Adam Smith Institute

It is good for the freedom of individuals if there are strict limits on the information the state is allowed to hold on them.. In the first place it is no business of the state to keep tabs on the private dealings of citizens who have not been charged or convicted of crimes. Secondly, the mere possession of such information is open to abuse by those who have access to it. In the third place, the centralized collection of information is itself a hazard, with the possibility of such information being released inadvertently, or targetted criminally.

The collection of information on ordinary citizens alters the balance between citizen and state, casting the state into a superior, perhaps threatening role, rather than its proper role as our servant. It is there to do our bidding, and should have access to no more information about us than it needs to carry out our mandate. The proposed ID cards with access to vast data records on individuals do not sit easily with a free society. World War II identity cards were abolished postwar precisely because they were felt to be an intolerable intrusion into the lives of free citizens. The same is true today.

Of course the case is made that they are "to fight terrorism," as it is for eroding other liberties. In fact terrorists will equip themselves with forged ID cards as readily as they do with fake passports. ID cards should be seen instead as just another device for government to control the lives of its citizenry, and should be resisted accordingly.

Whiloe we're all discussing 42 days detention over here perhaps worth noting that the longer periods of detention over there don't seem to have been terrribly productive.

On that civil liberties jag, here's what a magistrate had to say to a policeman.

Well, what does happen when the Supreme Court makes a factual error in a judgement?

Now why would a businessman running an illegal business inform on his competitor to the police about the illegal business said competitor is running?

Are we really going to have to put up with another 60 years of this?

No, sadly, your money is not your own to dispose of as you wish.

And finally, what a piece of marketing!

Or, perhaps, why criminalisation of certain behaviours doesn't. Leave aside which group of prodnoses it is in this case, and have a look at what the Wisdom of Whores blog has to say about prostitution in Cambodia. Put simply, in the face of the HIV epidemic rather than trying to stamp out prostitution the authorities decided to co-opt the infrastructure itself, to ensure that condoms were used at all times (erm, well, at all times of sexual congress, at least).

HIV infection rates came crashing down, halving in just 5 years. It is estimated that condom promotion had saved 970,000 Cambodians from HIV infection by 2007.

The pressure now though is to close down the sex industry altogether, something that no one has ever managed, thus disrupting the way in which that extant structure has been manipulated to reduce those HIV infection rates. Other than those who think that there's something inherently wrong about the commercialisation of sex, something that's in fact so wrong that it's better to try and fail to wipe it out rather than manage the effects, most people would think of this as rather counter-productive. That the sex workers themselves are demonstrating for the right to remain sex workers might also give some thought.

You don't have to fully sign up to the rather extreme version of liberalism that I do, that ingesting what you wish as you wish or offering your gonads for pay or for play, again, as you wish, is one of your natural human rights, to think that perhaps attempted abolition isn't quite the right way to go about things.

As with drugs and their decriminalisation and needle exchanges, perhaps red light areas, brothels and condoms, are better than 970,000 people being infected with an incurable disease that will kill them young.

From the purely utilitarian point of view, what's best? Reducing the ill effects of what people are going to do anyway or attempting and failing to stop them doing it and ending up with all of those ill effects?

A Joseph Rountree Foundation team headed by Jonathan Bradshaw, professor of social policy at the University of York, has published a report which sets out the sum required for a minimum standard of living in Britain. The headline figure is £13,400, but in fact the report sets out different sums for people in different circumstances. The study, which took more than 2 years to complete, defines a minimum acceptable standard as including "more than just food, clothes and shelter."  For example, a single person is reckoned to need "walking boots, a pay-as-you-go mobile phone and a bicycle."  A pensioner couple's sum covers "an occasional carvery meal and a bird feeder."  Wine is included, but no tobacco, and a car is not deemed essential.

One might quibble over the details of what should or should not be included, but the exercise itself is a laudable one. It is useful information for us to know what level of income is needed by specific groups to sustain a minimum acceptable standard of living. It would be a good thing if this were to be institutionalized, with a standing commission reporting annually on how the figure has changed over the year, much as the inflation rate basket of goods is changed from time to time to reflect changing lifestyles.

What is admirable about the new report is that it sets out the poverty levels as specific cash sums. This is a positive step, for it is on the basis of what poor people can afford that the poverty level has meaning, rather than on how they compare with the rich. Too often people talk of poverty when they are actually discussing inequality. For poor people inequality is rather less important than whether they can afford enough to eat, and to live at a minimum acceptable standard. This is not some hypothetical fraction of what rich people earn, or what the average income is. It is whether they have enough to get by on. The Joseph Rountree Foundation rightly includes extras in addition to basic survival needs, for they are part of living a decent life. Their report sets out targets for minimum income levels, and sensibly treats poverty as a problem of deprivation and needs, rather than as one of disparities of income. It is a most welcome and refreshing change.

This is almost (but not quite) unbelievable. The NHS, that wonder of the world celebrating its 60 th birthday, is currently rationing vaccines for babies. Is it any surprise that no country has tried to replicate the system?

Bill Gates' tips for how to succeed, as delivered to high school students. Amazingly, create a monopoly wasn't one of them.

Is it possible to save too much money?

Not all that sure about this campaign to bankrupt the Guardian. Would we really want their columnists released into the community?

There are good ways of financing the insurance of bank deposits, just as there are bad ways. Guess which has just been chosen in the UK?

A ballot initiative in California Netsmith fully supports.

And finally, dancing all over the world.

This week’s Economist warns that America could have the infrastructure of a third world country within a few decades if does not change course quickly.

Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times that America, more than Iraq or Afghanistan, is in need of a better-functioning democracy that can work to solve the big issues.

Each year, the federal government collects 2 TRILLION dollars in taxes. State and local taxes push the total amount of taxes collected even higher. Sadly, while infrastructure crumbles and the economy goes to the pits, the government wastes billions of dollars on useless projects and subsidies—and spends far more than the two trillion it takes in.

This situation is not wholly unique to America. The UK sends a ridiculous amount to the EU each year and gets little in return. Meanwhile, consumer confidence is at a 26 year low and housing prices have fallen for the ninth consecutive month.

What should the government do? 1) Focus spending where it is absolutely necessary. 2) Eliminate wasteful spending. 3) Get rid of useless subsidies and entitlements. 4) Get rid of protectionist regulations and tariffs. 4) Lower taxes.

Apparently, the efficiency of power plants in the United States has remained the same for the past 50 years. That's right; in 1957, at a 33% efficiency rate, power plants got just as much energy for every pound of coal as they do today. Why this dearth of technological growth in such an important sector? One author makes a plausible case that it is the extensive regulations and perverse incentives created by government subsidies that have distorted the market, making efficiency unprofitable and competition miniscule.

According to the article, the market "is not stagnant because we've hit any fundamental limit. Indeed, studies by the US Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency have identified a whopping 200,000 MW of potential (that's 20% of the peak power demand of the US) for proven technologies that either recover waste energy from industrials and/or cogenerate heat and electricity from a single fuel source."

In other words, we have the technology to drastically increase the efficiency of energy production. In a free market, this efficiency would convert immediately to an increased profit and should therefore be adapted relatively quickly. One major reason that this has not happened is the fact that government regulation makes small start-up companies in the sector unviable – because capital investments are subsidized but energy must be passed on at no mark-up over operating costs. Moreover, mandates to adopt certain kinds of environmental standards have had the perverse effect of shutting out better, more efficient improvements.

Because of its size, importance, and environmental impact, the energy sector is often seen as a sector that requires government intervention. Yet that very government regulation has instead stifled progress to an almost shocking degree. Since the 1950's, we've invented personal computers, the internet, landed men on the moon and sent rovers to Mars. Is it a coincidence that despite all of that progress in unregulated fields, the most heavily regulated sector of the American economy has literally stagnated? I think not.

The U.S. tourism industry is worried about the slowdown in overseas visitors after the 9/11 attack and the subsequent entry hassles caused by increased security measures. So in a brilliant move the Travel Promotion Act was created and is gaining support in Congress. The act is intended to “promote the US as a premier travel destination” and to educate travellers about the entry process, thus making it less of a bother to visit because they understand and are prepared for security procedures.

It’s an easy piece of legislation for most of Congress to support, as it will not use any American taxpayer monies to finance the campaign. And this is why it will also fail: because the act calls for private sector contributions and a user fee on foreign visitors. So imagine the campaign does its job. You are convinced that a holiday to the United States would be nice and that its not a pain to go through loads of security, but now it is more expensive because you are going to actually pay for the nice little brochures that convinced you. A bit backwards in my opinion to have the tourists pay a tourist tax to promote tourism. I guess economic incentives work differently abroad…

Apparently, Swedish schools have now decided that children have a right – yes, a right –  to be invited to birthday parties. An eight-year-old boy was accused of discrimination when he failed to invite 2 of his classmates to his birthday party. According to the boy’s father, one of the uninvited students bullied the birthday boy and the other had not invited him to his own birthday party. But because the boy was handing the invitations out in class, his teacher confiscated them and has accused him of discrimination. According to the BBC, “The boy's school says he has violated the children's rights and has complained to the Swedish Parliament.” The Parliament will decide whether the boy has a right to only invite his friends to his birthday party in September.

A fascinating little map showing quite how large government looms in the economy in the various parts of the UK. There have been nominally socialist countries with lower levels than some areas.

Another fascinating snippet on attitudes towards such government interventions in the economy.

The highly amusing results of advanced technology meeting not very advanced prejudice.

These government consultation things might not be quite all they seem you know. Strange but true.

Total Politics seems to have managed what many new magazines do not: plan for a second edition.

As a bibliophile Netsmith is annoyed with himself for not coming up with this explanation for house price falls.

And finally, the usual uncle at a wedding thing.

According to ICM polling for the BBC, 40 percent of Britons list the risk of potentially deadly infections such as MRSA and C–difficile as their main concern with the NHS. They are right to be worried:

• One in nine patients admitted to hospital contract an infection during their stay. MRSA accounts for 45 percent of hospital-acquired infections in the UK, compared with less than 5 percent in the Netherlands and 1 percent in Sweden and Iceland.
• Only half of inpatients surveyed by the Picker Institute regarded their ward as clean.
• The number of hospitals not complying with the Healthcare Commission's standards on infection control, decontamination and hygiene went up by 6.8 percent, 1.7 percent and 2.5 percent respectively in 2006/7. A third of hospitals failed to comply with at least one of these standards.
• The number of deaths caused by MRSA has risen by 39 percent since 2001/2.
• EU-wide figures on MRSA infections show that Britons are 45 times more likely to get MRSA than Swedes and Icelanders.
• Between 2004 and 2006 deaths caused by C-difficile increased by 69 percent. Only one in four hospitals has a C-difficile isolation ward, even though this is considered the best way to stop the spread of the infection.

The strange thing is that 81 percent of people surveyed also said they were fairly or very proud of the NHS. 51 percent believed the NHS was the envy of the world. One simple question – why?

Healthcare spending now consumes 9-10 percent of GDP every year, and yet the UK has one of the highest levels of avoidable mortality in Europe.  We spend more on cancer treatment than any other European nation, yet still have poor survival rates compared with Western Europe, the US and Canada. We're the only OECD country to show no improvement in stroke deaths since 2000. NHS patients wait much longer for treatment than their European neighbours, and are denied new medicines and treatments that are routine elsewhere.

The NHS is nothing to be proud of. The sooner people realize that, the better.

Meteorologist Fred Singer is always amusing. He has a cheery disposition, and takes particular delight in teasing the likes of Al Gore when their enthusiasm gets the better of their reason. His Non-Government International Panel on Climate Change points out that melting glaciers and suchlike may be evidence of rising temperatures, but they are not evidence that human beings have caused them. And he states simply and confidently that human influence over the climate is insignificant.

The world has been much hotter, and much colder, long before we arrived on the scene. Carbon dioxide has been twenty times the level it is now. The sun – gushing out radiation, gas clouds, and magnetic fields – is a much more important cause of climate change. Carbon 14 and Oxygen 18 isotopes in ancient ice samples allow us to gauge both solar activity and temperature over the millennia; and indeed there is a strong correlation.

Singer has been in London, promoting his new report, Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate. The idea that human beings are causing climate change, he says, has produced damaging distortions in our energy policy – increasing our costs, damaging our economic growth and lowering our living standards. Instead, he says, since our activities have almost no influence on the climate, we should carry on using coal (and nuclear power) to generate electricity, and use our potentially-insecure supplies of natural gas for less strategic purposes such as transportation.

You might not agree with Singer, but it's hard to dislike the good-natured way he is prepared to stand up against the consensus.

It is an important safeguard against oppressive authority that the state should only act against people suspected of a specific crime. Free societies reject what are called "general warrants," where the state comes fishing to see what wrongdoing it might find. Its searches should be limited to specific offences suspected of being committed by specific persons.

The state always wants to survey everyone in case it can find some offence they might have committed, and liberty is preserved by preventing it from doing so. The police want to stop drivers at random in case any of them are under the influence of drink or drugs; but they are only allowed to stop people who are behaving suspiciously. Similarly with homes or businesses; there must be good cause to suspect specific infringements, not general snooping.

Several recent laws have weakened this protection by, for example, giving numerous bodies including local authorities the power to snoop on actions, correspondence, and communications in case people are transgressing the laws and rules. The position should be re-established that general warrants are not to be tolerated in free societies.