devil on my shoulder suggests that such findings would be lost somewhere in the vast overhang of paperwork within the funding organisation!

And this is the point – all research runs the risk of being compromised by the requirements of the funder, whoever that funder might be. This does not mean the research is wrong, badly conducted or unreliable (although all of these things can apply it is a logical fallacy to link them to the funding) or that such research doesn’t contribute to the totality of our understanding. However, I find it rather sad that we have reached this juncture.

Let’s speculate that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation funds me to conduct a study of social capital in Cullingworth. Do you, dear reader, think that I will be somehow less of a laissez faire liberal because I’m funded by a bunch of statist, interventionist lefties? Thought so – my integrity on such matters is clear (which is probably why JRF won’t be funding me)!

So why then do some of you think other ethical, responsible researchers are compromised by being funded by an oil company, a publisher, a charity or the Government?

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Banks, budgets and the Archbishop calling for unethical behaviour

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Every now and then national newspapers – in what I guess is some form of social service – hand over prominent columns to senior churchmen. Mostly the resulting mushy thinking can be ignored or ridiculed in the same manner we treat thought for the day but sometimes the opinions expressed are thoroughly disturbing.

The Sunday Telegraph published a column penned by the Archbishop of Westminster – England’s top catholic priest – in which he urges the banks (or more specifically the leaders of banks) to behave unethically.

A key part of the change needed is to forge a cultural consensus in the financial sector that its licence to operate depends on a clear and demonstrable commitment to service. Of course, profits have to be made if an efficient and thriving financial sector is in fact to serve society. But the ethical judgment, which has to be transmitted right through the organisations concerned, is that profit must only be a means to this end, and not an end in itself. We have a long way to go to achieve this.

What the priest is saying is that managers within banks should make decisions that are not about securing the maximum return on the capital invested in the business. So what, I hear you all saying? This is wrong – not just against the interests of the business but straightforwardly unethical. Those managers – however much they are paid – are merely agents of the business owners. And the business owners require that the business focus on maximising return on investment (I know this because I am one of those business owners).

Secondly this priest says that financial organisations operate only under licence. Where on earth he gets this idea from (perhaps it comes from on high) but it is again suggesting that there should be some other relationship of significance beside those between owners and managers and between the business and its customers. Again it is unethical to suggest that a business should only operate under some unspecified entitlement rather than as a consequence of the free use of property.

The article then descends into typical priest-speak about social justice, equality and demonstrating a profound ignorance of economics and the point of measuring economic performance. And up pops the mushy thinking:

A great deal of the support which any government needs in such difficult circumstances will depend on the extent to which it is seen to be acting impartially and prudently, with a demonstrable care for basic human needs and a continuing sense of our responsibility in the wider world. A powerfully positive message will be sent if in Tuesday’s Budget the overseas aid programme to assist the development of the world’s poorest people is not cut.

Sorry Archbishop but the support for the government will come if it’s seen to be sorting out the mess – that’s it really. Where it matters – the bond markets, the stock exchange, the real economy – the positive response will come if the deficit is eliminated and the debt begins to fall. And not giving India £300 million thereby allowing them to buy up our manufacturing industry might be a good start towards achieving that aim.

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A mad economist writes (some tips on policy-making from over the pond)

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The Whited Sepulchre reminds us – and a welcome reminder it is to – about some economic truths that too many commenters ignore. The good blogger asks a series of questions to which you might respond with one of these: 1) Strongly Agree, 2) Somewhat Agree, 3) Somewhat Disagree, 4) Strongly Disagree, or 5) Not Sure.

The questions are:

Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those services.

Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago.

Rent control leads to housing shortages.

A company with the largest market share is not a monopoly.

Third World workers working for American companies overseas are not being exploited.

Free trade does not leads to unemployment.

Minimum wage laws raise unemployment.

Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable.

Now I know The Whited Sepulchre is an American and they speak slightly differently from us but these are important questions. And it is important that we understand the right answers and what they mean for policy making.

The right answer, dear reader, is either ‘strongly agree’ or ‘agree’ in every case (and don’t go trying all that ‘ethical’, ‘socially responsible’ stuff – this is economics we’re talking here and economics is amoral). Having established this we can make informed policy decisions rather than emotive appeals to specific target audiences or ideological obsessions.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have minimum wages, development control or rent measures but we do at least know that these decisions have a downside (which may or may not be significant). And we’ll get away from nonsensical statements like these:

Raising the minimum wage will increase employment by getting people off benefits

The planning system has no influence on house prices

Making trainers in Vietnam is immoral

…and so on. We allow what we would like to be the case to govern our decisions rather than what actually is the case. I’m reminded as ever of the wise words of P.J. O’Rourke:

I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat. God is an elderly or, at any rate, middle aged male, a stern fellow, patriarchal rather than paternal and a great believer in rules and regulations. He holds men accountable for their actions. He has little apparent concern for the material well being of the disadvantaged. He is politically connected, socially powerful and holds the mortgage on literally everything in the world. God is difficult. God is unsentimental. It is very hard to get into God's heavenly country club. Santa Claus is another matter. He's cute. He's nonthreatening. He's always cheerful. And he loves animals. He may know who's been naughty and who's been nice, but he never does anything about it. He gives everyone everything they want without the thought of quid pro quo. He works hard for charities, and he's famously generous to the poor. Santa Claus is preferable to God in every way but one: There is no such thing as Santa Claus.

Were Santa Claus an Englishman he would vote Labour. We already know God’s a Tory!

20 reasons why we get the MPs we deserve.

Have you ever:

1. Inflated an insurance claim
2. Claimed expenses for something you would have paid for regardless
3. Not owned up to being undercharged
4. Purchased smuggled booze or fags
5. Bought something you know (or suspect) was stolen
6. Watched a bootleg video
7. Lifted a top shelf magazine (boys only) or some sweets
8. Claimed back VAT on a non-business purchase
9. Paid for goods or services in cash to avoid VAT
10. Not declared cash earnings
11. Raised a false complaint just to get a refund
12. Taken something from your work for personal use
13. Had a day off when you weren't sick
14. Fiddled an hour or two on a time sheet
15. Attended to private matters on work time
16. Dodged a bus or train fare
17. Charged a client for more time than was spent on his business
18. Asked a taxi driver or restaurant for an inflated receipt
19. Made up a family or personal problem to get time off
20. Taken towels or a dressing gown from an hotel

I could go on with this list for some while but I think the point is made. If you've done some of these things do you really believe that - given the opportunity to fiddle that our MPs had - you wouldn't have fiddled? Thought so!