The Magic of Mushrooms

Psilocybin, more commonly known as the active ingredient in ‘magic mushrooms’, has been around for centuries and are part of an age-old biological creation: fungi. Fungi and bacteria are the oldest organisms to exist on this planet and have been used from recreation to medication and everything in between. They have already provided medical solutions such as penicillin and potentially many others, which have yet to be discovered by scientists. But the legalisation and decriminalisation of this powerful hallucinogenic, both for medicinal and recreational uses, is a different story. 

The recent decriminalisation of psilocybin containing mushrooms in Denver, Colorado, has witnessed the first milestone completed to end the stigma around naturally occurring drugs (such as mushrooms and cannabis), and people are coming to realise the benefit that they have both on physical and mental health. One argument for decriminalisation in Denver focused on the fact that certain strains may be helpful in the treatment of cluster headaches, PTSD and OCD (BBC 2019). Their new law aims to allow a margin for growing possessing mushrooms for personal use, for those aged twenty one and over, without the threat of penalties or imprisonment. Whilst the bill was passed with 50.6% to 49.4%, those who voted against it are still open to researching and studying the effects more extensively, to bring more insight into the use of natural medication. 

Studies suggest that psychedelic-assisted treatments may be breakthrough therapies with regards to mental health issues such as OCD, depression, anxiety and PTSD. Within the UK alone, prescriptions of antidepressants have doubled in the past ten years, leading to a worldwide pandemic of growing mental health problems. For many people, antidepressants and other medication can be a huge source of stability, especially for those who are predicted to have lifelong health issues, however many people who have never tried medication as part of treatment, are reluctant to try it due to the potential dependency they may face. 

Additionally, there are also studies that show that using psychedelics have low rates of harm compared to other drugs, both to users and third parties (The Economist, 2019). On this basis, there is a strong argument for decriminalization, because data has shown that magic mushrooms in particular are less risky than alcohol and tobacco usage as well as having therapeutic potential in the right context. However, like most medications prescribed for mental health disorders, mushrooms require a sufficient follow-up period, and regular check-ins with the psychiatrist who prescribed them. The use of mushrooms is finding its way into various different types of therapy; with the active ingredient of the mushroom boiled into a strange-tasting “tea”. The psilocybin is used to help patients recover from traumatic events in their past, under the guidance of their psychiatrist. Maybe it’s time the UK looked to Denver and changed its approach?

Ria Uppal is a research intern at the Adam Smith Institute.

Edward Teller – arming against Communist tyranny

Edward Teller died aged 95 on September 9th, 2003. Six weeks earlier he had been awarded by President George W Bush the US Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award. Teller had lived a remarkable and highly controversial life that included work in the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb. Later he headed up the research that led to the creation of the hydrogen (fusion) bomb, with many times the destructive power of atomic (fission) bombs. And after that he conducted a strong campaign for the US to create a defence against nuclear weapons, a programme later called the Strategic Defence Initiative, adopted by President Ronald Reagan, and which played a crucial role in securing the West's victory in the Cold War.

He was detested by the Left, partly because he gave the West the weapons with which it confronted and finally defeated the Soviet Union, and partly because he testified to a Congressional Committee against continuing Robert Oppenheimer's security clearance. Oppenheimer might not have been a security risk, but he had lied to federal investigators about his links with known Communists and his membership of the Communist Party until 1942.

Teller had left his native Hungary for Germany in 1930, now with a PhD in theoretical physics, but left when Adolf Hitler's rise made it an unsafe place for Jews. He worked with Niels Bohr for a time in Copenhagen, then went to the US to become Professor of Physics at George Washington University, before being recruited into the Manhattan Project. While on that project, Teller developed the idea of a feasible thermonuclear bomb. This was dismissed as implausible and impossible by fellow physicists, but when the USSR exploded its own nuclear bomb in 1949, Teller was given the go-ahead to develop a hydrogen bomb, the first of which was detonated in 1952.

He never liked the title of "Father of the H-Bomb," but he was. He is widely believed to have been, along with Hermann Kahn, the model for Dr Strangelove in the 1964 Kubrick classic movie. He was not wheelchair-bound, but he did have a prosthetic foot resulting from an accident in youth, and walked with a pronounced limp. He was a potent public advocate of a strong defence policy to combat Soviet expansionism and aggression, and regularly went public in calls for higher defence spending. He initiated a study as to whether a one megaton warhead could be made small enough to put atop a submarine-launched missile, a programme that led to the Polaris missile submarine.

His fervent anti-communism was sparked by his reading of "Darkness at Noon" by Arthur Koestler when he was a teenager, and he spent his life resisting both communism and fascism. In the 1980s he lobbied strongly for advanced weaponry to provide a defensive shield against enemy attack, including the use of atomic weapons to fire X-ray lasers at incoming missiles. It was derided as "Star Wars" by critics, but a now-convinced President Reagan announced his commitment to it. The Soviets were unable to match the SDI in either technology or cost, and ultimately folded, meaning that the system never had to be built. The threat of it achieved its objective.

I met Edward Teller at Hillsdale in 1975 and was privileged to shake his hand, something Gorbachev later publicly declined to do at a White House reception. The Nobel Prize winning physicist, Isidor Rabi, once suggested that "It would have been a better world without Teller." The opposite is true. Without Edward Teller the Soviets might have won, and the world would have been incomparably and unimaginably worse.

Sizewell C will murder the little birdies apparently

The Observer wants to tell us that the Sizewell C nuclear stations will do something very bad:

Nuclear power station could destroy wildlife haven I’ve loved since childhood

Sounds terrible, doesn’t it?

Naturalist Stephen Moss was 13 when he first saw the RSPB reserve in Minsmere, Suffolk. Now he fears plans for Sizewell C could wipe it out

Gosh.

So naturally I am worried that this unique place could be ruined by the proposed building of Sizewell C nuclear power station, a few hundred metres down the coast.

One little problem with this being that there have been nuclear power stations “a few hundred metres” (perhaps more like 1 km) away since Sizewell A started operating in 1966. We’re not exactly talking about a huge change in the environment hereabouts therefore.

We could even ponder whether using renewables to generate a few gigawatts of electricity might require more land than the 300 odd hectares a nuclear power station needs. That’s before we consider that one form, windmills, is colloquially known as birdchoppers.

But the real lesson to take from this:

Yet the name Minsmere might have remained obscure were it not for a quirk of military history. During the second world war, there were very real fears of a Nazi invasion across the North Sea. To create a barrier against a seaborne attack, farmland along the Suffolk coast was deliberately flooded and this accidentally created an ideal home for wetland birds.

Two years after the end of the conflict, in 1947, avocets returned to breed in the UK after an absence of more than a century. They did so at Minsmere, and this led the RSPB to lease (and eventually buy) the land from local owners and turn it into a nature reserve.

We don’t actually have to be at, nor to go war against, anyone to gain such precious nature reserves. Instead, just stop building sea walls and wait a few decades. That is, this avian heaven is rather easy to create and thus we can have just about as much of it as we desire whenever we do so. A particular piece of it therefore isn’t an impenetrable barrier to our gaining other things we also desire therefore - like, you know, heat, light, power, those sorts of things.

Star Trek, a moral tale

On September 8th, 1966, the first episode of Star Trek was aired on US television. It acquired cult status, but not the audiences its network wanted. They prepared to kill it as ratings dropped partway through its second season, but an unprecedented mail campaign by Trekkies (fans of the series) persuaded NBC to keep it going, but they moved it from primetime to the ill-fated Friday night slot, and pulled the plug after its third season.

It was revived as a movie franchise, and then as the highly successful Star Trek - the Next Generation, set a century after the first series. That, too, generated a movie franchise, and there were spin-offs such as Voyager, Deep Space Nine, and the less successful Enterprise. There were animated series, too, and novels based on the characters and settings.

Gene Roddenberry, its creator, modelled it on Gulliver’s Travels, Horatio Hornblower, and the Western series, Wagon Train. His aim was that each episode would tell an exciting adventure story, combined with a morality tale. It represented a future that Roddenberry hoped would come about, a future of tolerance and mutual respect, one without greed and violence.

The series was ground-breaking in several respects. It featured a mixed race and mixed species crew, including a Russian navigator, a black female comms officer, a Vulcan-human first officer, and a Japanese helmsman played by an actor later revealed to be gay. The Vulcan, Mr Spock, became a cult figure, representing a species that had put aside passion and emotion to embrace reason and logic, a future that Roddenberry clearly wanted for humanity.

The economics of Star Trek was interesting. With material wealth plentiful enough to eliminate want, and with replicators to satisfy all material desires, money became irrelevant, leading to an emphasis on talent, intelligence and status. People sought respect rather than riches. Manu Saadia, a Trekkie himself, wrote a book about "Trekonomics," describing how, in the absence of conspicuous consumption, people would look to mental enrichment via art, education and the discovery of new things.

This would all be very nice, but human beings, evolved with a desire to control their environment rather than to adapt to it, seek power over circumstance, including power over others. We have learned to control this to some extent by a combination of a morality that respects the rights of others to make their own choices, and the institutions that can restrain those who would use power to control others. In a Star Trek future that retraining morality and those institutions that inhibit the exercise of power would still be needed.

The Star Trek future might be wishful thinking, but it was positive, uplifting, and optimistic, and its words and phrases passed into everyday language and conversation. Prime Minister John Major, fighting the 1992 General Election, held up the Labour manifesto before a huge crowd and declaimed:

“These, then, are the voyages of the starship ‘Lack of Enterprise.’ It’s 5-year mission: to seek out and destroy new jobs and new opportunities; to boldly tax where none have taxed before.”

He personally had never actually heard of Star Trek, but that hardly mattered. The audience loved it, and he went on to win that election.

Doing things by bureaucracy never does lead to sensible solutions

Voluntary cooperation - the basis of markets but not exclusive to a market system - leads to a certain give and take. Hmm, yes, that seems a sensible solution to the problem at hand. That sense being determined by the people on the ground, at the place and time, observing said situation and coming up with a solution.

The we’ve the bureaucratic solution, the one where there must be a written rule for everything:

Litter pickers were told they couldn't recycle rubbish at council centre because it didn't count as "household waste".

“Litter picking” being where you go out and, well, pick up litter. Clean up a place that is. That litter then needs to go somewhere. The local council tip sounding like a good place for it to go.

But after filling six bags full of litter, Mr Mitchell turned up a the Richborough Household Waste Recycling Centre in Sandwich, Kent, last weekend (Aug 31) to dispose of them, but was turned away, being told it was just for 'household rubbish'.

Rules, d’ye see?

A spokesman for Kent County Council said: "The Richborough Household Waste Recycling Centre is for the use of members of the public to dispose of items which originate from their own property.

"If you are planning a litter pick, we would encourage people to contact their district or borough council in advance to arrange the collection of the waste.

"KCC has worked with district and borough councils across the county to make it easier and clearer to arrange disposal of waste from litter picks."

Politics, government, is at heart the system whereby we work out who deals with the rubbish. It has been said that the great genius of the British is to somehow muddle through. Few plans, little bureaucracy, rules only where there absolutely need to be such. Perhaps we should go back to that system rather than the current one where the anal retentives are in charge?

Georgi Markov, murdered by a Bulgarian Secret service assassin

On September 7th, 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian defector working for the BBC World Service was walking across Waterloo Bridge when he felt a sharp pain in his leg. The man behind him who was carrying an umbrella fled in a taxi. Four days later Markov died in hospital, and a post-mortem found he had been injected with a pellet containing the deadly poison ricin, probably injected from a weapon disguised as an umbrella.

 He was murdered on the orders of Todor Zhivkov, the Communist dictator of Bulgaria for 35 years. His rule tolerated no dissent, and writers had to toe the party line and parrot its praises. Those who were reluctant were persecuted and denied publication and recognition. Markov defected in Italy and settled in London, where he learned English and found work with the BBC. He was sentenced in absentia to six-and-a-half years for his defection.  

Todor Zhivkov was a thug, one whose extremist approach led to the largest ethnic cleansing of the Cold Ear period. He ordered a forcible assimilation of Bulgaria’s Turkish minority, forcing them all to adopt Bulgarian names. Resistance to his led to riots, so he expelled 360,000 of them over the Turkish border. This brutality appalled even his Soviet and Warsaw Pace colleagues, and he was forced to resign in 1989. Within a month Communist rule in Bulgaria ended, as it did across central and Eastern Europe.

No-one was ever charged with the murder of Georgi Markov, carried out in broad daylight on a London Street, but KGB defectors Oleg Kalugin and Oleg Gordievsky later confirmed that the KGB arranged the murder at the request of the Bulgarian Secret Service, whose agent, Francesco Gullino, was given the weapon. The documents concerning the case were later destroyed to remove hard evidence.

After his death, Markov’s works were withdrawn from circulation in Bulgaria, and his name was not mentioned by their media until after the fall of Communism in 1989.

Communist dictators routinely ordered the murders of defectors living in the West, and several were victims, or had unsuccessful attempts made against them. The same pattern can be seen today, with ex-KGB Putin ordering similar attacks against dissidents and defectors. Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in London in 2006 with radioactive polonium-210, on Putin’s orders. Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok sprayed onto their door handle by Russian agents who have since been named and identified by Western media investigators.

It illustrates the utter contempt the Communists and their like-minded successors have shown for international law and due process. They kill people who oppose their tyranny. It reminds us of the need for vigilance. Thankfully the UK has not thus far fallen under the rule of such a sociopathic ideology.

An interesting corollary to public choice economics

Public choice economics is simply the observation that humans respond to economic incentives. Those who rule us, politicians and bureaucrats, are not immune to this - despite appearances and other behavioural attributes we are all members of the same species.

Another way to put the same idea is that everyone always talks their own book. This research testing that in the economic predictions made about Brexit by bank research departments:

Doom-laden warnings of economic catastrophe before the Brexit referendum were driven in part by commercial worries by economists at the banks that stood to lose the most from a ‘leave’ vote, economists have found.

The paper is here:

This paper introduces macroeconomic forecasters as political agents and suggests that they use their forecasts to influence voting outcomes. We develop a probabilistic voting model in which voters do not have complete information about the future states of the economy and have to rely on macroeconomic forecasters. The model predicts that it is optimal for forecasters with economic interest (stakes) and influence to publish biased forecasts prior to a referendum. We test our theory using high-frequency data at the forecaster level surrounding the Brexit referendum. The results show that forecasters with stakes and in uence released much more pessimistic estimates for GDP growth in the following year than other forecasters. Actual GDP growth rate in 2017 shows that forecasters with stakes and in uence were also more incorrect than other institutions and the propaganda bias explains up to 50 percent of their forecast error.

People do indeed talk their own book. And now the test for public choice economics. Or perhaps for opponents of the idea. If the economists in banks will skew their predictions to their own interests then why won’t the economists in government? The Treasury?

That is, if we’re seeing a human universal here what makes our rulers immune to it?

We can even test this empirically. Are we currently in the depths of that recession the Treasury insisted would be upon us the moment we had the temerity to vote for Brexit?

Nudges: they shouldn't cost an arm and a leg

Spain has the highest level of organ donation in the world. Many attribute Spain’s success to its opt-out system of organ donation, yet it is clear to see that this is only one of the factors at play. 

Both Dr José Ramón Núñez, head of the WHO’s Donation and Transplant programme, and Juan Pedro Baños Jiménez, president of the Spanish Association of Transplants, agree that there are factors that influence organ donation rates other than simply giving the state de-facto ownership of your organs. Many Spanish doctors explain that in order to affect the level of organ donations a nation must change public opinion - not just legislate to prevent choice. 

Dr Núñez claims that Spaniards’ faith in their well organised system makes them more willing to donate. Juan Pedro Baños Jiménez cites Spanish methods of communication with its citizens and press coverage of recipients expressing the virtues of donation. (A great example of this is the song Gracias por Ser Donante). In the UK, there is no popular culture equivalent. 

In addition, Spain accepts organs from people that many nations would deem too old. While most countries have an upper age limit of 65, Spain does not. The oldest age of a successful organ donor in Spain was 91. Donations from over 65s account for only 7 percent of total donations in the United States but in Spain, one in every 10 donors is 80 or older. Naturally, as the rate of mortality falls, so does the availability of organs. By accepting organs from older donors, Spain combats this problem, an example of the country’s ingenuity in maximising the availability of organs. 

Organ transplants are more routine in Spain thanks to doctors who are ready and able to perform transplants. By contrast, specialist transplant doctors in the NHS in England already report being swamped. Naturally, the Spanish system inspires trust as people have confidence that their donated organs will be used well. In all systems, those in favour of organ donation will donate and those opposed will not, as long as they can do so legally. With an opt-out system a government is trying to nudge those who are indifferent into becoming donors. Looking at Spain, it is equally likely that faith in the system will sway these people, doing so in a far less intrusive manner and still achieving the goal of higher organ donation.  

And yet many still praise Spain’s opt-out system. Surely that is a fool proof way of increasing organ donation? Wrong. Wales has had an opt-out system since December 2015, yet the number of organ donations fell from 64 in 2015-2016 to 61 in 2016-2017. This shows that the number of people who adopt the default position (i.e. not positively making a decision) is not as significant as one may expect and that an opt-out system may not increase numbers as expected. The opt-out system did not increase the number of people on the registry as it is still possible for individuals to opt out. Moreover, families of the deceased can override the donor’s choice to donate, which in turn shows the importance of Spain’s organ donation campaign, and that a nudge alone is not enough.

According to an article in the Independent, ‘in recent years around half of British organ donors’ status on the register wasn’t known at the time of death’. It is apparent, in Britain, the system is already ineffective. If we are unable to record the number of people who have opted in, how can we expect to record the number of people who will opt out. Clearly, there are deeper problems with our organ donation system than simply the concept of choice.

All of this relates to Nudge theory. The aim of libertarian paternalism is to make it easier for people to make the ‘right’ decision by helping them overcome the cost of actively considering and making the decision. Nudge theory is, however, pernicious. It recommends the government nudge us towards ‘better’ choices. Why should the government be able to pass value judgements - or, worse, assume ownership of an individual’s body? By granting the government this power to pass moral judgement, the system invites itself to be abused. Not only is the opt-out system paternalism, it is particularly bad paternalism. In Spain the logistics behind organ transplants is done by the National Transplant Organisation (Organización Nacional de Trasplantes) and it is after the introduction of this organisation that organ donation numbers started to rise. Thus, the paternalism of the nudge (the opt-out system) is not as effective as the ‘paternalism’ of the National Transplant Organisation. 

The takeaway point of Spain’s success is that they have a successful system that people trust. In a time in which the NHS comes under constant fire, these conditions are ones that England and Scotland can replicate but not simply by introducing an opt-out system.

St Petersburg recovered its great name

St Petersburg recovered its name after a 1991 referendum had voted heavily to change it back from Leningrad; (it had briefly been Petrograd). On September 6th, 1991, the Russian Parliament approved the name change, turning its back on its communist past, and harking back to its glory days as an imperial city and Russia’s capital.

Peter the Great had founded the city in 1703, wanting a more convenient port than Archangel, further to the North on the White Sea. The reforming Tsar wanted closer links with Europe, both trade and cultural. He moved the capital from Moscow to St Petersburg, and it remained so, barring a brief 4-year reversion, until the communists took power in 1917 and switched it back to Moscow.

The city is a monument to fine architecture, with much of its public buildings in a style called Petrine Baroque, developed by Trezzini and others. Many Russians dub it “the window to Europe” because it represents the westward-looking face of Russia. It is also called “the Venice of the North” on account of its many waterways. It was originally built on swampland and water.

Because of its far North location, there is a period in the summer when the nights do not grow completely dark for about a month. This is the city’s famous “White Nights,” a major tourist attraction. Large numbers choose that period to visit the city’s combination of its Russian heritage with European-inspired architecture and culture.

Not all visitors have been benign, however. Following the Nazi invasion of 1941, the city (then called Leningrad) was besieged by German forces for nearly two-and-a-half years. The siege cut off most food supplies and was one of the most destructive in history, with over one million civilians killed, most from starvation. It was also one of the most cruel, and was not lifted until January, 1944.

The city recovered, and when Soviet system was overthrown, its citizens voted to restore the name that spoke of its history, its culture, and its greatness. It discarded the name associated with brutality and murder, even though it had resisted Nazi conquest under that name.

The old man had been interviewed on television in the street while Soviet Russia was still communist. The interviewer asked, “Where were you born?” and the man replied, “St Petersburg.” “And where did you do your courting?” he was asked. “Petrograd,” he replied. “Where did you live your life?” the questioner went on. “Leningrad” was the answer. “And where would you most like to live?” was the final question. The old man replied with a sigh, “St Petersburg.”

I hope he was still alive to receive his wish.

But Polly, why should spending be at 2010 levels?

Polly Toynbee tells us that whatever the Chancellor announces he’s going to be spending it’s not enough Because there’s £60 billion at least that needs to be spent to get back to the service levels of 2010.

All in all, the IFS says it would take £60bn to get back to 2010.

But why should spending get back to 2010 levels? One good reason why not coming in her very next sentence:

Pay is still not back to 2008 levels.

If we the people who pay the taxes are poorer then it seems reasonable and fair that less is collected in taxes to fund those services really. If total resources are less then so will the righteous level of spending on any particular sector.

We can lay this out more formally too. Wagner’s Law tells us that as a country becomes richer more will be spent upon state services. The argument being that such state services are luxury goods. No, not luxuries, but things we spend more of our income upon as our income rises.

We have our doubts about that. We think it’s more to do with politicians and bureaucracies learning how to pluck the population better over time. But accept that statist contention for a moment instead. We’re poorer therefore Wagner’s Law goes into reverse, doesn’t it?

We might also think this through in a different manner:

Things less visible include Natural England losing half its budget and 1,000 staff;

What is there to tell us that Natural England’s budget in 2010 was correct? Rather more importantly we’ve had three elections since then - and are likely to get a fourth - and what is an election if it isn’t for us, the taxpayers, to change how we’re taxed and what that’s spent upon?

That is, if elections don’t change how much Natural England gets then what is the point of this democracy in the first place? Tony Juniper does, after all, work for us and aren’t we actually supposed to have a say in how much of our money he gets to spend?

And all that heedless, needless cutting was for nothing: breaking the fiscal rules proves this was about pure ideology, not economics.

Just for the sake of the argument we’ll agree. And what are elections and changes of government supposed to be about if not ideology? There are, after all, some out here who think that ever more government isn’t the solution. Sometimes we even vote that way too. That it all happens the way we vote is the point of the system, not a problem with it.