Thomas Piketty, New Fascist?

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On the face of it Piketty's work is orthodox, envy-ridden social democracy. Backed up by dodgy charts. But when we poke around at the words in the FT article there's an odd smell:

US inequality may now be so sharp, and the political process so tightly captured by top earners, that necessary reforms will not happen – much like in Europe before the first world war.

Here's the thing - the masterpiece created by the Great War was Fascism. It's authoritarian, directed, Listian autarky was the solution to those very problems that Piketty alludes to - essetially the excesses of capitalism.

The essence of the the New Fascism is that there must be a new authoritarian, directed, Listian solution - but petty nationalist autarky is rejected just as is personal liberty, choice and the idea of individual achievement. The fruits of success are not ours but the state's to determine.

The deepest irony of the New Fascism is that its adherents use the old discredited Fascism as a threat to beat us into submission. We are told that we must embrace their new order or suffer a return to that frightening past, a past that scarred Europe so terribly:

Short of that, many may turn against globalisation. If, one day, they found a common voice, it would speak the disremembered mantras of nationalism and economic isolation.

But Piketty and others propose the same solutions as did Gentile and Spirito - that identity is subsumed in a wider society and individual sovereignty is a false aspiration. Above all this is the central idea that the state must enforce society's sacrifice for the greater good. In this case it is a vain search for material equality built on the idea that we are unequal because the powerful have stolen from the weak.

I don't comment here on Piketty's economics but on the imperative behind his words - that liberty must be sacrificed on the altar of equality. This is the New Fascism.

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After the Bitrush - a comment on the politics of money

Well, I dreamed I saw the silver
Space ships flying
In the yellow haze of the sun,
There were children crying
And colors flying
All around the chosen ones.
All in a dream, all in a dream

The predictions - oh yes, the predictions! Everywhere we see them, all giving their take on the future of money following the remarkable growth of Bitcoin.

But first let me tell you of a little story. It's not my story, it's Neal Stephenson's story. And it's the story of in-game money and the way that money (and assets created in the game by that money) 'leak' into the real world. Moreover, like Bitcoin's recent ups and downs the focus is on China and the desire of rich Chinese folk to get round their government's tight control of money leaving for other countries.

Remember folks that this desire is real - it actually happens. Here's something from an article back in 2006:

In one extreme case last year, an online gamer in Shanghai killed another player who had taken his cyber-weapon, called a Dragon Sabre in the popular online game Legend of Mir III, and sold it for 7,200 yuan (US$871).

The gamer almost forfeited his real-world life for doing so when he was handed a death sentence with a two-year reprieve.

Still, Tencent spokeswoman Catherine Chan said in a written statement that the company's virtual money did not pose a threat to the real-world economy.

Q coins were created to work as tokens for the consumption of the company's online services, and the Q coin "is definitely not a currency," she said.

All sounds a bit familiar, eh? And, if the bubble theorists and tulip fans are right and Bitcoin falls over, there will be another way for people to circumvent the nosiness of government. Another on-line system - call it a currency or an exchange system, maybe even a game, it doesn't matter. People will use it to get round the arbitrary controls governments place on our actions.

Ms Chan, quoted above, is right - virtual money isn't a threat to the real-world economy, it's a threat to government. Hence the concerns about taxation and the polemics about Bitcoin being evil. I would therefore leave you will an alternative view - not from some techno-whizz or Randian obsessive but from Hayek:

"We have always had bad money because private enterprise was not permitted to give us a better one.  In a world governed by the pressure of organized interests, the important truth to keep in mind is that we cannot count on intelligence or understanding but only on sheer self-interest to give us the institutions we need.  Blessed indeed will be the day when it will no longer be from the benevolence of the government that we expect good money but from the regard of the banks for their own interest.”

Those who believe that the only safety is the safety of government guarantee are wrong - cruelly wrong. This supposed guarantee is a fraud, corrupted by inflation and fed by the need of bureaucracy to fulfil Parkinson's Law.  It doesn't matter whether or not Bitcoin is a good investment, whether it is safe or whether other people use it for illegal acts. It really doesn't matter because the stopper is out of the bottle - the genie of liberated money is out of the bottle and is a weapon for those who would tear down the castle.

How we respond to these changes will be a measure of how much we want liberty and whether we prefer choice to government edict.

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Exchange and the essence of society

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So here we all are. Sat with a mug of tea in that slightly hazy period between Christmas and the New Year. And wondering.

Some of the wondering is prosaic and practical. When will the headache fade enough to make opening the curtains worthwhile? Where are the car keys? Are we going to go shop or try and scrape together another creative culinary masterpiece from amongst the festive leftovers?

Perhaps the wondering is more romantic - love found or lost, good stuff remembered or, better still anticipated. The prospect of more party, of the New Year's celebrations.

Or maybe the fading of Christmas goodwill into the reality of normality prompts something more philosophical? A little more chewing on the bones of metaphysics or picking at the carcass of 'why'.

If the last of these things, here's a question.

Humans are both social creatures and also individuals. We are very conscious of our personality and identity for they are uniquely ours. Yet we also know that this identity is as much a mirror of that around us as it is a self-contained uniqueness. So are we an element of society, of some greater whole? Or are we, as Margaret Thatcher would have it, individual men and women that create society through our joint, mutual actions?

Before you leap to the obvious in assessing this question, it's not a simple as it seems.  Nor is accepting the former idea - that society is greater than the sum of its human parts - some sort of reject of individualism or justification for government. It could be argued that government is necessary because in an imperfect world (less than compliant with the expectations of society) it serves the function of policing the imperfectly compliant.

Such a position assumes that society is created, is a deliberate act of human ingenuity rather than a consequence of humans behaving as social creatures. It also reckons that man can be made perfect
through the administration of society. but only where that administration is by mandarins, by Plato's philosopher kings.

Such an argument is commonplace in socialism (although not exclusive to left-wing beliefs). And it's counter is to say that man is not perfectable, that to attempt such a project is hubris. Society is organic and essential. It is the consequence of human exchange for mutual benefit - you can call this exchange 'collaboration', 'cooperation' or even 'trade' but it is what makes us human and what makes our human society.

When we try to make a different society, to pretend that we can make one that isn't based on exchange - on trade - we fail. It doesn't matter whether this is communism's ordered society or Ayn Rand's selfish individualism, if it denies that mutual benefit through exchange it also denies the essential nature of society.

Society is greater than the sum of its parts. Not in the way that some socialists might argue. The value - in the broadest sense of that word - we get from exchange is that 'greater sum', the advantage society gives us is the benefit of trade. If we stop free exchange we damage human society.

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Pioneers wanted! Capitalism, Marxism and living on the moon.

"Space travel leading to skylife is vital to human survival, because the question is not whether we will be hit by an asteroid, but when. A planetary culture that does not develop spacefaring is courting suicide. All our history, all our social progress and growing insight will be for nothing if we perish."

Gregory Benford and George Zebrowski, Skylife, 2000

Starting a discussion of capitalism - in space or anywhere else for that matter - by quoting Rosa Luxemburg isn't a good plan. Dear old Rosa believed that capitalism needs a frontier - a periphery - to succeed. And, like most Marxists who talk about capitalism as if they own the term, Rosa gets it wrong. Still this didn't stop the chap from Lenin's Tomb getting all confused about space (and capitalism) in the Guardian.

Capitalism really isn't the point when we talk about space exploration. Google 'commercial exploitation of space' and you get pages of learned, legal tomes with titles like:

Law and Regulation of Commercial Mining of Minerals in Outer Space

Commercial Utilization of Outer Space: Law and Practice

Creating a legal framework for the commercial exploitation of outer space

Now this writing suggests two things to me - firstly that the capitalists really are interested in space. And secondly that the controlling hand of government is placing constraints on making money out there in the great blue beyond.

More importantly, exploration - and that's all we've done so far - never really interested capitalists, even the ones who termed themselves "merchant adventurers". Where we are familiar with space, commercial exploitation is commonplace and successful:

On 10 June 1995, International Launch Services was established, upon the merger of Lockheed and Martin Marietta companies, to market Proton and Atlas launch services to the commercial satellite telecommunications marketplace worldwide. Prior to the merger, each of these companies were competing in the commercial launch services market with the Proton and Atlas rockets. Lockheed entered the launch market in 1993 with the establishment of Lockheed-Khrunichev- Energia International (LKEI), the joint venture to exclusively market the Russian Proton launch vehicle. Similarly, Martin Marietta had entered the commercial launch arena with the family of Atlas launch vehicles. Neither rocket was new to the market, however, and provided a combined heritage foundation of more than 450 launches at the inception of ILS.

Despite the persistence of government controls and restrictions on space exploitation, capitalist progress has been made (and I guess we shouldn't mention Richard Branson selling over-price trips into space to celebrity millionaires).

The real problem here is that our Marxist confuses the fact that lots of goodies undoubtedly lie below the surface of the moon (and all over the solar system) with whether those goodies are actually worth exploiting. Right now we're doing a pretty good job (whatever the greenies say) of fuelling our world - in most cases we're not running out of stuff and where we are there are some pretty useful alternatives that don't require us to go to the moon to get them.

What we have to consider here is that we need a sort of unholy alliance between the controlling government and the free spirit. People like John Leeming are needed:

“You seem to fit the part all right. Your technical record is first-class. Your disciplinary record stinks to high heaven.' He eyed his listener blank faced. 'Two charges of refusing to obey a lawful order. Four for insolence and insubordination. One for parading with your cap on back to front. What on earth made you do that?'

I had a bad attack of what-the-hell, sir,' explained Leeming.” 

So the government gave Leeming a state-or-the-art super-duper scout ship to explore the galaxy. Just as government funded Columbus, subbed Magellan and encouraged (if turning a blind eye to piracy is what we mean by 'encouraged') Drake. Because it got them out of the way by sending them off into unexplored oceans. If they died, it was their risk. But if they found something the government could take the credit.

Our Marxist lives in something of a binary world - the choice is between timid capitalism:

Of course, under capitalism the state's ability to explore the unknown is limited by its priority of making things work for business, or developing a greater war machine. States don't need an immediate return on investment, but if they're to justify taxing profits, they need to demonstrate some sort of plausible return. Hence, there's always more money for military arsenals than spaceships. 

And glorious socialism:

So, this is what we need. First, international socialism. And to paraphrase Lenin, socialism = soviet power + interstellar travel. Don't ask me how we get that, we just need it as a precondition for everything else. Second, an international space exploration programme, funded with the express purpose of adding to the sum of stuff and human knowledge. Third, a popular space tourism programme. 

I'm not intending to try and unpick the ignorance of demanding a system that is a myth to replace a system that is a fact. Instead, I want to offer another alternative - we'll call it the Eric Frank Russell system. We'll invite independent minded, pioneering sorts (with a scattering of John Leemings) to go and live on the moon. Not a few of them but lots - we'll charge them with the task of creating the means to live there, the ways to reach the moon and the way they'll run the place when they get there.

And hopefully what we'll get won't be international socialism or corporatist capitalism (the two choices our Marxist offers us) but this:

 

...;

On liberty and poverty...

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We are frequently told that intervention by government is necessary for the elimination of poverty. And even that this poverty is a consequence of inequalities or other misfunctions of the market.

Here's a quote (via Don Boudreaux) that questions all this, rather suggesting that economic liberalism is the route to eliminate poverty rather than the mercantilist, directed economy preferred by our masters:

If bourgeois dignity and liberty are not on the whole embraced by public opinion, in the face of the sneers by the clerisy and the machinations of special interests, the enrichment of the poor doesn’t happen, because innovation doesn’t.  You achieve merely through a doctrine of compelled charity in taxation and redistribution the “sanctification of envy,” as the Christian economist the late Paul Heyne put it.  The older suppliers win.  Everyone else loses.  You ask God to take out two of your neighbor’s eyes, or to kill your neighbor’s goat.  You work at your grandfather’s job in the field or factory instead of going to university.  You stick with old ideas, and the old ferry company.  You remain contentedly, or not so contentedly, at $3 a day, using the old design of a sickle.  You continue to buy food for your kids at the liquor store at the corner of Cottage Grove and 79th Street.  And most of us remain unspeakably poor and ignorant.

This is the thinking that gives us the Oxfam approach to international aid - keeping subsistence farmers as subsistence farmers through grant aid. It also underlies the idea that rich people are rich because poor people are poor - therefore you remove money from the rich to give it to the poor and everything is fine. Markets aren't seen as social, engaging and cooperative things but as exploitative. But the examples cited - banks, farming, energy, housing, healthcare - are the very areas where government intervention and regulation is greatest (ergo where the efficient operation of the market is most compromised).

Hardly a day passes without a new call for regulation - to make prices lower, to protect inefficient distribution systems, to reduce competition, to do a multitude of things vaguely defined as 'protecting consumers'. And each of these intervention makes the market less able to work, less able to make its magic, ineffective at doing what it does best.

And the result of all this fussing, all this knowing betters, all these attempts to fix what isn't broken? Stuff is more expensive and because it's more expensive there is more poverty.

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Robots and the successors to Captain Swing....

Sir, Your name is down amongst the Black hearts in the Black Book and this is to advise you and the like of you, who are Parson Justasses, to make your wills. Ye have been the Blackguard Enemies of the People on all occasions, Ye have not yet done as ye ought,.... Swing

We are told - by people far wiser and more knowing than me - that the future of employment is bleak:

Could the jobless recovery be signalling that technology has lead to the sort of abundance and productivity that leaves NAIRU — the unemployment rate below which inflation rises — with no choice but to recalibrate higher, if returns on capital investment are to be protected?

The point being made here is that the future of making stuff rests with robots not with people. And that means there won't be enough work for all the people. The result of this is a lot of frothing and excitement and calls for something to be done. And is accompanied by the emergence - blinking in the lights of the 21st Century - of Captain Swing from his nearly 200 year rest.

For men who smashed up the threshing machines under Swing's directions, just as for the followers of Ned Ludd, the objective was to constrain technology. By preventing its spread or by limiting its application (or as in the print industry by requiring more overlookers and operators than the machine required) we protect jobs and the livelihoods of workers.

The simple truth of technology is that, while technology improves productivity, causes prices to fall, demand to rise, more workers to be hired, and the economy to grow, there is a practical limit. If all the work is done by robots all the productivity gain serves no purpose since there is no work and no earnings - no-one to buy the things the robots make.

The central issue here isn't whether we have a job but rather whether we need to have a job. In simple terms, the people who own the robots don't need a job because the rents generated from that ownership would provide. The problem - if the argument about technology destroying all the jobs is correct - is with the people who don't own the robots (or at least not the robots that make all the stuff).

The modern day successors of Captain Swing think they've a great solution - let's either pay everyone a basic income with no strings or else fund a guarantee of a job. We have to assume that the money for this system (whichever is chosen) would come from taxing the robots - or rather the returns the robots generate for the people who own them.

The questions we have to ask are firstly, will there really be a wholesale destruction of jobs without new ones to replace them? And secondly would a basic income or job guarantee actually work? There is a third question - is it morally justified to pay people to do nothing - but this is a far bigger question and we'll leave it for now.

Apple reckoned recently that the app economy (just the iOS bit) has generated nearly 300,000 jobs in the USA alone:

The app revolution has added more than 291,250 iOS jobs to the U.S. economy since the introduction of iPhone in 2007

These are jobs that we hadn't thought of - for all the jobs destroyed by technology there are new ones created.  Izabella Kaminska may talk about the 'jobless recovery' but there's precious little evidence for it - other than in the sclerotic, over-regulated economies of Europe. It could be argued as forcefully that supply-side barriers to employment, the lack of need to work (especially among young people receiving benefits and contributions from the bank of mum and dad) and poor education are more of a problem than the rise of the robots. That government is more of a barrier to future job creation than robots.

A further factor in all this will be that - as has happened over the past decades - we'll see a further decline in average working hours. Back in Captain Swing's day the workers toiled for six days - probably for ten, even twelve hours, for wages far less than any basic income we might propose. And despite this the Captain and his mates smashed up the machines so the workers could carry on with back-breaking, life-shortening heavy manual labour.

Today, the average working day is under eight hours and people work just five days - our time working nears half that of those Captain Swing and Ned Ludd protected. And yet our incomes are immeasurably higher - even the wealthy owners of those threshing machines would be amazed at the life, the comforts that the poorest Englishman enjoys today. What is to suppose that this trend continues? That we work only 25 hours before enjoying the benefits of that work (and let's face it most people work because they want the money not because their work is such an exciting thing to do)?

It seems to me that the bounty of the robots' efforts will be more leisure time for all. And not some ridiculous idea that allowing anyone - at any time - to down tools and toddle off to live on their basic income. Get a good summer and no-one would be working (I appreciate that many of the believers in basic income also follow MMT - "magic money tree" - fantasies and the delusion that this doesn't matter). This indeed is rather the point of it all - we know that, given half a chance, people will swing the lead (you only need to look at sickness statistics in local government to understand this), so if we legitimise swinging the lead we'll just take advantage. As Flanders & Swann noted: "you can't change human nature."

This argument - 'there'll be no jobs, you know" - rather reminds me of Paul Ehrlich's bet on resource depletion. Following one thread takes you to a point where logic and common senses collapse. The theory still looks shiny and right but it has lost any contact with reality. Which, I guess explains why seemingly intelligent people are sucked into believing the sort of nonsense that is basic income (or worse job guarantees that are essentially slave labour directed by the state - we feed and clothe you and you do whatever work we demand).

If there is more stuff (in the widest sense of the word stuff) for us that is good especially if that more stuff comes without us having to work more hours. And that increased earning means more time for arts, sport, celebration, fun and games (and for all the people that provide such pleasure).

So let's be optimistic about what the robots bring and let's escape from the controlling, dictating approach that is captured by one advocate of basic income:

And I don't think anyone from the basic income side would dispute that the public sector might need to help those who are not self-starters to find useful and productive things to do.

And this from someone who self-describes as a "liberal" - such a view is as far removed from liberal as it is possible to get. Look folks, the future's a great place - there'll be flying cars, jet packs, holographic opera and leisure trips into space. And, even better, nearly everyone will be able to afford this stuff. So let's get on with the free markets that make it work and give up on the idea that the solution lies in either a vast lump of unmotivated drones paid to do nothing or else a slave labour force for the masters to direct to projects of their choice.

Above all let's remember - always remember - that government, mostly and most of the time, is the problem not the solution. And let's enjoy the future - it will be better than the past.

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The scariest quote I've read in a while...

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Seriously:

“There is a line in the sand between freedom of speech and the right to use hate speech. Freedom of speech does not guarantee you that right. We live in a democracy and we believe in free speech. People will now quote Voltaire but he never had the benefit of going to the gates of Auschwitz and seeing where unfettered free speech ends up.”

This is from some chap at an organisation calling itself "Hope not Hate". An organisation that clearly doesn't believe in free speech and that has a spokesman who thinks Nazi Germany was a land of "unfettered free speech".

The problem is that government - local as well as national - will not face down these organisations as they campaign for less and less free speech.

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Quote of the day....modern government defined

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From Peter Saunders:

You see, I am your government, which means I care about you and I know best what is good for you. It's my job to nag you and boss you around. That's what living in a free and democratic country means: I force you to vote, then I take your money, then I use it to tell you how to live your lives. You'll thank me for it one day.

This truth is what we must fight, just as we must fight the misguided belief that all the money exists only because of government - we must try to reclaim what is ours: independence, personal responsibility and command of our own affairs.

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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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Do as you're told citizen...and behave.

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It is hard to argue with this description of the New Puritan creed from Leg-Iron:

Play is verboten. Enjoyment is sin. Having a happy retirement in a non-approved manner costs the NHS money. If smoking, drinking, lounging around and not going to the gym are the sort of things that make you happy then you are to be denormalised.

Watch them - stop smoking, cut out the drinking, no more burgers, go to the gym...do as you're told or:

...instead of merely taxing tobacco sales, the federal government could require individuals to pay a tax penalty unless they declare that they haven't used tobacco products during the year. It could give a tax credit to people who submit documentation that their body-mass index is in the normal range or has decreased during the year or to diabetic persons who document that their glycated hemoglobin levels are controlled. It could tax individuals who fail to purchase gym memberships. It could require taxpayers to complete an annual health improvement plan with their physician in order to obtain a tax credit...

And you thought we lived in a free society? Forget it citizen...

...and BEHAVE.

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"The fetish of consumer choice..." - an introduction to 21st century fascism

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All the wonder - the liberation - of choice is but an indulgence. Or at least this is the view of one Andrew Dobson writing in the Guardian.

We need to discard the ideological trappings of an increasingly discredited neo-liberalism – such as the fetish of consumer choice, or the notion of the small state.

The fetish of consumer choice! Andrew Dobson would have us queuing outside GUM in drab conformity before returning to a depressing apartment - just the state TV channel braying out the instructions of our masters. And - when the electricity works which isn't every day - Mr Dobson would have our cupboard (no point in a fridge) filled with the dull product of a state factory.

In Professor Dobson's world this control is needed because of "climate change" - the imperative of impending doom demands that the state takes command and leads. All must be:

...brought back under democratic control, and control of the state must be wrested from those whose interest lies in diminishing its democratic potential for reining in the market and acting in the common interest.

Andrew Dobson does not know it but he is a fascist.

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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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Consultation on plain packaging for cigarettes - what you need to tell the government

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The government has launched a consultation on the introduction of plain packaging for tobacco products - be warned the questions are loaded and partisan. However, you do get the chance to make your comments. My advice - be moderate in your comments, provide evidence where you can and stick to the core objections:

1. The proposals fail to understand the role of brands:

"Branding fulfils many significant and positive functions for both consumers and markets. Take it away and consumers lose out and markets become commoditised, with price rather than quality being the influencing factor. As well as calling on Government to consider carefully whether plain packaging will yield any positive impact in practice, we will also encourage it to look at all the possible negative impacts."

2. Plain packaging makes counterfeiting and illicit sale of cigarettes more likely:

BASCAP (Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy) is concerned that plain packaging requirements would increase the prevalence of counterfeit goods in the market and reduce brand owners' ability to take action against such activity, besides undermining the ability of consumers to make informed purchasing decisions. Trademarks serve these important functions in the market for all branded goods. Plain packaging [is] likely to increase rather than decrease burdens on already overstretched public agencies working to enforce intellectual property protections in the face of escalating counterfeiting and piracy in the United Kingdom and worldwide."

3. Plain packaging threatens jobs:

Mr Barber said: “These proposals could have serious implications for our business as tobacco packaging is vital to our turnover. It could cost up to 50 per cent of the jobs here."

4. The proposals will damage businesses:

...a report from Deloitte titled “Potential impact on retailers from the introduction of plain tobacco packaging”, February 2011, states that the operator of a service station can expect to incur additional staff costs of between A$9,000 and A$34,000 due to the extra work that would be required to handle plain packaged tobacco products.

I'll leave you to add your comments on how the proposals are illiberal, anti-business and based on the flimsiest of evidence. I would also urge - as well as responding to the consultation - for you to write to your MP making the above points - this is an unjustified idea without evidence that will destroy jobs, promote crime and damage personal liberty.

The consultation is here - be prepared to give an hour of your time.

http://consultations.dh.gov.uk/tobacco/standardised-packaging-of-tobacco-products/consult_view


And just for the record, I am a non-smoker.
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America!

 

"...sudden burst of sunshine seemed to illuminate the Statue of Liberty, so that he saw it in a new light, although he had sighted it long before. The arm with the sword rose up as if newly stretched aloft, and round the figure blew the free winds of heaven."

OK, so Franz Kafka was wrong about the sword but the symbolism of arriving in America is so often written that we forget why so many arrived there. Today we seem only to hear the shrill, snide, judging voices of anti-American sentiment. And we forget. We forget that - almost uniquely - the USA was founded on the principle of freedom. On the idea that government has no right to rule. That rulers must act with the consent of the ruled. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are not merely the founding documents of the United States but represent a voice of liberty - symbolised by that statue - that echoes today.

Yet so many continue to condemn the USA. To cry foul at its every act. To point at its flaws and failings. To focus on its mistakes - or rather on the mistakes of its rulers. And they are wrong to condemn a whole nation - to claim that the aim of expanding liberty and freedom bequeathed to US government by John F Kennedy is somehow an evil force in the world. The United States remains a force for good - for all its errors a beacon of liberty in a world where too many still believe the state exists other than with the permission of the people, who want some role for priests in government and who prefer the disposition of bureaucracy to the choices of free men.

Today we remember a terrible attack on America. An act supposedly committed in the promotion of god's rule on earth. An act that chose terror over conversation, murder over persuasion. An unforgivable and inexcusable act that saw thousands killed without reason and, in a cry of collective pain, led Americans to acquiesce to a set of military adventures - some with good reason and some without. But the deaths the anti-Americans point to were not caused by America - they are the direct result of that unwarranted, that evil attack on New York and Washington in September 2001.

And that attack was an attack on liberty. On the ideas that founded the USA. On the principle of inalienable rights. And on the power of choice in the world of men. It was as much an attack on Bradford, on Paris and on Islamabad as it was an attack on the USA.

I will not forget. I will always remember the stunned silence in the room as we watched - over and over again - those planes crash into the twin towers. The images of smoke, fire, chaos and confusion will never go away. Nor will the quiet heroism of ordinary men and women faced with such an act of evil.

The United States of America is a great country - its very act of foundation brought more good to the world than the sum of its sins since that date. And the power of freedom and choice allowed the USA to lead man's advance to greater wealth, happiness and health. I am - and you should be - grateful not envious. Appreciative not condemnatory. Thankful not fearful.

Long live America!

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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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Joining the Liberal Democrats doesn't make you a liberal!

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A while ago I wrote a little comment explaining why “Jack of Kent” – the estimable David Allen Green, lawyer, blogger, skeptic and sometimes journalist – isn’t a liberal. It is a mark of David’s popularity (and his assiduous self-promotion) that this little blog post remains one of the most visited at The View from Cullingworth.

It seems now that “Jack of Kent” has gone the whole hog and joined the Liberal Democrat Party:

The Labour opposition is impotent. In government they were illiberal and often brutal. There is only one political force which is having an actual liberal effect in our polity as it is presently constituted, and it is the Liberal Democrats.

Yet – as I pointed out – David isn’t a liberal but a social democrat. No genuine liberal could believe this:

The liberal endorses an individual's autonomy unless there is a greater public interest in interfering with that autonomy.

Such a position is indistinguishable from the essential social democrat position – it places society’s interests above those of the individual. The problem – or confusion – may lie in a differing understanding of what the term ‘liberal’ actually means. I fear that David’s view owes less to Gladstone and more to Herbert Croly, the godfather of Roosevelt’s politics and founding editor of New Republic:

Government, according to Croly, could no longer be content with protecting negative rights; it needed to actively promote the welfare of its citizens.

This position, the championing of positive rights and the embracing of regulation to correct “market failure” are the essence of “progressive” politics. Indeed, Britain’s Liberal Democrats remain overwhelmingly a party of social democracy – a marriage between the Fabianism of people such as Shirley Williams and the grass roots activism that typified the old Liberal Party.

My argument before was that, in rejecting ‘market orthodoxy’, David was rejecting the basis of liberalism – that free exchange between individuals represents the best way to order things.  Instead we get American “liberalism” – a mish-mash of social democracy, ‘progressivism’ and above all the promotion of group rights above personal rights. Indeed, the preamble to the Liberal Democrat’s Constitution makes explicit that the party is not a liberal party:

The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity. We champion the freedom, dignity and well-being of individuals, we acknowledge and respect their right to freedom of conscience and their right to develop their talents to the full. We aim to disperse power, to foster diversity and to nurture creativity. We believe that the role of the state is to enable all citizens to attain these ideals, to contribute fully to their communities and to take part in the decisions which affect their lives.

So “Jack of Kent”, who isn’t a liberal, will feel quite at home in what isn’t a liberal part.

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