On National Poetry Day...
...here is one of my favourite poems by Ogden Nash, which is as appropriate now as it was when he wrote it in the midst of the US government's measures to prevent 'overproduction' during the Great Depression.
One From One Leaves Two
Higgledy piggledy, my black hen,
She lays eggs for gentlemen.
Gentlemen come every day
To count what my black hen doth lay.
If perchance she lays too many,
They fine my hen a pretty penny;
If perchance she fails to lay,
The gentlemen a bonus pay.
Mumbledy pumbledy, my red cow,
She’s cooperating now.
At first she didn’t understand
That milk production must be planned;
She didn’t understand at first
She either had to plan or burst,
But now the government reports
She’s giving pints instead of quarts.
Fiddle de dee, my next-door neighbors,
They are giggling at their labors.
First they plant the tiny seed,
Then they water, then they weed,
Then they hoe and prune and lop,
They they raise a record crop,
Then they laugh their sides asunder,
And plow the whole caboodle under.
Abracadabra, thus we learn
The more you create, the less you earn.
The less you earn, the more you’re given,
The less you lead, the more you’re driven,
The more destroyed, the more they feed,
The more you pay, the more they need,
The more you earn, the less you keep,
And now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray the Lord my soul to take
If the tax-collector hasn’t got it before I wake.
— Ogden Nash
All cats go to heaven
YouTube is an incredibly easy way for ordinary people to communicate with one another and the world. It is therefore open to abuse, the consequence being that much of its content is not to be taken seriously: extraterrestrial Freemasons, Leonid Brezhnev rap videos, and amateur films mocking religion and religious figures -- any religion you can think of, from Scientology to the Church of Raptor Jesus -- abound. Yet last week Google took the unprecedented step of banning one single YouTube video in three countries (Egypt, Libya and India) in order to protect the sensibilities of the peoples who populate those lands.
Amid all of the stupidity one can find on YouTube, it is difficult to understand why this is necessary. In individual life, one would only expend such an effort on behalf of a truly delicate little snowflake, someone for whom the facts are simply unbearable. One does not tell one's three-year-old that the cat, Fluffy, has died; Fluffy goes "to Cat Heaven". One does not, in a group, call out a compulsive liar mid-flow; one "smiles and nods" and pretends to be amused, and then slowly backs away. One does these things of one's own free will, to protect an interlocutor from shock or humiliation, and for the sake of convenience, because causing a scene would result in the expenditure of far more effort than it is worth.
To try this trick with nations of men is another matter, and one with civil liberties implications. Steve Henn, writing for National Public Radio, points out that in the present context, Google's censorship is "an example of the challenges of balancing U.S. free speech concerns and of something known as the 'heckler's veto'" -- the problem faced when one person or a group of people resort to extreme means (e.g. threats of violence) in order to silence public discourse. This has happened several times in the past several years (think Terry Jones and Jyllands-Posten). And on each occasion, the riots failed utterly in their aims: as even the most cursory search on Google will reveal (find it yourself - I will not provide a hyperlink for reasons which will become readily apparent in the following paragraph), the liberal peoples of the West have responded to extremist tantrums by producing mountains of blasphemy and ridicule, the most recent iteration being the film implicated in last week's unrest.
But before we congratulate ourselves for our tolerance and humanity, we should take a hard look in the mirror. Last week, in Leeds, on 14 September (3 days after the attacks which destroyed the U.S. consulate in Benghazi), Azhar Ahmed, a 19-year-old from West Yorkshire, was convicted of making "derogatory, disrespectful and inflammatory" remarks under the Malicious Communications Act. His crime? Writing a Facebook post which stated, shortly after the funeral of a number of British soldiers from the area, that "all soldiers should go to hell". In the United Kingdom, such a communication falls foul of a provision of the Act which states that "a person who sends to another person a(n)... electronic communication... of any description which conveys a message which is indecent or grossly offensive... is guilty of an offence if his purpose [or one of them] in sending it is that it should... cause distress or anxiety to the recipient". He made the post; distress was intended and caused; judicial sanction followed.
At this point I would say, being a lawyer, that he made the crucial mistake of putting it in writing. But if he'd yelled the same thing at a funeral (or even a parade), that would have been of no assistance to the free exercise of his rights: a case on nearly identical material facts, but relating to spoken expression (R v Abdul, 2008) resulted in a half-dozen convictions under Section 5 of the Public Order Act. And this is far from the only case of its kind - there are dozens of reported cases showing that all manner of political speech, religious speech, and even the casual F-word can, under the right circumstances, fall foul of the legislation. The man on the Clapham omnibus has as much of a heckler's veto as the Salafist on a Cairo street; furthermore, the man on the Clapham omnibus is state-backed.
David Cameron described the attacks on the Libyan embassy as "senseless". I totally agree. In a free society the expression of a controversial opinion by an individual should not, under any circumstances, justify the threat or application of violence by other men in order to silence that opinion.
But Azhar Ahmed has been so silenced. Until we end the criminalisation of those opinions which offend us, we cannot justifiably claim that we are any different from the mob.
Review: Taft 2012, by Jason Heller
Two things did I know about William Howard Taft before reading this book. Firstly, in 1903, as governor of the Philippines, he opposed a ban on the sale of opium. Secondly, in 1913, as the 27th president of the USA, he vetoed the Webb-Kenyon Act which would have banned the transportation of alcohol from into dry states. A liberal man in age of puritanism, Taft’s resistance was in vain. Opium was banned in the Philippines in 1908 and the Senate overrode his veto of Webb-Kenyon Act, paving the way for national prohibition followed seven years later.
After reading this novel, Jason Heller’s first, I am not sure I know much more about this one-term president. He was a fat man, that much is amply emphasised. He had a moustache, like so did many gentlemen of the Gilded Age. And he would have fitted into the world of 2012 with surprising ease.
Taft died in 1930 in the bosom of his family, but that was only in real life. In ‘Taft 2012’, he mysteriously disappeared in 1913 and reappeared still more mysteriously in November 2011, just in time to bring some traditional American values to the current presidential election. His re-emergence leads to some inevitable fish-out-of-water confusions from the Crocodile Dundee school of comedy. There are various battles with technology, which Taft wins with remarkable ease for a man of 155. He enjoys some punk rock. He is unfazed by his descendent marrying a black man. He is soundly opposed to the War on Drugs.
Heller sees Taft’s main attribute as being his reluctance to hold political office. He may be right, but even if not wanting to be president is an excellent qualification for the job, having no policies is not, and Heller’s Taft has little of substance to say. He is neither appalled nor delighted to see what has happened to his country. He is just a bit confused, an affable man who is out of his depth and knows it. He sees no reason why he should run as president in 2012, and the reader has to agree, but the invitations rain in nonetheless. Thanks to the internet, a minor movement of ‘Tafties’ attempts to goad him back towards the White House. Heller’s depiction of the madness of the Twitter crowd is well-observed, gently parodying the shallowness of the medium while showing Taft to be just another celebrity freak on the social networking conveyor belt.
It may be churlish to lay the charge of unrealism at a time travel yarn, but the ease with Taft fits into modern day liberal America strains credibility. This would matter less if the novel had the teeth to fulfill its promise. Instead, it is a political satire with very little satire and hardly any politics. Taft has nothing of significance to say about American foreign policy, abortion, Obamacare, the economy or how to reunite a divided country. He is an everyman with enough wisdom to know that he doesn’t have the answers, but his reluctance to stir things up wastes an interesting premise. Heller clearly sees Taft as the kind of middle ground, third way candidate his country supposedly needs. He is, as his fictional grand-daughter tells him, “conservative yet forward-thinking, pro-business yet pro-regulation, principled yet open to compromise”, but which politician does not describe themselves in these bland terms? Certainly not Mitt Romney.
The closing pages see something of a twist in the tale, but the target Heller takes aim at is too trivial to justify the effort of resurrecting a dead president, as if Churchill came back from the dead to complain about chewing gum. In the end, Taft 2012 is a perfectly enjoyable bit of fun which is as disposable as its title destines it to be.
Make room for a bottom-up Olympic legacy
Interesting proposal from a group called British Future, saying that we should build on the Olympic feelgood factor, and widen the Olympic legacy by having more minority/disabled sport on TV, a single national school sports day, and suchlike.
Hmmm. I would be perfectly content to see the nation taking to sport, cycling to work, insisting that their kids walk to school and run round at the weekend rather than slouch on the couch. But these proposals all sound a bit – well, statist. I would really prefer not to live in a country where some minister could tell schools what day to arrange their sports day on, or could bully broadcasters into carrying programmes (however worthy) that they believed their viewers and listeners were not really interested in.
Better, surely, to have diversity among schools, who might want to do all sorts of different sports activity in their own way and at their own time, in ways that some central ministry could never imagine in a decade. Better too to have diversity of broadcasting, rather than the close central regulation we have at the moment which allows broadcasting 'watchdogs' – that is, a state-appointed quango – to dictate what they should carry. Better, indeed, that broadcasters should owe their living to carrying what their public actually wanted, rather than what ministers want for them (or what they say they want to surveys – who is going to answer 'no' to the question 'should sporting minorities be better represented on TV?'.
The remarkable thing about the Queen's Diamond Jubilee is how little it was organised from the centre. There were more than 2,000 street parties, all of them organised by local people in response to the desires of local people to have them and to help with them. You would think the nation would be street-partied out after the Royal Wedding not so long ago, but no, they came onto the streets with bunting and deck chairs and had a good time. It didn't take any ministers or officials or think-tanks or pressure groups to dictate how we were going to get into the mood, we just did it.
Nor did it cost anything. Actually, for the £9.5billion that the Olympics cost, you could keep the Royal Family up and running for 294 years. And I think that in the last year or two, they have been responsible for at least as many Union Jacks on the streets as the Olympics.
I often figure that interest groups come up with good ideas that we all agree should be done, but somewhere along the way a price tag appears. Sure, we want to capitalise on the Olympic legacy, but maybe not at the expense of higher taxes to fund more central programmes. And worse, it gives the nannies an opportunity to come out and dictate how we should live our lives.
An Olympic legacy will amount to nothing if we try to manage it from the centre through state initiatives. it has to come from the hearts, minds and enthusiasm of local people. We need to set them free, though. When parents refuse to help out with school sports because they face the indignity of criminal record checks, when you want to hire a school gym or a village hall for some sport event and get hit with a demand for risk-assessments and a whopping insurance bill, you can hardly expect people to promote sport at the local level. Get out of our hair, and the legacy will create itself.
Conspiracy theories: Back and to the Left?
A study claiming that climate sceptics are more likely to (a) support the free market, and (b) believe in conspiracy theories has attracted a good deal of media attention recently, leading to such headlines as “Climate change deniers ‘are either extreme free marketeers or conspiracy theorists’”. (Students of logic might like to consider how that headline diverges from the actual findings.)
This has naturally annoyed the aforementioned sceptics/deniers, who dispute the researchers’ claim that their blogs were invited to take part in the online survey that provided the study’s data. Regardless of whether or not this is true, the methodology used was about as impressive as the phrase “online survey” implies. In 2010, a questionnaire was posted on the various climate change blogs where the two sides thrash the issue out, often in forthright tones. Questions involved belief in the extent of man’s contribution to global warming as well as one’s preferred economic system, the moon landings, Princess Diana’s death, Area 51 and other wacky conspiracy theories. Since it would not be difficult to guess the purpose of the survey, it strikes me that there was a non-trivial incentive for each side to use it to discredit the other by claiming to hold the opposing view on climate science whilst pretending to believe in every tinfoil hat idea on the list.
The coming qualifications revolution
A new generation of qualifications has recently emerged in the global IT sector, which operate very differently from our traditional GCSE’s and A Levels. For example, Microsoft Learning is now a global leader in IT qualifications and they offer a wide range of Microsoft Certifications which provide individuals with technical expertise and prove their ability to design and build innovative solutions across multiple technologies. Due to the rapid rate of change in this sector, new Microsoft qualifications are continuously being introduced and existing qualifications revised. Some certifications are retired when Microsoft ends its support for the related technology and others must be updated every three years by taking a refresh exam. This generates additional income for the company, enables students to keep up to date on the latest developments in the field and ensures that potential employers have confidence that someone who holds a Microsoft Certification is current and engaged with Microsoft technologies. In short the value and the relevance of the qualification are maintained over time.
The branding of these new qualifications is also significant because the quality and reputation of the qualification is now inextricably linked with the quality and reputation of the parent company. Therefore any criticism of the Microsoft Certification will have a negative impact on the corporate image of Microsoft itself, which places pressure on the company to continuously maintain and improve the quality of its qualifications by investing in research and development and experimenting with new and better ways of delivery. Further pressure comes from existing and any future competitors from around the world which may introduce a superior alternative at any time. Again, all of these pressures help to maintain the value and the relevance of the qualification.
Because the government uses examination results as a key measure of a schools performance, schools respond by teaching to the test and by choosing the exam board which has the highest pass rate, i.e the easiest exams. You therefore end up with a race to the bottom with each private exam company competing to provide the easiest exams. Children continue to get better exam results, schools continue to climb the league table and the government can boast of helping to improve standards across the board. And when people begin to highlight the blatantly obvious, that despite increasing grades, children appear to be less educated than half a century ago, the private companies which provide the curriculum and the exams can simply hide behind the cover of the government and its generic GCSE qualification, which now attract most of the criticism. As a result the branding of the company remains intact, while the value of the GCSE continues to decline, until it becomes worthless.
Thankfully, a new generation of specialist qualifications may soon begin to appear in more traditional subjects across the curriculum, as a variety of world class companies and organisations begin to offer their own branded certificates, in the subject areas in which they specialise. For example, Pfizer could provide qualifications in the sciences, Khan Academy on maths, Pearson on English, Adobe on web design, Virgin on entrepreneurship, Google on utilising the internet, National Geographic on geography, the British Museum on history, the Economist on economics, Fitness First on sport, Jamie Oliver on home economics, Office Angels on how to get a job, Marks and Spencer on customer service and Greenpeace on the environment. The list is endless.
This unbundling of the school into different subject areas helps to redefine the school as a mechanism that provides students with an assortment of services instead of delivering an indivisible package of education. We can then start to disentangle the components of that package and customise them to fit specific student needs and abilities. Choice, variety and specialisation will therefore begin to increase within each school, and each school will now be in a position to offer their students a variety of different courses and qualifications. With the use of online technology this increasing variety and customisation of children’s education is now much more affordable and this will also encourage a new blended style of learning that combines the classroom with an online experience.
This unbundling of the school will certainly appeal to those parents who live in areas where there is a lack of alternative schools to choose from or who may not want to disrupt their children’s education by transferring them to a different school. Instead, if they are not satisfied with their child’s progress in a particular subject then they will now have the opportunity to choose between a variety of different educational programmes and qualifications within the same school. Therefore the goal for customised, unbundled school reform is not to develop a new model of what a good school should look like but to create a flexible system that enables schools and a variety of specialist content providers to meet a variety of needs in increasingly effective and targeted ways.
The end result is that children would not simply graduate after 11 years of schooling with a single certificate which lists the subjects studied and the corresponding A-F grade. Instead they would graduate with a portfolio of branded qualifications which have real meaning in the outside world and which provide useful information concerning the knowledge and skills acquired by each student. However, unlike traditional qualifications these branded qualifications will not hold their value for ever but will expire after a certain period of time unless a refresh exam is taken. This is the only way to guarantee that the qualification holds its value and remains relevant over time, thereby protecting the brand image of both the qualification and the parent company.
Should the government fund the arts?
Should the government fund the arts? No, says Pete Spence, the newest addition to the Adam Smith Institute team at The Economist's debate site. Pete makes a strong argument against taxpayer subsidies for the arts, arguing that they should be opposed not because of the cost, but because of the harmful impact of government money on the arts themselves:
The unspoken question throughout Mr Davey's piece is who defines what art is. Culture is valuable, but not when dictated to us. It should be organic, its ability to change through time to reflect the zeitgeist of the time being one of its defining features. Government agencies must be careful not to seem to support the party of power to avoid attacks as a propagandist, while not being too radical, for fear of facing cuts to funding. These pressures see funds directed towards the mediocre and the predictable. Government funding is no guarantee of success: for every “The King’s Speech” there is a “Sex Lives of the Potato Men”.
What's more, the nature of government funding means that the system will choose which 'good art' to fund. In other words, if people don't like Tibetan nose flute orchestras enough to pay themselves, they will be forced to do so by their betters at the Arts Council. A bad model, says Pete:
To appreciate the arts does not require us to be able to tell a Monet from a Manet. It is up to individuals to decide whether their lives are more enriched by watching a Hollywood film than by attending the opera. Richer people are more likely to go to the sort of “elite” arts that are funded by the government. When Mr Davey speaks of making prices affordable, he in fact refers to a subsidy to the middle classes. It is unclear why fans of Adele and “The Dark Knight Rises” should have to pay for my enjoyment of Italian opera.
Well, indeed. The Economist holds a running vote on the topic. Right now, 42% have voted No to taxpayer funding for the arts. If you agree with Pete that the arts are something government is better left out of, please do go and vote No as well.
The Fountainhead comes to London
Ayn Rand seems to be everywhere these days. Paul Ryan, the Republican nominee presumptive for Vice President, is a fan (although his actions have often not matched his words); the world's media have become slightly obsessed with explaining how appallingly individualistic she and her writings were; and, best of all, the Adam Smith Institute's Ayn Rand Lecture this year was a roaring success.
So it's another feather in Ms Rand's overflowing cap that the movie of her book The Fountainhead is being screened in London on Saturday 15th of September:
The Fountainhead is an important and inspirational film – whose author, Ayn Rand, has shot into the public eye recently in the US elections.
The film features some of the best actors of the era, including Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal, and directed by King Vidor, the winner of eight international film awards. In 1979 Vidor was awarded an Honorary Academy Award for his “incomparable achievements as a cinematic creator and innovator.”
The story centres around Howard Roark, an architect who refuses to conform to the uncreative limits that others try to impose upon him. According to Ayn Rand, the author: “Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man’s nature and of life’s potential. There are very few guideposts to find. The Fountainhead is one of them. This is one of the cardinal reasons of The Fountainhead’s lasting appeal: it is a confirmation of the spirit of youth, proclaiming man’s glory, showing how much is possible.”
There are only 85 seats available, so things should fill up pretty quickly. Don't miss it.
Less theory, more reality
Picture the scene: you're in a room full of freedom-loving libertarians - the kind of crowd who unfailingly have an answer for everything - and a fundamental question surges forth from your cerebral cortex.
'Just why are freedom and the free-market so good then?' Your question is met with a mixture of sympathy and incredulity. One might think this an unparalleled opportunity to extol the virtues of personal and economic freedom and the strength of the individual. However, the response is often lacklustre. In an almost automaton-like manner, void of inspiring message or conviction, the reply comes back: 'Well, you see, Hayek/Smith/Rothbard wrote about that in his book X. It must be true – it's all there in black and white!'
A response with decided limitations. In the often bubble-like environs in which an inspiring young, politically-minded person often find themselves in, this approach tends to go off without a hitch. Fellow like-minded people nod sagely and in agreeing tones affirm: 'it's true, you know. Mises did say that'.
This effectiveness, however, tends to diminish rapidly the moment you step outside of the postcode SW1. Were a similar situation to occur in my Midland home town, your Joe Bloggs would give any combination of the following three responses: 'who?', 'eh?', or a dull, cold stare.
But nor is it just about Mr Bloggs. If students, the most likely decision-makers of the future, are to be converted to the cause of freedom and liberty, throwing around names will achieve little. There is no reason to think that the alienation many of us feel when bombarded with the names of the left-wing holy-of-holies is any less alienating than others hearing about those we hold in such high esteem.
What we need are inspiring real-life examples. There are multitudes of these wherever freedom and liberty are allowed to flourish: the men and women whose inventions, made possible through economic liberty and the freedom of capital, directly benefited themselves and society as a whole; the poets, playwrights and painters who created great works of art, unmolested by restrictions on their conscience and granted independent thought. These are our ambassadors – those who made the watch on your wrist and shoes on your feet.
It is tempting to lapse back into the self-satisfied stance of thinking that we are somehow the enlightened few compared to those who are either too idle, too dim-witted or simply too far-gone to learn about freedom. This is nothing less than a monumental mistake. Many of us bemoan Westminster for being more a political club than a functioning organ of a representative democracy. Whilst not the sole remedy to this grievance, inspiring your man and woman on street of liberty is a crucial first step. Until then, the mental shackles put in place by decades of political misdeeds do not stand a chance of being torn away.
[Deirdre McCloskey wrote a fine example of 'Factual free-market' advocacy recently. — ed]
Social capital and the free market
The concept of the positive form of social capital, as championed by Robert Putnam in books such as Bowling Alone, is the notion that economic and collective benefit can be derived from networks of relationships, reciprocity and trust within and between communities.
The creation of social capital is often associated with government intervention and even the enforcement of a certain set of moral principles based on the whim of the current government. The government's Big Society program has been scorned from its very initiation because of its disconnection from reality and lack of government backing. However, the Big Society program failed not because, as often argued, that social capital cannot be created without private wealth and public investment, but because it intended to redistribute wealth rather than promote healthy competition. The creation of social capital does have its place in capitalism, but it is not something that can be forced.
Let me explain. By promoting free market competition, big businesses are given no safety net; they must depend totally on Darwinian capitalist principles. This encourages cooperation to strive forward for that mutually beneficial prize and increases the amount of wealth and innovation in the system. At the individual level, libertarianism creates a similar pattern, giving people an incentive to volunteer their services and to create social networks. The creation of social capital should be at the forefront of the mind of anyone who wishes to create a libertarian system as it is only with a healthy dose of social capital that we can avoid the concentration of wealth that is feared by many Marxist theorists.
Conversely, by funding a selective welfare state through obligatory public funding, voluntary commitments seem unnecessary and makes the ‘norms of reciprocity and networks of civil engagement’ that Putnam states are crucial to the creation of social capital much harder to form and we may actually see the destruction of social capital. Staffan Kumlin and Bo Rothstein have noted that ‘people with experience with selective welfare... will to a greater extent perceive themselves as having been mistreated’ and this in turn affects levels of interpersonal trust.
The creation of a free market system and the abolishment of a selective welfare state can and will create the social capital that will further reinforce libertarian principles. Governments must not be tempted to intervene in an attempt to create social capital as by doing so they will undermine the delicate balance of reciprocity. Social capital is not something that can be enforced, but can grow organically through the perception of universal benefit and fairness.