Basic income, human nature and freedom

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I thought about this basic income idea - it sounds, as these things do, wonderfully Utopian:

A basic income is an income unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement.

And, for it to make any sort of sense, it has to be big enough for people not to have to work so as to live. According to some this is a good thing but I'm not so sure - it does rather depend on the nature of the choices made by individuals whose only options are low paid work at a level slightly above the basic income.

I recall a lecture on crime and social conditions during my masters degree study. The lecturer (I'm afraid I forget his name) began by asking us: "would you work 35 hours a week for £7?" That was - give or take a few pence - the difference then between what we might get on benefits and what we might earn in a low paid job. The response was mixed - some said 'yes' arguing that this might lead to opportunities for still more lucrative work while others said 'no' since there is no real prospect of advancement (and we could earn a little on the black).

The idea of basic income makes this even more stark. That £7 a week job is now gone since the basic income is far in excess of the previous level of benefits. And because that income is enough to live on (that's the whole point after all), the number of people who become drones - living off the efforts of others - increases and is not tolerated. It may seem cute to say this:

Jobs are scarce, so it's better for workers if some are subsidized not to seek them, leaving more opportunities for those who do want to work.

...but that little tic of common sense suggests that those idling their lives away on basic income will be resented by those working and paying for their idleness. And that more and more people would seek such a life - after all most people see their job as a means to an end rather than an end in itself. So if the reason for working - providing for self and family - is removed, these people will stop working. And will be resented by those who are working.

All this is wrapped up in the view that there are too many people - or rather, too many workers. And that this problem will increase as technology finds more ways to do things without people that now require people to do them. Hence we need to either find things for the surplus to do ("the government must create jobs") or else we pay them to sit around doing nothing.

In the end, if we pay people to do nothing (in the mistaken belief that there's nothing productive for them to do) what we'll end up with is the corvée. The workers (assuming there's a sufficiency of them) will expect those idling around on a basic income to do something. And government will find that something. The drones stop being an escape valve for supposed excess labour and become a slave resource for the wealthy governors.

Welcome to the new slave state, the 21st century oikos society!

So a glimpse at the possible future. In his monumental “History of Government”, Finer used the Greek word oikos to describe ancient world governments. Oikos means “the household” which for the Greeks meant family under a male head including slaves and other dependents. We are headed back towards such a polity – where we are free in our daily actions within the constraints placed on that freedom by the government and its advisors. And the product of our labour belongs not to us but to the group and to the state – not through confiscation but through a combination of taxation and benefit dependency. It may even be the case that those out of work will be directed toward “socially useful” labour – a precursor of which we see in Labour’s “Future Jobs Fund”. Future jobs are not wealth creating but have a social purpose paid for either through taxation or (less likely) through philanthropy.

It may be "efficient" but it won't be free.

I prefer free.
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Socialism died in 1989 - now we must destroy its shadow

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Socialism died at the end of the 1980s. For sure, its corpse twitched and jerked for a few years but there's no doubt that it died. And that it won't be missed. Here's Dan Hodges reminding us:

She won. Hers was not a superficial victory, but a final settlement. In the 1980s the Left framed the battle with Thatcherism as a final reckoning. And they were right, it was. And it was Thatcher who emerged victorious.

In truth it wasn't just Margaret Thatcher or even her and Ronald Reagan. It was a catalogue of great men and women - Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Helmut Kohl, even Gorbachev from the evil empire.

Socialism died. The trouble is so many didn't get the news. They didn't see how free enterprise, free trade, privatisation and free capital movement - that lovely neoliberalism - was making the world a better place. Wealthier, happier, more equal - all the things those socialists claimed for their failed creed. Except for the actually working bit.

It beggars belief that intelligent people continue to delude themselves that we can plan, organise and direct all the economy. That clever men can make better choices for you and me than we can make for ourselves. Eastern Europe - all those Poles, Slovaks, Romanians and Bulgars we fear will flock to England - is poor because of socialism. It really is that simple.

The next generation has to destroy the shadow of this dead creed. Or else we will watch as other places - places we once pitied as starving basket cases - start to catch us up. Watch as we squander the inheritance of our past success on a make believe economy - one where public spending, the modern equivalent of taking in each others washing, creeps ever higher and where the chimera of borrowing-driven consumption eats away at wealth and prosperity.

If we don't slay socialism's shadow, we will all be poorer. And for some that may mean the relative poverty socialists bleat about becoming real poverty. A poverty created by the vainglory and hubris of the socialist.

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Sorry Ms Moore, I'm right wing and I believe in freedom

There has, it seems, been some great debate amongst assorted "equalities" mongers - indeed the debate has descended into a row and from there spiralled down into political protest. And all because of something that Suzanne Moore said.

So the Guardian, seeking to pour oil upon these troubled waters, gives Ms Moore the space to explain herself (as it were). In doing so she launches into a justification founded on a belief in freedom:

...I feel increasingly freakish because I believe in freedom, which is easier to say than to achieve and makes me wonder if I am even of "the left" any more.

Of course, Ms Moore spends the rest of her article explaining how she's still a leftie really and that believing in freedom is a good thing. In doing this she can't resist positioning herself away from those on the right who claim to believe in freedom:

What we have is a few rightwingers who took some E in a field once and so claim to be libertarians, but are in fact Thatcherite misogynists. We have the double-think of "free schools", which exclude those who most need them. We have "freedom" for the very rich to take from the very poor while lecturing them on their moral poverty. We have women and gay people pushed into the conformity of lifelong monogamy, even though it clearly does not work for so many.

You see what Ms Moore has done here? That's right, she's parked the idea of free speech (that she claims to support) and sought to redefine freedom as something that cannot reside with the right. Now I'm a right-winger (although I never took an E in a field) and I don't recognise Ms Moore's argument. For sure, I've no time for those patronising sorts who want to judge the lifestyle choices of working-class people - you know the drinking, smoking and shagging. But I don't see this sort of middle-class disgust at such lifestyles as a peculiarity of the right. Indeed, the Guardian-reading left is perhaps more guilty of wanting to make moral judgements about lifestyle.

The problem for Ms Moore is that she likes the license of sexual liberation and the idea that no-one should have their talent dismissed simply because of their gender, sexual preferences, skin colour or accent. But she can't get her mind round the idea of economic freedom - the free enterprise and free trade bits of the great triumvirate of liberties.

As a Conservative, freedom is central to be world view. It is what we fought to secure, it is why we stand in silence every November to remember and it's why we get involved in politics. If freedom were secure - and secure for ever - then we could return to the plough and get on with the joy of life. But that freedom is threatened - by the sorts who would deny Ms Moore her words but also by those who would let others starve to protect their own income and position, by those who would create monopolies and by those who would castigate someone for the dreadful crime of creating jobs, wealth and success.

Suzanne Moore is right about freedom. But wrong to try and suggest - even to hint - that freedom can only be owned by the left.

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The consumer society is a consequence of freedom

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Earnest folk - whether they are slightly puritanical "traditional conservatives" or frothing left-wing greens - tell us that the consumer society is wicked. This is either because it harms our souls or because - in some unspecified manner - in harms 'the planet'.

Well I've news for you both, the consumer society is here to stay just so long as we keep hold of the idea of liberty. I am reminded:

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.  The maxim is so perfectly self-evident that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it.

Yet we hear always of production as the positive, pundits talk earnestly of exports as if they were more important than imports and of how we must work harder. We are enjoined to be more competitive - an utterly meaningless term. And all the while the greenies are urging us to 'consume less', to adopt a trajectory towards the rude hut and digging stick, away from the evil and sinful electrical society in which we live (and which we love).

But worst are those who would drag us back to protectionism, to industrial strategies and to a unionised labour force - to a less free society. These are the ones who fulfil the second half of the Adam Smith quote:

...in the mercantile system the interest of the consumer is almost constantly sacrificed to that of the producer; and it seems to consider production, and not consumption, as the ultimate end and object of all industry and commerce.

It isn't. We live to consume, to enjoy the bounty that our world and our creativity has made for us. To condemn 'underemployment' as some sort of curse rather than realising that it means more time for other things is the summation of this obsession with work and production.

So we must produce so we might consume. We may get pleasure from that production. But it is not our purpose here...

...our purpose here is to have the best time and the most fun we can, To eat, drink, drive fast cars, smoke cheroots, bungee jump, jet ski, knit, paint, sing, drum and throw balls. Or just to sit on the bank in the sunshine watching the world around us.

This is the consumer society. And we have it because we are free.

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Free speech, free enterprise, free trade...

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...and while I’m about it free choice and free markets.

It hurts doesn’t it! I’ve been struck by the swiftness with which people have told me that, yes, believing in free speech, free enterprise and free trade are great but that this doesn’t mean supporting free markets. Because free markets are a bad thing.

Don’t you just love the division of freedoms? We launch enthusiastically into supporting freedoms where we like them but feel unable to back those freedoms where they don’t suit our prejudices. So here’s a little game with my three freedoms.

Supporting free speech means:

• Opposing the arresting of people for the ‘crime’ of causing offence - free speech means having the right to offend and to be offended.
• Believing that there is no institution, religion or organisation that is above criticism or immune from satire – free speech means having the right to criticise, to question and to condemn
• Rejecting the banning of advertising – marketing communication is speech and should be free, to suggest otherwise is to undermine free speech

Supporting free enterprise means:

• Believing that there are almost no circumstances where “more regulation” is either right or appropriate – free enterprise can only work where markets are free
• Rejecting the concept of ‘market failure’ – markets always and everywhere, when left to their own devices, succeed and failure is the result of intervention
• Opposing market fixing devices such as guilds, registrations, subsidies and regulations that restrict market entry – free enterprise requires a level playing field not a protected system

Supporting free trade means:

• Rejecting managed markets – and this includes so-called “fair trade” – since they prevent free exchange and free enterprise
• Opposing protectionism in all its forms whether regulatory or financial – tariffs, duties, anti-dumping rules, quotas and environmental or employment regulation
• Supporting the liberalising of international markets in finance, government services and insurance – without free trade in these areas, other trading arrangements are compromised

This is the deal with freedom – it doesn’t come in tidy little units where we can have a little free speech but not have free trade. If you want it you have to want it all. So when people try to tell me that they want a free press but not a free market in news (because of the big bad Murdoch) then they are, in truth rejecting that free speech. When people say they want free enterprise but that free markets must be controlled, I know that they don’t support free enterprise. And when people tell me they support fair trade (and suggest that this is somehow ‘ethical’), they are no friend of freedom.

All these freedoms interlock – dividing them doesn’t work and diluting one freedom compromises another. It’s hard to have free enterprise without free speech, free trade requires free enterprise and the ability to choose, interact and exchange is central to any society laying claim to being free.

Those three things – free speech, free enterprise and free trade – are the things that matter. And we know they’re working when we have free markets, free assembly and free choice.

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...a reminder of neo-conservatism's curse

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Neo-Conservatism, bastard child of the ghastly Kennedy administration in the USA, has a lot to answer for and this is a reminder:

...on the death of George McGovern. The best thing you (Wall Street Journal) could find to say about him is that later in life he learned about the burdens of government regulation of business. But many conservatives and libertarians who love the free market as much as you do also value and praise him for his opposition to the ultimately pointless war in Vietnam. The war was an indirect cause of inflation, price controls and, most importantly, the loss of life of too many Americans (and Vietnamese) of my generation.

Those who know the subject of my first degree will understand that this story - the terrible catastrophe of Vietnam - really matters to me.  Sadly America repeated the mistake - in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Libya.

Pray god (if there is one still watching) that America won't make the same mistake in Syria or Iran. Or anywhere else for that matter.

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Libertarianism is a political programme not a set of economic policy options

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The thing with criticisms of libertarianism is that people fail to understand that it is a political project - a desire to break the state and rebuild a free society - not an exercise in economic choice-making. Hence this:

...if Johnson had been president in 2008, he would have allowed the U.S. financial system to collapse and the country to fall into depression. And if he became president now, he would do his best to strangle the tepid recovery we are enjoying and turn it into another severe recession.

Perhaps but the author is trapped inside and can't see the label on the jar that says "Government Jam - contains no freedom". As with other proponents of national account mathematics as a replacement for economic thinking, this author cannot see that the supposed "solutions" from the US government (and for that matter our government here in the UK) merely stir the 'Government Jam'. Voices will say that lessons have been learnt and that the banks will be controlled but is this not simply to repeat past errors?


Firstly, why is it said that banks cannot be allowed to fail? Are these institutions of state or businesses? If they are the former then why were they allowed to operate outside the direct control of the state? And, if the latter, why are the rules different from those applying to other businesses? If we believe in a free system, then businesses - including banks - must be allowed to fail. Those who argue otherwise do not support or believe in freedom and might as well just toddle off and join the Marxists.

Secondly, when did we decide that the government's job was to "run the economy"? This viewpoint now dominates economic thinking - or rather what passes for it within the corridors or power (and the organs of crypto-fascists like Bloomberg). Again, if we believe in freedom then it is mistaken to believe that government can "run the economy" without curtailing that freedom. And, moreover, the idea that something as complicated as the US economy can be "run" by anything or anybody is hubris. Yet the view that the economy is an institution as opposed to a system still corrupts our thinking:

Speaking in purely descriptive and functional terms, the distributive institutions of society are what makes any given bit of money “your money.”

The flaw in this argument is the same flaw that drives the economic policies of national and international governments and organisations - that the economy is an institution to be managed not a system to be used.

Thirdly - and finally - this entire argument echoes this famous dictum:

"All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."

Without the state there can be no freedom. Without freedom there can be no prosperity. Therefore the state must be everything. Today this is achieved through dominating consumption through public spending and through the exercise of regulatory control rather than through the more brutal methods preferred by the man whose words are quoted above. But the object is the same - a directed, corporate state under the control of technocratic experts.

In the end libertarianism is a political project setting itself against the established institutions. And it does so because those institutions corrupt the effective operation of the free system. For sure, the proponents of state orthodoxy claim that we are not to be trusted with free enterprise, free trade and free speech (merely moderated shades of these things).

If you reject this system of the world - controlling but failed once and failing again - then you must argue either for the forcible end of free markets or for the advance of liberty. There are some - proponents of the idea that all the money is government's bounteously scattered upon the infantilised masses - who want a totalitarian state of courageous proportions.

Libertarianism is a political idea not an alternative approach to the failed economics of the establishment. If people fail to appreciate this and treat it as just another set of policy options then they are missing the point. The banks should be allowed to fail because to bail them out is an act of corruption, the protection of the wealthy from the consequences of their mistakes. Government's exist as protectors - guarantors if you will - of rights and freedoms not as managers of the economy.

I remain sceptical of this creed - it tips a little towards an anarcho-capitalism I'm sure can't work - but I'd rather take the risk of heading this way than remain in the seemingly inevitable spiral towards state control that current policies imply. I do not wish to live in a world where liberty and choice are limited by government - doled out like sweeties as a way to keep us content but removed whenever those choices or liberties threaten the institutions where power sits.

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It's not the government's money - none of it

Understand this:

"The State has no source of money other than the money people earn themselves." 

It is not the case - however much some folk want to tell us so - that the government is the source of value. This isn't to say government has no purpose but to say that not only isn't there a money tree in the basement of the Bank of England but to claim so is to perpetrate a gross and unforgivable deception.

But it is worse to manufacture a whole ideology that believes all money emerges magically from the state. This is to rediscover the god emperor, to carve a 21st century' oikos' and to create a new slave state. The revelation of liberalism is not that we discovered the power of the state for good but that we gave ourselves the tools to escape from leviathan - personal freedon, personal choice and personal responsibility.

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"Live Free Or Die..." - thoughts on the imperative of freedom

“Live Free or Die!” goes the motto of New Hampshire – not for that place these cute Latin bon mots but a raw, clear and understandable statement of political intent.

The motto became "Live Free Or Die," as once voiced by General John Stark, the state’s most distinguished hero of the Revolutionary War, and the world famous Old Man of the Mountain was voted the official state emblem.

The motto was part of a volunteer toast which General Stark sent to his wartime comrades, in which he declined an invitation to head up a 32nd anniversary reunion of the 1777 Battle of Bennington in Vermont, because of poor health. The toast said in full: "Live Free Or Die; Death Is Not The Worst of Evils." The following year, a similar invitation (also declined) said: "The toast, sir, which you sent us in 1809 will continue to vibrate with unceasing pleasure in our ears, "Live Free Or Die; Death Is Not The Worst Of Evils."

We take liberty lightly because we want to believe the best of those around us – including those whose job is to serve. And, as a result, we accept constraints on liberty because they seem for most of us little more than an inconvenience. While we would find it odd to have to justify a daily journey, we accept other little bites into our freedom – the requirement to identify ourselves, the cameras peering at our movements, the regulation of our business and the restriction of our pleasures.

Too often, people who lay claim to being conservatives are in the vanguard of these little attacks on liberty – for, they tell us, freedom is nothing without security. It is as if the post-apocalypse story – perhaps The Postman, maybe just Mad Max – is burned into our psyche. Without authority, without the security that authority brings there is unrule, anarchy, chaos.

At the same time – without any hesitation – those same conservatives cry freedom. The spirit of free enterprise is invoked, the idea of a free nation is proclaimed and, over in New Hampshire, the nation dubs itself; “Land of the Free”. This conflict – between security and liberty – is central to conservatism – it is not resolved any more than the socialist can resolve the need for social control and the idea of man’s perfection. But I will always argue that the imperative of freedom must win – that is the message in the New Hampshire motto, not that freedom means license but that living free, in peace and independent is the aim of politics, government and the life we live.

When asked what drives my politics I usually respond:

“Free Speech, Free Enterprise, Free Trade”

And of these I wrote:

These are the three things that matter most to me - fighting for them is the reason I remain in politics. Little else matters when you get to the crunch - free speech opens the doors of discovery, free enterprise allows us to create wonders from that discovery and free trade allows the riches of that discovery and creation to be shared by all.

Whenever people propose new rules, the controlling of things they don’t like and the directing of people to your purpose rather than theirs, I look at it through the prism of these three freedoms. For it is those very things I wish to conserve – if by the setting of rules we lose some of that liberty, speech, enterprise or trade are compromised then, as conservatives, we should oppose.

“Live Free or Die...” – understanding this is central to conservatism. It is the imperative of freedom.

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“...it’s not a matter of whether you win or lose but how you place the blame”

 

I recall a ‘Peanuts’ cartoon that took the rise out of an old saw with:

“...it’s not a matter of whether you win or lose but how you place the blame”

We all smiled but underneath this pleasure at a little witticism lies a darker truth – we do, all of us, seek to lay the blame somewhere other than on ourselves. And with this goes our pleasure – that schadenfreude – at going over past failings so as to point the finger of condemnation, to lay the blame. Such passing of responsibility’s buck has become not only institutionalised but expensive.

The Saville report's numbers are their own indictment – 434 days in session, 12 years from inception to publication, a £191m budget, tens of millions of words and finally a retail price of £572.

It’s not for me to enquire whether this enquiry provided catharsis for those involved or merely a bully pulpit for republicanism but merely for us to appreciate that the blame game now sits at the core of how we behave. Everywhere we look people seek excuses for this mistakes, faults and failings – we have become a nation of Heinz Kiosks crying at every opportunity: “we are all guilty”.

We have become dependent rather than free, supplicants to the state in all its forms and ready to play a fine hand of excuses – race, sex, social upbringing, drink, drugs, peer pressure – whenever something goes wrong. We are no longer prepared – unless forced by authority – to accept personal responsibility for our lives and how we live them.

For the conservative this is a problem – personal responsibility is central to what we believe. Yet human instinct seems to draw us away from accepting that responsibility – the first response of the sales clerk or shop assistant is seldom to apologise. More usually it is to seek excuse – to explain why the product or service failed. As if we care about how short staffed they are or how the supplier let them down or whether they were ill - that is their problem, not mine. It is their responsibility.

The problem is that this culture of dependence and supplication leads us to an expectation that our problems will be resolved by others – parents, employer and, most commonly, the government. The state must act to “create jobs”, to “protect families”, to “promote well-being” – to lay down “solutions” to all the problems of our lives. And when there’s a problem – new or old – there’s a lobby group on hand and opposition politicians ready and waiting to call for action, for “something to be done”.

There are two big problems with this dependence – the first is that is creates a class of folk dependent on the government. Either because they – in ever larger numbers – work for that government or because they are financially dependent on the handouts of that government (rather ironically called “benefits”). But there is a second problem, more insidious yet – the rejection by so many of any responsibility for ordering their lives divides society.

The big divide in western societies is no longer between rich and poor, nor is it between ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ classes, the big schism is between the dependent and the independent. Between those who, most of the time, act independently of government and those who depend on the state. The growth of the latter – of the state-dependent – squeezes out private action and initiative, stifles innovation. Why get involved, why innovate when there is a benign state to care for us? I recall my mother bemoaning how difficult it was to recruit volunteers for the day centre – the most common reason for rejection: “that’s the council’s job”.

The principle of responsibility has become so compromised that it results in injustice:

Reggie Bush is a good case in point. Playing for the University of Southern California, he won the 2005 Heisman Trophy as the most outstanding college football player in the USA, while his team won the national championship. The results of an NCAA investigation, however, found that Bush knowingly broke the rules by allowing a sports agent hoping to represent him someday to provide free housing for his parents. Although Bush might have to return some awards, he is safe and sound as a very well paid professional football player. His coach at the time of his violations, Pete Carroll, is now coaching the Seattle Seahawks professional football team and will not be punished. The penalties go to the school, USC, and its current football players who will be barred from bowl games for a couple of years. The people most responsible for the violation -- Bush and his coaches -- go mostly unpunished.

And our rejection of personal responsibility has led to a veritable frenzy of lawyers scrapping over the opportunity to extract value from blaming someone else – personal injury claims, employment tribunals, class action cases against smoking or drinking and a host of other lucrative sources of legal business. For sure, I know the defence – sometimes it really is someone else’s fault – but we have reached a stage where the first response of some to a trip or a bump is to ring the lawyer, to lay the blame on some other poor fellow. “Ah, but the insurance will pay” is the cry – as if the insurance company owns a special breed of money tree! And when the premiums rise there’s a lobby on hand to call for government action, for regulation.

As a conservative, I believe I have a primary duty to myself, to my family and to my neighbours. This duty is not discharged by passing across responsibility to government in return for a tax bill. It is discharged by me taking responsibility for my life, for all the crisis and chaos, for all the pleasure and excitement, for all the ups and downs. It is discharged by me doing the right thing by my family, my friends and my neighbours. There is no government in this, no regulation, no lawyers, no church, no god – just me and my responsibility. As Robert Heinlein put it:

I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

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To say "property-owning democracy" is tautology - there is no other kind

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OK, I know that the term "property-owning democracy" refers mostly to houses. And this allows people to write utter nonsense about property:

Yet even though the property-owning democracy idea has achieved neither its social nor its financial goals (the housing market has manifestly not developed in an orderly fashion that seamlessly matches supply and demand), there remains a truculent insistence from the right that somehow it is still interference from the state that is the problem, rather than the lack of it.

Now setting aside that the housing market is so constrained by regulation - be it financial, planning or legal - that to describe it as free is utter claptrap, we need to stop with this critique, catch a breath and ask what exactly is the problem?

The reason this critique is wrong - and verging on immoral - is that you cannot have a liberal democracy without property rights. Whether those rights apply to land, housing, paintings or that old pair of boots in the bottom of the cupboard. What is worse is that we are now telling people that owning property is just something for the rich:

We are, arguably, at another point of potential momentous change: the centre-ground voter is increasingly well-knowing about the foolishness and falsity of the home-owning democracy myth; the actual facts reveal that new home ownership, especially among the young, was steadily declining even before the 2008 credit crunch; and the gradual, tentative, dismantling of the previously cherished RTB has not led to any popular revolt.

The liberalisation of property finance and the "Right to Buy" brought about perhaps the biggest redistribution of wealth in England's history - shifting valuable property from the state and from big landlords into the ownership of ordinary men and women.  There are over 6 million homes in the UK that do not have a mortgage and, for those with a mortgage, there are plenty where it is neither a financial burden nor a significant proportion of spending.

The real question is how we allowed the vested interests within the housing system - landowners, existing householders, finance companies and the government - to fix the system so as to make it ever more expensive to 'get onto the housing ladder'.

What these critiques are telling us is that owning things is for the wealthy - ordinary people should not have such aspirations, should satisfy themselves with the outlook of the serf. Indeed the criticism includes - shock-horror - that some folk don't understand (and by implication shouldn't be allowed to play):

A Shelter UK survey indicates that one in four mortgage holders have no idea what the UK base rate is. These mortgage holders are playing with significant financial risks while being unaware of their exposure. Data from Legal & General indicated that maybe 90% of UK mortgages are on variable rather than fixed rate of interest. That's up from 60% from 2007. In something of an understatement, Shelter UK said that when the Bank of England does raise rates, this could push risk-ignorant owner-occupiers and those assuming permanently low interest rates, into a 'spiral of debt and repossession';

I bet those mortgage holders know what rate they are paying, how much they pay out each month and what their limit is in terms of payment. And - since Shelter are stupid - let's point out that all those poor fools on variable rate mortgages got the full advantage of the lowest interest rates ever, unlike the clever chaps with fixed rate mortgages.
 
Ownership is a good thing. It gives us a real stake, a commitment that renting or living for daily consumption doesn't bring. Ownership allows us to pass things along to our children should we so wish. And ownership stores up value - even if house prices aren't rising I still end up with a valuable property having had the benefit of living in it all the while!
 
Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with renting (although the housing subsidy implicit in social housing is a massive distortion to this market) but we shouldn't go around telling less well off people not to aspire to such wealth. That owning things is not for you working class folk.
 
Yet that is precisely what the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Shelter and a plethora of left-wing commenters are doing. And not only are they wrong but their arguments erode the central element of a free society - property rights. It really scares me that some see the constraint of property rights as essential to a liberal democracy:
 
Yet, still there remains in place an obstinate refusal to see that, without a determinedly redistributive infrastructure, liberal democracy simply cannot exist
 
The left believe that Government must have the right to confiscate property so as to allow for a liberal democracy?
 
Herein lies the fundamental reason why the left are illiberal. Such arbitrary powers - we cannot predict precisely which property the government plans on seizing so as to "redistribute" - are the short road to autocracy. Whatever the pain of owning property it is preferable to a ghastly socialist world of confiscation, rationing and centrally-planned chaos.
 
For me such a position is immoral, it patronises ordinary people and it maintains the myth that if it all goes wrong it's someone else's fault. And the government will bail us out.
 
this is the myth that got us into this mess. For heaven's sake let's not do it again.
 
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So just how close to the edge are we and what happens if we fall?

Honesty now, folks. I don't know any more than other people out there what the endgame of this current crisis will look like. But it seems to me that when we fall we want a pretty soft landing. Which begs a bigger question about that landing and how to build it.

The sound and fury out there features those pointing the accusatory finger at the "markets", at unspecified, nameless monsters prowling through the world's cities, nameless and faceless men in pinstripe suits who are sucking the marrow of society while laughing all the way to their private bank on some distant tropical isle. This dreadful world of capitalism, dark and frightening, driven by greed is what is destroying all our wonderful social innovations. The cuts are mandated by these plutocrats as the price for them not destroying us.

I wish I could live my life with such certainty, such clarity about the nature of my enemy. But I cannot do this for the enemy might not be an enemy but more as Sam Gamgee saw Aragorn - grim but fair. Indeed, the real danger may well be those champions of government, those enthusiasts for transactional taxes - such siren voices appeal but can government really save us from a disaster created - in great part - by the actions of that same government?

There are two sorts of end game - that which means greater freedom from the state and that which sees us further entangled in government's web of dependency. Forget all the convenient excuses for more rules, for new laws, for "co-ordinated international action" and for us to trust the wise idiots who dragged us into the problem to start with. It may seem sweet, a sugar-coating to the painful pill but it is false - we have to take the pain, and more pain still.

And don't give me that "it's all the bankers' fault and they should pay" argument. You and I allowed them - and their friends in government - to do these things. Because it meant we could buy houses, have shiny cars, foreign holidays and not bother with the basics since the state would provide. We stopped looking out for our neighbours - because government would do that. We stopped caring about the outcomes of politics because our lives were good, were comfortable.

We can have these good things again but it must be on our terms. We have to take a harder fall, maybe to break a few bones. We have to get away from our dependence on a passive-aggressive government and make the case for independence. Right now in the fine rooms of Europe a plan is being hatched - it will sound good, will offer a route out but the destination will be an unfree place.

Face the other way. Choose pain. Be free.

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I like choice - and so should you

Vivienne's masterpiece salmon

We hear often of the sin that is "consumption". Not the 18th and 19th century killer of literary genius but the preference that many of us have for spending a fair old chunk of the limited time we get on stuff we actually like doing. If you want to call that decadent, uncaring or planet-threatening that's fine by me. But I intend to carry on consuming.

And I am not swayed by the righteousness of some folk who, having failed to persuade us - the consumers - that consuming is a bad thing - have shifted the attack. The problem, they tell us, is choice - there's too much of it, it is making us anxious, stressed and meaning that we are no longer "organising ourselves and making a critique of society".

This little animation from RSA (entitled "Choice") peddled all this stuff - including the quote in the above paragraph. We have here all the regular left-wing anti-choice arguments including jolly little stories about how some bearded professor was uptight about which wine to buy in a restaurant or how some self-indulgent journalist wrote that sex life wasn't like the sex lives described in the pages of Cosmopolitan. Plus the usual rubbish about the stress we get from being over faced by the range on offer in the supermarket.

I feel so sorry for all these sensitive folk living in their convenient little anecdotes. But the argument - so typical of pop psychology - is founded in story and prejudice rather than in the reality of consumer behaviour. Yes, consumers will tell you they don't like choice. But consumers also use heuristics to mange and moderate choices - mostly they're called brands although they may also be choices about shopping location or, today, the use of comparison web-sites. There is an entire academic discipline - consumer behaviour - that studies such stuff.

More substantially, however, the argument against choice presented here tiptoes towards anti-capitalism - not just through an ignorance of what, precisely, we might mean by capitalism (it is presented as the creator of our consumer society) but through the contention that choice is used by "capitalism" to prevent us from achieving "social change". I have to smile at the manner in which "capitalism" is anthropomorphised - made to have an existence as master of an "ideology of choice".

But what is the alternative to this "ideology of choice"?  Logic tells us that the only alternative must be an "ideology of choice denial". Our choices - whether of wine with dinner, of places to live or of clothes to wear would be constrained, limited and even stopped entirely (bit like healthcare really). And one presumes - although this isn't stated - the limitation of choice would require mandation. Somebody will have to set out the choices we can have - assuming that "somebody" actually thinks we should have any choice at all.

So the argument presented - for all its wit and literacy - is profoundly illiberal, requires a mechanism for limiting choice (so we are not stressed or otherwise pained by our choices) and represents the continuation of the Nancy Klein attack on that choice. Or rather on the "wrong sort of choice" (as we can characterise Ms Klein's argument) - the idea that the brand "McDonalds" is essentially different from "Liberal " or indeed from "Chateau Lafitte Rothschild". All are those pesky heuristics - short-cuts to decision-making - that enable a complex consumer society to work.

Although the RSA do not present any alternative - "organising to achieve social change" is as far as it goes - the vision, characterised by the use of bees as a metaphor, owes more to Aldous Huxley than to a happy vision of the future. Indeed it could be this:

"Our world is not the same as Othello's world. You can't make flivvers without steel-and you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get."

Please let it not be so. Let us be free. Stop speaking of some idea of social change as if "social change" is absolutely desirable. And stop offering excuses that permit governments to control our lives, to remove our choices. And stop already with this angst, this post-millennial ennui, this pseudo-guilt trip - choice is good, it makes us happier, healthier, wealthier and, each day, the chance to do it differently means that innovation, change - even social change - takes place.

However, the sad little assault on choice will continue, partly because some folk makes choices that people who do cute animations for the RSA disapprove of (you know getting drunk, smoking and eating the wrong food) but mostly because the social change that is driven by choice isn't the "social change" such people want. Rather than the controlling hand of the benevolent masters directing the ignorant towards enlightenment, we get a messy, exciting, chaotic mish-mash of changes - some fantastic, some problematic but all of them driven by the individual actions, initiatives and, yes, choices of men and women doing stuff they like doing.

Choice is good. And don't ever forget it!

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New Cavaliers! A Call to Arms!

In the past couple of weeks I have written a series of articles on the New Puritans – these have been aimed more at understanding than at castigation. We have to appreciate that these people are not bad people but that they believe absolutely that the role of public health is to change behaviour:

“This should be mainstream agenda. This is not an add on , this not the responsibility of a single professional group, the new public health is what we should be all about and move way beyond this set of current reforms and into seriously addressing these issues of behaviour change.”

Your behaviour, my behaviour, the bloke next door’s behaviour are all to change so as to meet the requirements of proper behaviour. And this proper behaviour is not about swearing, politeness or refraining from sleeping with fallen women but about what we consume – our food, our drink and, for some, our smoking. The purity being sought by the New Puritan isn’t the purity of Christian faith that past Puritan’s sought but a purity of living – the temple is our body not the church of Christ.

Are health educators the new puritans? Yes, of course they are. They would cleanse and purify the new religion. The new religion is a paltry faith. It is worship of self.

And with this desire to perfect mankind comes an associated accountants dream – that tallying up of the cost to “society” of this bad lifestyle.

Unhealthy Britons are costing the NHS, employers and themselves £17.7 billion every year through their lifestyle choices, according to a study by health insurance firm Bupa. And obesity, smoking and excessive drinking could cost us all £33 billion by 2025, unless something is done.

Against this New Puritan onslaught there is little challenge – most of us start from the premise of “so what” when these dreadful figures are pointed out to us. We respond to the accountants by pointing out that those smokers and drinkers pay plenty in extra duty and VAT and tend to die younger – more than making up for the extra cost of their bad lifestyle. But this counts for nothing since the object of veneration is not the NHS budget but the perfectible human body, the temple of hubris.

And our anger is not co-ordinated or directed – smokers rail against the ban on indoor smoking unsupported by groups like CAMRA who, we hope, will die in the ditch to halt the New Puritan assault on drinking. We turn to those who make the products and find that they quite like the restrictive environment – one where business entry is hard and the resulting oligopoly contributes to higher profits:

Diageo wants to see "full equivalence" between all kinds of alcohol, so that one unit is taxed at the same rate, regardless of the drink. The strongest drinks would therefore pay the highest level of tax. Diageo is proposing the move as a way of staving off political pricing on drinks such as alcopops and strong cider, targeted by health campaigners for encouraging binge drinking.

So we arrive at the point where an ill-directed bunch of people connected only by a preference for personal choice and liberty face the huge New Puritan faith backed as it is by large amounts of taxpayers’ cash and the subventions of self-interested multinational businesses. And it is no wonder that, in response to my description of the New Puritan world one commenter had this to say:

The ideological struggle in Anglo nations has been between roundheads and cavaliers since Cromwell and, the puritan faction are now in the ascendant again. But I fear that sitting back to wait for them to self-destruct isn't going to work. They have never done so in all the preceding centuries. If there are internal contradictions to Puritanism, it hasn't stopped them so far. We do need to raise an army, of an ideological nature. These people will not stop on their own. They have to be stopped.

Hence this call for New Cavaliers, for a troop of people to take on the army of the new Puritans, that army threatening our leisure and pleasure, that would restrict out freedom and our choice. We should heed the words of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester:

But thoughts are given for action's government;
Where action ceases, thought's impertinent:
Our sphere of action is life's happiness,
And he that thinks beyond, thinks like an ass.
Thus, whilst against false reasoning I inveigh,
I own right reason, which I would obey:
That reason which distinguishes by sense
And gives us rules of good and ill from thence,
That bounds desires, with a reforming will
To keep 'em more in vigour, not to kill.
Your reason hinders, mine helps to enjoy,
Renewing appetites yours would destroy.
My reason is my friend, yours is a cheat;
Hunger calls out, my reason bids me eat;
Perversely, yours your appetite does mock:
This asks for food, that answers, "What's o'clock?"
This plain distinction, sir, your doubt secures:
'Tis not true reason I despise, but yours.

We are not placed here to serve some masters – be they kings, presidents or some collectivist concept of government – we are here to consume nature’s bounty. Yes we must work, we must create but this is purposeful only in that it allows us to consume, in that it permits us our choice of pleasure. So we must resist those who would have us join the Church of Public Health, expose them as – in Wilmot’s words – thinking ‘like an ass’ concerned with something beyond happiness, beyond the idea of pleasure.

So what should we do? Here are a few thoughts – feel free to add to them:

1. Question, petition and challenge your politicians – don’t listen to those who would see this as waste. Remember that politicians respond to a full mail bag and if it is full of challenges to the New Puritan message from voters many MPs will start to listen. And don’t limit yourself to MPs – target councillors, parish councillor and the candidates from different parties at elections

2. Support your local pub, chip shop or burger bar – raise petitions in support of licensing, write letter to the press in support of good licensing. Don’t be scared to offend or upset those – and especially those from public health and police – who would restrict licensing to an English version of the six o’clock swill

3. Get involved in local bodies – whether we’re talking about campaigning groups like CAMRA (boy do they need some spine) or local community groups. Get onto Parish and Town Councils – these bodies are always looking for new members and, for a few hours work a month, you get a chance to oppose the message of the New Puritans

4. Write to the local paper – it may have a declining readership but it still matters. Speak to the editor too – ask him or her whether you can have an opinion piece, especially if you represent a local group or organisation. Also add comments to new stories challenge the New Puritan message

5. Join health bodies – register as members of Hospital Foundation Trusts, get involved with GP Patient Participation Groups, sign up to Alcohol Concern, ASH and other such bodies. Attend the AGMs of these groups and challenge the report on public health and other statements in annual reports.

6. Attend health scrutiny panels of local councils – if you’re a group ask to present, to speak. Provide councillors on these panels with reasons why the New Puritans are wrong. Identify and support those politicians who agree or sympathise

All these actions are done without any disobedience, without breaking the New Puritan’s rules. But there may come a point when disobedience is necessary, when we must challenge the orders that allow police to confiscate drinks for no good reason, must protest at stupid smoking restrictions such as those on windy station platforms and must challenge the lunacy of licensing decisions that mean you can drink outside on a fine summer’s evening.

And we must be loud about all this – intolerant of those who tell us to shush because they disagree or else don’t want a row with the New Puritans. My friends – my fellow cavaliers – get that feather in your hat, straighten the beard, dust the ruffles on your shirts and raise your sabres in the charge. We are going into battle – a battle we may lose but would we not rather lose a real battle for liberty and choice than sit idly by? And find ourselves thinking, “maybe I should have said or done something”, as we sip slowly at the half-pint of beer that the Government’s weekly ration allows us? To look up from our approved low calorie, trans-fat free veggie burger and ask ourselves, “how did we let this happen?”

After all we’ve nothing to lose – except the right to choose. The right to drink a couple of pints, to smoke a few fags and to eat hamburger and chips – the right to choose the path of Epicurus over the cursed Narcissism that the New Puritans promise.


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Let's hear it for the Gipper!

It was delightful to see a statue unveiled in London of my political hero, Ronald Reagan. Not only was he a gentleman but he set about righting the wrong of communism and, after 30 years of political activism succeeded in that task. As the great man said:

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.

More than anything, Ronald Reagan spoke of freedom - of freedom's importance and freedom's price. He was a great man and a brilliant president.

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Cut taxes....

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I know I've said it before but we should be cutting taxes if we want the economy to grow. It would be good politics and would address the immorality of us slaving away to pay the government for nearly half the year. Thankfully today is Tax Freedom Day:

“Tax Freedom Day underlines the huge burden of government on working people’s lives. For five months of the year, we are slaves to the state. No wonder growth is so slow – we need robust tax reform now, bringing lower, simpler, flatter taxes. The government should resolve to make Tax Freedom Day something we can celebrate earlier and earlier each year.”

Hallelujah Brother! George, can we start tomorrow please?

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The 'Free School' genie is out of the bottle...

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I received a briefing note from Bradford Council's Strategic Director, Children's Services on the matter of academies and free schools. The note simply set out how the governance status of existing schools is changing - there will be at least 15 academies in the District soon - and listed the proposals for free schools (there are nine so far).

Now Bradford's a big place - getting on for half-a-million people - so these numbers still represent a minority of schools but, it seems to me that the advent of free schools and the simpler academy process represent a very profound change in the City's educational landscape. And I'm inclined to agree with Michael Gove on how important this agenda is to parents and children - the most profound and welcome change in education since the destruction of the grammar school system that started in the 1960s (a destruction that still continues today - as parents in Reading are discovering).

Add to this the significant changes in the management of admissions - allowing, in effect, successful schools to expand - we have a welcome shift away from the dominating monolith of the local education authority:

With pupil numbers determining school funding levels, ministers believe liberalising admissions policies will stymie what they view as attempts by local authorities to keep underperforming schools going by preventing popular schools taking on more pupils.

The genie is out of the bottle - and will start weaving the magic of freedom and choice around our schools. I for one am pleased.

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For heaven's sake leave us alone! A comment on choice, freedom and independence.

It struck me yesterday (while listening to the righteous discuss licensing and other matters at Council) that the idea of free choice, of personal responsibility and our autonomy as individual persons is a minority viewpoint among the political class. By way of example:

1. We debated whether the Director of Children’s Services should be consulted when the private sector wished to develop a children’s home. By the end of the debate I was convinced that the Director of Children’s Services should have no such right – by all means that individual can make representations in the same manner as any other person, put granting the developer's primary competitor (and also supplier) an privileged position is wrong. Yet we voted for such a privilege – it’s for the children, you see.

2. During this debate the matter of free schools arose - mostly so the Labour speaker could get over a pretty lame political point. And when the matter of planning leniency for new schools was mentioned a ripple of applause went round the chamber. I was shocked to see Conservative Councillors applauding an attack on the extension of choice and the reduction of bureaucracy.

3. In a different debate – one on ‘child poverty’ – the Labour speaker again mentioned free schools and academies. And her problem was that these schools reduced the Council’s budget – after all the money goes to the schools not the bureaucrats. Independence, autonomy and freedom were attacked because it meant the Council bureaucrats could not direct and control .

4. So much for debates at Council and onto a wider debate – this time the NHS. A doctor speaks and the gist of her comment is that patients don’t want choice and only ask for it when service is poor. This was compounded – according to the doctor – by the choice being between private and public providers. As I understand her view it was that we shouldn't get choice in healthcare because the public sector aren’t as good at it as the private sector! And the private sector is nasty because it makes a profit. This from someone who profits from the NHS to the tune of £100,000 or more.

5. And then we have the ‘drinking is bad’ debate – the lies and nonsense intended to reduce the access to drink for poor people. The underlying context of this is that old-fashioned middle class busybody view that the poor aren’t bright enough to make their own decisions about their own lives – they must be nudged, shoved and browbeaten into following the strictures of their public sector masters. I guess that talking strangely, listening to cacophonous base-heavy music and appearing on Jeremy Kyle’s daytime show provides the basis for this argument. Well it won’t do – if they want to wreck their lives with drink, fags and drugs that’s (most of the time) their business, innit!

I will not despair but will carry on making the sensible, usually evidence-based arguments that freedom, choice and independence – autonomy as is explained by Anna Raccoon – are the best route to a civilised, happy and successful society. When we’re free we work harder, we play better and we work out means to deal with out differences – all without the need for a political master race to direct our every childish action.

I do not understand why the political class so despise freedom – or rather freedom for other people to make their own successes and failures. And why appeals to authoritarian and draconian reactions – be it on immigration, crime or the economy – get such popular support. Maybe wiser heads might help?

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