The ASI's best of 2011: Madsen & Eamonn
Madsen Pirie, President:
Movies
The best movies I saw were
The Eagle
A great tale of adventure, loyalty and friendship in Roman Britain
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
It holds up splendidly against the Alex Guinness TV version, with more than a nod in its direction.
Hugo
A brilliant, atmospheric and absorbing tribute to the early pioneers of cinema. Beautifully shot with effective use of 3D.
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Books
The best books I read were
Dictators' Houses (by Peter York)
How fascinating to see how dictators live, unrestrained by taste.
The Churchill Memorandum (by Sean Gabb)
A fast-paced romp through an alternative post-war history in which all of the political opponents I have despised are cast as traitors or mass murderers!
What Am I Still Doing Here (by Roger Lewis)
Roger Lewis looks with dispassionate eyes at the sometimes squalid lives of people and places he has known, but never without humour.
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Events
Among the events I enjoyed were:
The Royal Wedding
I celebrated it with friends, decorating a balcony in Nice and with a union jack cake and champagne to toast the happy couple.
Reagan Statue unveiling
I joined the crowds in Grosvenor Square unveiling the great man's statue, and in Guildhall to hear Condoleeza Rice and William Hague celebrate his achievement.
Mont Pelerin Society meeting
I had the chance to mingle with great intellects in Istanbul, and to cruise the Bosphorus in style.
~
Eamonn Butler, Director:
Best film:
Tinker Tailor, Soldier Spy - different from but just as gripping as the TV series with Alec Guiness.
Best book:
Nicholas Phillipson's Adam Smith - An Enlightened Life.
The ASI's best of 2011: JP Floru
JP Floru, Director of Programmes:
As a contrarian I’m reluctant to prove that I am human after all - what’s wrong with being a Martian? But our Sam has asked us to do this – so here we go.
Talking of Martians, the most interesting event I attended this year was a talk organised by the Economic Research Council about Space Travel and Space Exploitation – some people there couldn’t wait to move to another planet. My second most favourite event was attending mass at Westminster Abbey with the Pope. He is even smaller than I am, and has a very high-pitched voice with a strong German accent. Lots of incense and pump and circumstance, and red mitres and golden clothes. Yes!
As for films, for me only those where everybody is rich will do. This started when my communist teacher in school discouraged us from watching Dallas “because it glamourised the rich in America”. Not for me, serfs crawling in the mud, fighting over a potato: films are to escape. I switched the DVD three minutes into Black Death last week. This film featured Eddie Redmayne, who I saw in the fantastic play Richard II at the Donmar last week. Favourite play of the year, though I don’t really do plays. Richard II would be the favourite play always, because of the “Sceptered Isle” bit (tears), which also talks about “That England that was wont to conquer others, hath made a shameful conquest of itself”. This second bit, presumably, talks about the European Union. All very topical.
Back to films. Melancholia by Lars von Trier ticks all the boxes: everybody is rich; they live in castles; there is some SF in it (without ghosts and Martians, all perfectly possible); it is sufficiently weird and hasn’t bee done before. Another potential contender, Almodovar’s The Skin I Live In I disliked profoundly because too gory. The King’s Speech had glorious decors but no story and I never got Mr. Darcy’s allure anyway. Downtown Abbey (of course), though the second season was not as good as the first (of course). Had Lord Fellowes been told by the BBC to write more about downstairs than last year?
Music: I listen to XFM at high volume while driving through Central London and making tourists jump. I like most of it, especially when upbeat. Surprise then that this year’s winners for me are two melancholic tunes: Video Games by Lana Del Ray; and On Melancholy Hill by Gorillaz. But I am more a classical music person: the grander and the more pompous the better: Handel, Vivaldi, Lully. Versailles rocks.
Politician of the year would be Boris (as all years for the previous five). David Cameron was a surprise second (late entrant after the Veto in Brussels). Ed Millibore: Zero Point. Other losers include: Rowan Williams, for being so predictably socialist (and therefore boring). Most dangerous politician of the future: Yvette Cooper.
Favourite places of 2011: Sweden (very civilised) and St. Jean-Cap-Ferrat (France) where I will move to when I win the lottery.
Most impressive video clip: Zach Wahls Speaks About Family.
What I look forward to in 2012: More vetoes on Europe; The Iron Lady; and writing a second book.
I used to be a productive member of society like you...
Skyrim damages the economy according to Geek Dad writer Dave Banks. His explanation is worth a read, gushing with praise for one of the most immersive and impressive video games yet, and finishing with a petition to politicians to ban Bethesda from making such great games. But it should be read as a parody, as one of the best and most culturally relevant mock petitions since Bastiat pretended that the sun was putting unprotected candle makers out of business.
Unlike Bastiat's petition, this one has a more modern target, pointing out the skewed priorities of many economists and econometricians. While capitalists are most often accused of being obsessed with economic efficiency and making money, the true materialists are the Keynesians and statists. In fact, free-marketeers and particularly the Austrian school instead focus on human action and preferences, and would see the decision to lock yourself in a room for the 300 hours of Skyrim's estimated game-play as perfectly valid.
Some may not approve, and others may tell you to get a life doing something 'productive'. To top it all, you may well not be the best, most rational decision-maker. But you still know yourself best, and you often unconsciously act on it; after all, your definition of 'productive' may involve clearing Dwemer ruins, mining ore on a snow-swept mountainside, and absorbing dragon souls.
People like Owen Jones who decry the 'funemployment' of the wealthy forget that the whole point of work is to pay for leisure. They're right that work sometimes brings its own therapeutic benefits, and perhaps a degree of dignity, but the free market and the progress of technology have allowed our generation to have more leisure time than ever before. Rather than being good for its own sake, employment is the cost of leisure, as defined by our personal preferences and decisions.
The money earned doesn't just provide some security and standard of living, but also gives us the opportunity to pursue our own happiness. If that happiness involves 'wasting' your time becoming a thane or slaying virtual vampires, then how else were you going to spend it? On vapid consumer spending to 'boost the economy'? There's something inherently wrong about the idea, as if you're working for others at your own expense; and the value of Mr Banks' parodic petition is in making it so obvious and repugnant. So let's give ourselves a deserved break and have our virtual adventures, before we take the metaphorical arrow to the knee and are stuck back at work on a Monday morning.
Twisted sex stories
The BBC has a report up this morning that claims that the number of students in sex work has doubled. But the story is paper-thin – the NUS says they’re being misreported, and the BBC gives no useful figures to support the claims in their report.
The article’s headline says “NUS: Students turning to prostitution to fund studies”. The basis of this claim is not an NUS report or even an NUS press release, but a comment given by an NUS officer on the BBC’s own story. And the content of the story is weak, to say the least.
To begin with, the story is based on a statistical fudge. It reports the change, without any concrete numbers. But relative figures are only useful if you have the original numbers to see where the change has taken place. An increase from two people to four isn’t very significant but, if expressed in terms of the change, it’s the same as an increase from 10,000 to 20,000. And, obviously, if you’re dealing with very small numbers it’s hard to say that a “doubling” of an extra ten or twenty people is statistically significant. That the number of students who know someone working in the sex industry has risen from 3% to 25% in the last ten years doesn’t say very much about the actual numbers doing so, especially given the nebulous status of the term “sex industry”.
Next, the BBC story interviews a woman who “turned to escorting during her A-levels when she found out her education maintenance allowance (EMA) was in danger of being cut.” Note the weasel words there – if Clare was studying for her A-levels and getting an EMA, she would continue to get it until June 2012. So Clare hasn’t actually been getting less money from the government at all, and won't until June next year.
Far from being forced by poverty into sex work, Clare says “I began looking for jobs, but the hours were unsociable.” I’m sympathetic to Clare – she says that she was misled by a “friend” into escort work, which is grotesque. But for the BBC to appropriate this story to support their flimsy thesis about students being forced into sex work is exploitative to her and deeply misleading to its readership.
There are people resorting to illegal sex work because of poverty. This is very, very bad, especially because the prohibition of a lot of sex work has made it a violent and dangerous type of work. But this BBC article has hijacked this very real problem in order to promote a specious non-story that misleads readers.
Bias at the BBC?
We've been very pleased about the coverage our new report on renewable energy, Renewable Energy: Vision or Mirage?, has been getting. I was particularly impressed by the balanced coverage given by the BBC this morning, which fairly summarized the report along with some criticism from a spokesman from the World Wildlife Fund.
Unfortunately, their story now appears to have been heavily rewritten to give the thrust of the coverage to businesses that profit from state subsidies to the renewables sector. Even the headline has changed, from this morning's "Green energy push ‘flawed’ claims Adam Smith Institute" to this afternoon's "Scottish Renewables slams 'flawed' energy report".
You can read the original version of the story here, since the BBC doesn't preserve its original news stories after they have been rewritten. Interestingly, the BBC story also covers a report by Reform Scotland that is strongly in favour of renewables — remarkably, the BBC does not include any criticism of this paper despite its inclusion of renewable energy companies' criticisms of our report.
It's possible that this is all normal, but does anybody really believe that this would be the practice if our report was in favour of wind turbines? Somehow, I doubt it.
Update: In the comments, Man in a Shed points me to this comparison of the two versions of the report. As he says, I think it makes the point rather well (click for full size):
Update 2: To answer my own question, I read through the four stories linked to at the bottom of the BBC's report on our paper:
- Scotland 'setting example' at UN climate change summit: Quotes Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, giving out that the Scottish Executive hasn't done enough on renewables.
- Osborne unveils £103m renewables funding for Scotland: Comments from Friends of the Earth and Pelamis Wave Power, a subsidy-funded firm, praising the fact that extra money is being spent on wave power.
- SNP's 100% renewable energy plan is 'overambitious': The Scottish Labour leader questions the timetable (but not the policy) of making Scotland 100% dependent on renewable energy by 2020. One link to an Institution of Mechanical Engineers report, which "supports the aspiration of the Scottish government to fully exploit the potential for renewable energy that exists in Scotland".
- Renewable energy production drops in Scotland: Quotes Pelamis Wave Power (again) and Scottish Renewables (again), both on the importance of putting more taxpayer money into renewables.
Obviously this is a small sample, but it's striking that, in the last four news reports, not a single comment was quoted questioning the basis of Scotland's renewable energy policy — the only "dissenting" voices are the firms asking for more money from the taxpayer. Is there any other business sector that gets such an easy ride from the BBC?
The British Social Attitudes Survey makes for miserable reading
The 28th British Social Attitudes Survey was released yesterday. Whilst it is important not to read too much into survey data they do reflect many interesting attitudes and changes in attitudes. Commentators have been quick to suggest that the results show ‘the public’ (i.e. the respondents) are less willing to pay more taxes to support the welfare state. Unfortunately, I am not convinced that classical liberals and libertarians should be too hopeful about the results.
The data suggest that although many respondents are concerned about income inequality (74%* believe the gap between rich and poor is too large, which has slightly decreased from 82%* in 2000), they are increasingly unwilling for the state to redistribute more income in order to narrow it. Only 34%* agree that ‘government should redistribute income from the better-off to those who are less well off’ with 37%* disagreeing – these figures have not varied substantially over the past decade. The number of respondents who agree that taxes and spending on education, health and social benefits should increase has fallen to 30%* from 58%* in 1999 and it is important to note that this trend was occurring before 2008 and thus was not simply a consequence of recession. Libertarians should not be too cheered, however, as 57%* believed taxes and spending should remain the same and only 9%* thought that they should be reduced.
Given that we have highly redistributive tax policies in the UK, at least in theory, the data are rather contradictory as some of those who disagreed that government should redistribute income must at the same time, bizarrely, believe that levels of taxation should remain the same! My reading of the data suggest that the UK is not becoming more libertarian; whist there is a growing resistance to higher taxes and more government spending, there is an overwhelming level of support for the status quo which represents a level of taxation I would deem oppressive. The only positive picture I could draw is that respondents are becoming markedly more socially liberal on issues like homosexuality. Even here, however, we must recognise that socially liberal attitudes are often embodied in illiberal laws such as equality legislation.
Respondents’ attitudes to education were similarly depressing. Despite a high level of support for a ‘basic right’ to choose a school, 63% believed parents should send their child to the nearest state school and only 38% believed that parents who could afford to should be able to pay for private education. This shows how far the state has gone in destroying support for private education and choice.
Naturally, The Guardian saw this as an opportunity to suggest that it was private schools which were responsible for ‘dividing society’ whereas in reality it was the state’s occupation of the education sector which has caused the problems and destroyed choice and quality. The report concludes that “there is stronger support for prioritising equality than for prioritising parental freedom’. On a brighter note, the numbers supporting higher education tuition fees and loans have increased as 70% believed that some students should pay fees ‘depending on their circumstances’ and only 16% believed that no student should pay them (down from 25% in 2007). That said, only 13% believed that all students should pay.
These broadly statist attitudes are mirrored in health and social policy. As if we needed reminding, the NHS continues to be treated as the national religion with 70% of respondents ‘very’ or ‘quite’ satisfied with the service overall and satisfaction at an all-time high, albeit plateauing. There is no question of a huge and increased level of endowment-effect support for a free-at-the-point-of-delivery service. Worryingly, 79% of respondents agreed that Central Government should be responsible for reducing child poverty. This is in spite of any clear consensus on what the levels of child poverty actually were and what might cause it.
Interestingly, the data reveal a degree of scepticism regarding environmental issues. Most importantly 50% stated that they were unwilling to pay higher taxes for environmental protection, up from 38% in 2000. It is clear that, whatever their attitudes towards climate change and the environment, many of those polled are reluctant to see the state taking action.
Whilst the BSAS might suggest that there is little support for the state to become more redistributive or ‘greener’, from a classical liberal perspective I found it depressing reading. It served as a reminder of just how far government has stretched its tentacles into every aspect of social and economic life in the UK and how much support there is for it to do so. In many cases, classical liberals have not merely lost the battle, there is no battle whatsoever.
*Data quoted are for England only
The new website: what's changed?
Welcome to the new Adam Smith Institute website. It should be a significant improvement on the old one, being a lot more user-friendly and, hopefully, stylish. Most of the old website’s structure has been preserved, so you shouldn’t have any trouble navigating around the key sections. There are a few changes, though:
Research: We’ve collected all our work into one section that encompasses our reports, books and articles. The difference between these should be clearer than it has been: reports discuss a particular policy issue or idea; articles are closer to being a magazine-style extended article about an idea; books are much more broad and often educational in focus. It's still easy to focus on one section in particular by clicking on the drop-down menu under Research. As always, everything is absolutely free and we're hoping to provide eReader-compatible versions of our longer publications in 2012.
Articles: We’ve renamed our think pieces as Articles, and we’re giving them a lot more prominence than before. I want this section to host magazine-style articles written by people from across the classical liberal and libertarian spectrum. If you want to write for us on issues interesting to classical liberals and libertarians, such as political engagement (is politics a waste of time?), liberalism in history (is medieval Iceland proof that government isn’t essential?), or something else entirely, this is the place for it. Articles need not reflect any ASI line, but should be written from a liberal perspective and spark a debate among classical liberals and libertarians. It’s a great way to get more involved with the Adam Smith Institute too – if you have an idea or article you’d like to submit, please send it to sam@old.adamsmith.org.
Students: As well as old favourites like The Next Generation and our student conferences, we’ve added links to the Freedom Week website and our student partner organizations, such as the Liberty League and European Students for Liberty. The biggest addition is our new Learning About Liberty section, which gives a list of books, blogs, websites and media resources to use as a starting point in learning about the classical liberal tradition. This will be updated frequently – leave your suggestions in the comments of this post.
Blog: The most active and visited section of the site has been given a refit and been rechristened as The Pin Factory Blog. Adam Smith famously used a pin factory as a demonstration of the power of cooperation to boost productivity. When people work together voluntarily, the result can be a lot more than the sum of its parts. I think that’s a nice analogy to use for one of my favourite parts of the site.
I hope you like the new site as much as I do. As with any change, there will be some hiccups – if you’re having any trouble with the site, let me know at sam@old.adamsmith.org.
The Leveson Inquiry should not advocate statutory regulation of the press
The Leveson Inquiry recently began taking evidence into the role of the press and police in the phone hacking scandal. Whilst the police role in the scandal is an important one – and says a great deal about the problems of a state-run police force – the potential threat to press freedom is far greater.
The economics of the newspaper industry has been cited by some as a factor driving journalists towards unethical behaviour or, worse, break laws. Lost in the general discussion of the economics of the industry is the behemoth that is the BBC. It should be noted that, after the demise of the News of the World, News Corp controls around 20% of UK daily paper circulation, whilst the BBC controls 60% of the broadcast news audience. It is, therefore, somewhat ironic that the BBC itself protested against the News Corp takeover of BSkyB on the basis that it threatened competition!
Newspapers have been unable to monetise the internet as an income stream. This is in part because the BBC website offers so much content for free (i.e licence fee-payer funded) that it heavily distorts the market and mitigates against charging for content. The BBC itself has been forced to recognise this and plans to scale back its website by 20% to allow ‘room’ for competition. Local radio stations also suffer hugely from crowding-out by BBC local radio. Similarly, local paper circulation and revenues have been damaged by the council ‘freesheets’ that Eric Pickles was meant to dispose of.
There was some discussion over the meaning of ‘public interest’, which seemed to revolve around a rather simplistic fallacy over possible meanings of the word ‘interest’. Clearly, there is a clash between the public interest and private interests in privacy that need to be resolved on a legal level. I would suggest that there ought to be a critical distinction, however, between a public and a private figure. A public figure is, or ought to be, a figure who has sought elected or appointed public office (i.e. is in receipt of a public stipend) – a private figure has not. Clearly, a ‘public interest’ applies to information in the case of the former that does not in the case of the latter and there may be different standards of privacy between the two.
Broadcasters in the UK are already subject to rules on ‘objectivity’ which really represent a curb on freedom of speech. As no individual is capable of objectivity, this simply hides broadcaster’s bias from easy scrutiny and furthermore, restricts freedom of choice. It is a great shame that there has been no equivalent to Radio Caroline breaking the state’s attack on freedom of expression, represented by that most malign figure Tony Benn.
Above all else, statutory regulation of the press must be avoided and I sincerely hope that the Leveson does not recommend this. Whilst the phone hacking scandals have exposed regrettable behaviour on the part of a certain portion of the press, that behaviour is punishable under existing criminal law. Moreover, the closure of The News of the World showed that such activity is not sustainable under a competitive press. Given that the greatest threat to press competition is government intervention, one wonders how a regulator could enhance it. Regulators invariably decrease competition by driving up barriers to entry. Newspapers are increasingly subject to checks on their accuracy and market share by the emergence of new media, especially on the internet, so there is no reason to suppose that there is a serious threat of market domination.
A statutory regulator would mean that bureaucrats and politicians, rather than producers or consumers of newspapers, had the ultimate say over what should or should not be published in them. The public choice consequences of such a regulator are vast. Politicians and bureaucrats already have a symbiotic relationship with the press; regulatory capture and rent-seeking are simply inevitable. At the same time, given that the press does – to some degree - play a role in scrutinising and restricting the activities of bureaucrats and politicians the dangers of the latter dictating to the former are also substantial. We should look to other countries that regulate their press: China, Burma...