Of course regulation is needed but it's by whom and how that is the trick
That human society needs to be regulated is obvious enough, it’s by whom and how that regulation is done which is the important matter. Regulation by law, by bureaucracy, by the state, they’re not the only three ways to do it - or, given their similarity, the only way.
In fact, we’d argue that they’re the last gasp attempt to do what we don’t have better methods of doing.
Take, for example, Elinor Ostrom’s work which gained her the Nobel. Garrett Hardin’s highlighting of the Tragedy of the Commons had led us all into believing that government must do something, government must regulate. It might be by defining property rights and leaving the market to do it, it might be by using the bureaucracy to direct actions in detail, but that state definitively had to do something, to act. Ostrom pointed out that this wasn’t so. Often enough a community could work out the rules for itself. And enforce them too.
Government only needs to act to prevent that tragedy when voluntary interactions haven’t worked.
We think this a useful guide to all regulation. Sure, society needs it. But often enough - everyone agrees sometimes, any argument is only going to be over how much or when - people just rubbing along together will produce entirely adequate regulation of whatever it is. Thus we do not require detailed prescriptions of how to run a society to emanate from the bureaucracy.
Sure, that might surprise the occasional German but then so what?
Further, changing technology can flip us from requiring that intervention, those bureaucratic emanations, to not:
Thousands of Britons are earning between £40 and £200 a night by offering illegal taxi services on social media, prompting police warnings.
The Times found 18 Facebook groups with a total of more than 50,000 members where people advertised or sought “lifts” for cash from drivers without taxi or private hire licenses. Many lifts drivers are students and others are in their teens or twenties. They ferry people to and from clubs and house parties, taking their highest earnings on New Year’s Eve.
Drivers and passengers often claim that licensed taxis are too expensive or are unavailable on busy nights but the police warn that clients risk travelling in unsafe or uninsured cars with drivers who could be sexual predators.
Facebook, social media more generally, is producing that reputation management system which is the regulation. That’s what the bureaucracy is proving for us anyway - that the people doing the taxi rides are reputable. We’ve not another system for doing this, maybe we don’t need that formal one any more?
Yes, obviously, such a system would be leaky, would make mistakes. As the state version does as proven by John Warboys. We don’t therefore claim that reputation management through social media is a perfect system of taxi regulation. Only that it’s one that works to a certain extent and the interesting question is. well, how well does it work? Better or worse than the current state regulation? Or even, well enough that we don’t need that state?
We’re not even insisting upon what we think might be the answer - only that we’ve got to answer the question.
Venezuela Campaign: Telecoms for control, not communication
In 2007 Hugo Chavez nationalised CANTV, Venezuela’s primary telecoms provider. Prior to its nationalisation CANTV had a reputation as South America’s leading telecoms operator. The company utilised the latest equipment, paid staff well, and trained staff thoroughly. However, the nationalisation has had a disastrous effect on CANTV. Today the network is falling apart. State imposed price controls have crippled the company’s ability to generate sufficient revenues to finance its operations. Additionally, investment in new technology has ceased and many skilled staff have left the company.
An in-depth investigation by Reuters has revealed that to pay its employees CANTV has to seek funds every month from the Venezuelan Central Bank. Wage levels are below $8 a month and pay often arrives late. The President of the Fetratel union, Jose David Mora, has written to employees saying that CANTV cannot obtain new equipment because of a lack of foreign currency and complaining that “there is total impunity for those who have bled the company dry.” Skilled employees have left and have been replaced by unqualified supporters of the ruling Socialist Party.
Maintenance has ground to a halt. Vehicles sit rusting because the company cannot afford to replace missing parts. Servers are no longer upgraded, and the fibre optic network is not supported by maintenance teams. While consumers find it very frustrating when they no longer have phone service or cannot use online services, the impact on Venezuelan businesses has been far more severe. Being unable to communicate with their customers or suppliers is a death sentence for many.
Price controls are also causing severe issues for the mobile networks. Movistar’s top mobile data plan cannot be sold in Venezuela for more than $0.15 cents, while in next-door Colombia a similar Movistar plan costs $17. Mobile networks cannot generate enough revenues to maintain their systems, or to replace network parts stolen by Venezuelans desperate to feed their families. Over 2,000 of the 6,000 cellular antennae in Venezuela have been attacked by thieves over the past three years. As a result of these problems many towns do not have cellular signal.
However, for the Venezuelan regime telecoms is more important as a means of control rather than communication. It speaks volumes that the person Chavez put in charge of CANTV was General Henry de Rangel Silva, head of the intelligence service (also sanctioned by the US for drug trafficking). The Chinese telecoms operator ZTE has helped the regime build a citizen control system based around a new, ID smart-card known as the “carnet de la patria,” or “fatherland card”. This card transmits data about cardholders to computer servers at CANTV, the manager of the database. Venezuelans need the card to receive state benefits such as pensions, food baskets, and subsidised petrol. This year pensioners have been protesting about the card restricting access to their pensions.
The system is also used by the regime to support its election-rigging activities. Voters are encouraged to scan their cards when voting and those doing so then receive messages thanking them for voting for Maduro. Agents of the state are telling people that the system knows how they voted. The regime is focused on controlling its citizens through this sinister programme, even while the basic communication system falls apart. Indeed, that angry citizens are increasingly unable to communicate with one another is likely regarded as a good thing by regime leaders.
While a free press is often championed as the basis of a free society, the freedom to communicate is far more important. Without communications that are reliable and free from surveillance, Venezuelans are unable to escape economic turmoil and political repression.
More information on the Venezuela Campaign can be found on their website.
Cuban revolution 60 years ago
On January 1st, 1959, Fidel Castro and his guerillas took over Cuba as President Batista fled into exile. Although initially hailed as a liberation, it quickly became apparent that one dictatorship was being replaced by another. Indeed, the Communist takeover replaced an authoritarian dictatorship with a totalitarian one. There followed the public execution of many who had served under Batista, with Ché Guevara personally shooting some of those condemned.
Castro consolidated his grip on power, nationalising key industries, banning private schools, and confiscating church property. Private lands were appropriated, and an aggressive, anti-US foreign policy was introduced, including armed intervention in foreign military conflicts. The US responded with sanctions, and Cuba became a client state of the Soviet Union, which bought its sugar crop in exchange for essentials. The Cuban economy stagnated under central planning, with shortages and rationing becoming the norm.
Castro's vehement anti-Americanism came to a head when he agreed to station Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, aimed at he US. When the US insisted they be removed, and Kruschev backed down, Castro felt betrayed, because he would have preferred a nuclear confrontation.
Cuba will no doubt celebrate the 60th anniversary of its revolution, but it gave the Cuban people a bleak future. Hundreds of thousands risked their lives to flee in small boats to a welcoming US, and the economy they left behind remained locked in a time warp. Things could have been otherwise. A democratic government could have given Cuba the benefits that globalisation brought elsewhere, and made the country rich and prosperous. But 60 years ago this was not on offer.
Management by Press Release
The Secretary of State for Health and Care seems to have taken over direct management of NHS England with a new technique: MBPR or Management By Press Release.
Discovering that the NHS is the last major organization to be using fax machines, he issued a press release on 9th December to ban them. GPs then explained that faxes were necessary because they cannot be hacked and are more reliable that the NHS IT email systems that cannot communicate with each other. No problem, a further press release set out a shiny new IT system: “The future of healthcare sets out the government's vision for digital, data and technology in health and care and outlines what is needed to enable the health and care system to make the best use of technology to support preventative, predictive and personalised care.”
Well this all appears new and shiny, ambitious NHS IT plans should ring alarm bells. Billions have been wasted on them in the past. “Back in 2013 then health secretary Jeremy Hunt, who left the department this week, said he wanted the health service to be paperless by 2018.”
A total NHS IT revamp deserves considered thought, not least about why previous ones were disasters. Consultation is necessary and the DHSC wasted no time. The press release was issued at 12.22pm on [Friday] 28 December 2018 along with the consultative questionnaire: “Please provide comments and feedback on the vision in this questionnaire - it will close to responses on Monday 31 December 2018”
Yes. You read that right. Today.
Naturally we are all at our desks during the post-Christmas weekend. And the vision is not just for a national NHS IT system but one to be used worldwide. With no knowledge of overseas health IT needs, or present systems, and a track record of nothing but disasters at home, the DHSC will design a “Global Digital Exemplar”.
The questionnaire itself is as unworldly as the timetable for its completion, reflecting the mindset of the authors, not reality. The second question, for example, reads:
“We have set out the guiding principles we should operate by: user need, privacy and security, interoperability and openness, and inclusion. We have also articulated our architectural principles:
put our tools in modern browsers
internet first
public cloud first
build a data layer with registers and APIs
adopt the best cyber security standards and
separate the layers of our patient record stack: hosting, data and digital services.
What do we need to take into account when applying these principles to different parts of the health and social care system?”
According to the 28 December press release: “The changes will free up staff time and reduce delays by allowing seamless, digitised flows of information between GP practices, hospitals and social care settings.” The current problems have been created by the DHSC’s refusal to use the email used by the rest of the world and insistence on different providers re-inventing email systems of their own. The given reason is confidentiality but that is, to quote a senior GP, a “smokescreen”. Private medicine in the UK uses standard email with special arrangements to cover confidentiality as does health systems overseas and large organisations worldwide – even Whitehall.
The same senior GP wrote: “the current Byzantine e-mail arrangements mean that we have to copy and paste all outgoing and incoming e-mail correspondence (plus details of sender, recipient, time etc) by hand into a text box, a time consuming process which results in the e-mails being stored in the clinical journal (i.e. as medical notes), not in the correspondence section of the clinical record. To add to this irritation, hospitals, laboratories etc insist on using just one "generic" e-mail address per practice rather than sending e-mails to individual clinicians, meaning that a member of staff has to waste time logging into the generic mailbox on a periodic basis then redirecting e-mails, whose receipt by their intended recipient can therefore be delayed substantially.”
For many conditions, notably cancer, the speed of these communications is crucial. The DHSC could implement its NHS internal communications vision at a stroke by simply insisting on the sole use of standard email. The last thing we need is a new generation of email reinventions that claim to speak the same language but fail to do so.
The overall IT problem is not so much that the DHSC does not know what it is talking about but that it thinks it does. At the ministerial level, the requirements should simple enough, not much more than:
Shared data storage
Ensuring only those entitled to data access can have it.
Cybersecurity
There is nothing anywhere in this “vision” about learning from the private medical or care sectors in the UK or in other countries or from other large modern organisations. There is nothing about timetables or costs. The “vision”, or rather phantasmagoria, has all the hallmarks of many more billions down the drain.
These “visions” and press releases, intended to give the impression that progress is being made, have the opposite effect after even the most cursory glance.
We employ, at no little expense, a CEO for NHS England. In the real world, CEOs run their businesses, they make realistic plans and they deliver them. The Secretary of State should set the broad targets, the funding and the timetable for their achievement. He should clarify what England expects, let Mr Stevens do that or find another.
MBPR not only makes the CEO redundant but also removes the responsibilities of the Secretary of State and his department. The ideas, visions and plans for NHS England should come from its CEO. The Chairman, and then the Secretary of State, should be ensuring that they are not just realistic but the best they can be. Because it usurps the role of the CEO, MBPR can only give the illusion of improvement. In the case NHS IT, the damage may be far greater.
Apparently the people who run universities are entire, complete and total idiots
It’s a rather startling claim and one that given our general view of those who can’t and therefore teach one we might even believe - that all those who run Britain’s universities are idiots. We don’t quite believe it though as we’ve met some goodly portion of them.
Yet this is what is being claimed here:
Tory education reforms are giving private school pupils a huge additional advantage in the hunt for university places and jobs by allowing them to sit easier GCSEs than the more rigorous exams that are being forced upon state schools, new official figures suggest.
Data released in parliamentary answers, and research into the exams chosen by private schools, shows the extent to which the independent sector is still opting for less demanding, internationally-recognised GCSEs (IGCSEs), which state schools are progressively being barred from using.
Let’s entirely accept the underlying contentions here. That IGCSEs are easier than GCSEs, the private sector sticks with the IGCSEs and that this means that the private sector pupils are getting better exam results when we look purely at grades.
Does this give those private sector pupils an advantage when applying to university? Well, only if those running the universities are entire fools.
People applying to Britain’s gilded cloisters come from all sorts of educational backgrounds. There will be those who have come up through the British school system, those from various remnants of the colonial schooling system, baccalaureates, perhaps the international bac, we’re sure that here will be graduates of Finland’s famously egalitarian system, of Sweden’s variation, or Russia’s and so on. Even some who managed to scrape through American high school.
That is, those who select pupils for entry into the universities are already well versed in the intricacies of different sets of qualifications. Thus entirely capable of distinguishing between 15 A*s at IGCSE and 5 Cs at GCSE. Actually, if they can’t, then what are they doing there?
To believe what is being claimed is that the universities are being run by those entirely unqualified to do so. Which, if true, suggests we’ve a bit of clearing out to do rather than worrying about who takes IGCSEs no?
Optimists
There is a tendency among those of the neoliberal persuasion towards optimism, the confidence that humankind can solve its problems and emerge into a better world, one full of opportunities, choices and chances, and one that will enable more people to live more fulfilled lives. An early exponent of this attitude was Julian Simon, author of "The Ultimate Resource," which was human ingenuity and creativity. Modern representatives of this approach include Matt Ridley, who wrote "The Rational Optimist," and Johan Norberg, author of "Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future." Both authors share Simon's confidence that humans will meet and surmount the challenges they will encounter. Both see the world as far, far better than it was, and both look to an even better future.
The question arises as to which comes first: is it confidence in the power of markets and the spontaneous interaction of millions that draws some to be optimistic about the future? Or is it that temperamental optimism leads people to endorse markets and neoliberalism? There might be another factor, too, in that optimists tend to see the world as it is, using more reason and analysis to evaluate it, rather than an emotional response to how far it falls short of the way it might be imagined. To optimists the evidence is overwhelming that the world is better than it was in terms of offering people better lives. It is also obvious to them that people can, by care, effort and application, make it better still.
British public sector pay isn't low, sorry, it just isn't
Those who work in the National Health Service are being warned against leaving the public sector pension scheme. This sounds like extremely good advice as on the numbers given this is the finest investment in the world. Perhaps the occasional equity will do better but this one comes with a government guarantee:
NHS workers are abandoning their generous gold-plated pensions in droves, despite warnings they could face poverty in retirement.
Concerns have been raised over an "epidemic" of workers opting out of the NHS pension scheme after nearly 250,000 staff withdrew from the scheme in the past three years.
Workers who opt out could be giving up pensions worth around nine times what they save, Royal London hospital warned last night.
It said figures revealed under the Freedom of Information act found that 245,561 workers across the NHS in England had opted out of the NHS pension scheme in the past three years.
A nurse earning £25,000 annually who opted out for a year could save £1,420 by doing so.
But it would cost a lump sum of around £13,000 - around nine times the £1,420 saving - to fill the pension hole caused by that one year of lost pension in retirement, Royal London said.
When people opt out they also give up large employer contributions into their pension pot.
There are claims that the British public sector - most especially those Angels of the NHS, the nurses - is underpaid in some manner. But we’ve got to understand that pensions are simply deferred pay. The pension that accumulates this year of your labour is payment for this year of your labour as assuredly as anything that turns up in the wage slips for this year.
Further, given the vagaries of final, average, defined contribution and so on pensions schemes the only useful valuation is the net present value of that future income stream.
When we do this across all of the public sector we get to an interesting result. Largely, and in general, in terms of wages the public sector pays better - adjusting for experience, training, education, all those things - for low end roles than the private and less well for top end jobs. But that’s for wages only. Add in pensions, a useful rule of thumb here being those public sector ones are worth an additional 30% of salary, and the pay scales tip to the public sector doing rather better than the private.
Not that we think so ourselves but it’s possible to argue that this should be so too, those who work for us should be well remunerated perhaps. But what this does show is that the argument that the public sector should get pay rises to keep up with the private workforce is simply false.
Now, what was it Hayek said about the difficulty of planning economies?
This was it, wasn’t it? In his Nobel Lecture, The Pretence of Knowledge, Hayek pointed out that we can’t plan economies because we can’t know what is happening in them. Without the information of what is going on we can’t - logically enough - determine what should happen, nor how to make it happen.
We admit to a tad of simplification there but that’s rather what he did say. Fortunately we currently have a government intent on proving this contention to us, which is nice, reality proving theory:
The Government has been accused of “sheer hypocrisy” for urging schools to become plastic free zones, after it emerged that its own fruit and vegetable initiative uses plastic packaging.
Under the scheme, all children at aged between four and six-years-old who attend state-funded primary schools are given a daily portion of fruit or vegetables. These are delivered to schools by Foodbuy, a Government supplier, wrapped in single-use plastic.
This week the Education Secretary, Damian Hinds, called on headteachers to contact their suppliers and ask for all deliveries to be made with packaging that is reusable or recyclable.
He said schools should stop using items such as plastic straws, bottles, food packaging and plastic bags and opt instead for sustainable alternatives.
It’s not that the Minister can’t try to control it’s that he doesn’t even know. Doesn’t know not just what we 65 million out here are doing, or the generality of the government, but doesn’t know what his own department is doing on a daily basis.
At which point this cloud of ignorance is going to make planning everything a bit difficult, as Hayek told us.
Of course, given that this about plastics is all a religious mania rather than anything rational there’s this as well:
Ms Sutherland said that using plastic packaging for fruit and vegetables is “one of the most indefensible uses of plastic”, since there are so many more environmentally friendly alternatives.
But if there are so many options which are better then why is it that people are using the one that isn’t better? We do tend to think that people aren’t stupid, that they optimise their use of resources. Rather a lot of our observation of the world confirms this insight. So, to claim that some other manner is better does require answering that question, if it is better then why aren’t people already using it?
Sure, it’s possible that there is a good reason why not. But we do need to know what it is.
Virtue signalling countries
It is common in developed countries for some people to signal their virtue by ostentatious behaviour changes. Although their changes often make zero difference to whatever causes they espouse, it does enable them to feel they are “doing something,” and to show their fellow citizens that they are on the side of the angels. Whole countries are not immune to such displays of virtue. Germany, for example, is phasing out nuclear power. It has closed 8 of its 17 reactors, and committed itself to closing the remainder by 2022. This is done “in the interests of the environment,” even though nuclear power pollutes far less than the fossil fuels it substitutes for.
The UK has joined the virtue signallers by proposing to double its 5p plastic bag charge, and to push schools to eliminate use of plastic. The UK’s contribution to plastic in the oceans is tiny. Ten rivers worldwide carry 90 percent of plastic entering the oceans, according to a paper from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig. Two of them, the Nile and the Niger, are in Africa, and the rest are in Asia: the Indus, Ganges, Amur, Mekong, Pearl, Hai he, Yellow and Yangtze rivers.
The Yangtze River in China is identified as the worst offender, putting up to 1.5 million tonnes of plastic into the sea every year. The Thames, by comparison, is responsible for only 18 tonnes of plastic into the ocean. Of course it is a good thing to play our part to reduce this, but the difference it will make to the world’s total is negligible. We might be better employed offering prizes to any researchers who can devise ways of dealing with the plastic others are dumping, perhaps by engineering micro-organisms that can digest it.
Unless and until we contribute to ways of actually solving the problem, we are simply virtue signalling and giving our ministers a chance to “look green” without actually making any difference.
But why this insistence upon recycling plastics?
As we’ve pointed out more than once around here we really don’t want to kill off sea life with the waste products of our civilisation. This includes plastics floating around the oceans. But this means managing the wastes from our civilisation, not either recycling them all or not having wastes or a civilisation at all.
With plastic we could recycle, of course we could, at some cost. We could also not use plastics, again at some cost. We could also burn them once used but there are at least some who say this should not happen either:
The answer to plastic pollution is to not create waste in the first place
Well, no, not really. Taking a scarce resource and transforming it into something of use to humans is rather the definition of having a civilisation at all. So, it’s management of the waste which matters:
On the bright side, the ban sparked a much needed conversation about improving domestic recycling infrastructure and recycling markets, and has forced both companies and the public to re-evaluate the products and packaging that were previously assumed to be recyclable. But the ban has also been used as a wrongful justification for burning trash in incinerators.
Waste incinerators became popular in the US in the late 80s, until harmful emissions of mercury and dioxins, toxic ash, technical failures, and prohibitive costs soured the public on the industry. However, there are still more than 70 relics left over from that failed experiment which continue to pollute surrounding communities and drain city coffers.
Well, we’re not sure we believe that about incinerators but a little technical knowledge is useful here. We are, after all, 40 to 50 years advanced from when those incinerators went up and it is true that we’ve learned more about PCBs and dioxins over that time. Modern incinerators function at higher and more stable temperatures meaning that those harmful chemicals aren’t created at all, let alone released.
But OK, let’s roll with the assertion for the moment anyway. That still doesn’t mean that recycling or non-use are our only options. There’s still the burying it in landfill option to consider. We’ve no shortage of holes in the ground, plastics don’t pose a problem as they rot as they largely don’t. So, what are the costs and benefits here?
Don’t use plastics, do but recycle them, do and bury them once used. Which of these makes us richer - that being what we want to know, which has the greatest benefits as against the least costs?
After all, the idea that we dig up hydrocarbons, use them, then bury the hydrocarbons again isn’t exactly a grand rape of Gaia now, is it?