It's amazing how disinformation persists among the tax campaigners
Tax campaigner here has a meaning, someone who insists that someone else should be paying lots more taxes. That is, after all, the cry of most of the Tax Justice this, Tax that and so on.
Today’s example is from The Ecumenical Council for Corporate Responsibility - or perhaps their sideshow, Church Action for Tax Justice . They have a report out insisting that the tax system is most unfair. Their international example is Zambia and its copper exports. The Big Bad International Capitalists are misinvoicing and thus spiriting money that should righteously be taxed out of the country:
There are a number of different mechanisms but two common practices that are alleged to have taken place in relation to Zambian copper are abusive transfer pricing, and trade misinvoicing. [16] The first of these involves the mining company in Zambia selling its copper to a related company in another country, usually a tax haven. When these two companies are both subsidiaries of the same multinational company then the price for the transaction is meant to be set by an “arm’s length principle” in which the cost of sale is the same as it would be on the open market between two unrelated companies. Abusive transfer pricing occurs when in reality the mining company sells the copper to the company in the tax haven at an artificially reduced cost, thereby avoiding, if not evading, paying tax in Zambia. The company in the tax haven then sells on the copper at a much inflated price but also pays little tax because the country in which it is located is a tax haven. In this way, the Zambian Revenue Authority is deprived of much needed income.
The reference for this happening is this War on Want report, which itself references some research done by the Centre for Global Development. Done by Alex Cobham for the CGD in fact.
The problem with this is that the claim was shown, by Maya Forstater, to be an entire nonsense soon after it was first published. Which is one of the reasons - so we’re told at least - that Alex Cobham no longer works at CGD but runs the Tax Justice Network instead and Maya went to work for the CGD for a time.
The claim was that Glencore exported copper from Switzerland at a much higher price than it exported it from Zambia. Thus billions going missing. Reality was that Glencore, occasionally, exported a few or a few tens of kilos of copper from Switzerland as samples. The hundreds of thousands of tonnes leaving Zambia went at world prices. The samples - because this is how customs declarations work - included the cost of the copper plus the price of the courier services delivering the few kg. That, literally, was it, in toto.
Copper plus the price of DHL is higher than copper without the cost of DHL. From which the entire tale of billions going walkabout is woven.
Even though this has been disproven, the CGD has withdrawn the report (and Mr. Cobham has, ahem, moved on) The tale still persists though, doesn’t it? An absolute and complete untruth is still a rallying cry for more tax.
There are other problems with the report as well but we’ll leave those for another day. Except for just the one observation, question perhaps.
The claim is made that an NHS nurse pays a higher average (ie, as a percentage of her total income) tax rate than some people earning tens of millions a year. We don’t agree that she does - the report relied upon doesn’t handle corporation tax properly - but let’s just run with the idea that she does indeed do so. What should be the answer then?
Well, why not call for lower taxation of people on smaller incomes? As we do around here in fact, as we have done for decades and as we’ve even aided in making occur with the rise in the personal allowance. That is, why is it that Justice in this field always seems to mean more tax rather than less?
There's modern slavery and then there's modern slavery
We do not pretend or imply that conditions on Brazilian cattle farms are wondrous nor even desirable. We would though like to point out that £8 a day isn’t slavery.
Brazilian beef farms ‘used workers kept in conditions similar to slavery’
Workers on farms supplying world’s biggest meat firms allegedly paid £8 a day and housed in shacks with no toilets or running water
The point is repeated later in the piece:
In August 2019, government inspectors found nine unregistered workers clearing pasture on the Copacabana farm in Mato Grosso do Sul state were being paid £8 a day, the report said. They lived in improvised shacks made of logs, plastic, palm fronds and corrugated iron without toilets, kitchens or running water.
Here’s the thing. The average Brazilian wage is about 2,500 reals a month. The minimum wage is 1,045 a month. £8 a day is, for a 22 day working month, £176 a month, at current exchange rates that’s 1,272 reals a month.
It is entirely true that £8 a day isn’t something that anyone in this country is going to get out of bed for. But that’s because we’re all lucky, lucky to be born into an already rich country. As Branco Milanovic is known to point out, the largest single determinant of your lifetime income is which country were you born into? Brazil is, still, a markedly poorer country. Thus wages are lower.
Considering solely the wages being discussed here, for that’s the point we wish to make, paying above the local minimum wage is not evidence of slavery, whether we try to use the modern definition of slavery or not. It is evidence of the poverty of the surrounding economy.
At which point we can suggest a solution. The way to increase the incomes of the global poor is to buy products made by poor people in poor places. Now that Britain has the freedom to actually do this perhaps we should organise matters so that more of us can, tariff free, buy more Brazilian beef? That would make both us and those workers better off which sounds like a nice outcome of a plan, doesn’t it?
DHSC: Highlights from MI5
Victoria Street. Early March 2020
“Humphrey”
“Yes Minister?”
“Everyone is saying we have to do something about this pandemic thingy.”
“Don’t worry, Minister, it’s all in hand. Our world beating Public Health team have a plan.”
“Good. I’m told the Korean and Germans have got things under control with a test and trace system.”
“No, no, Minister, we don’t need that. We’re not the snoopers they are. We will lock everyone in their own homes so no testing and tracing will be needed.”
“Starting immediately?”
“I’ve been in touch with the PM’s office on your behalf. The Jockey Club have asked them to hold back until after the Cheltenham Gold Cup.”
One month later
“Humphrey. The hospitals are all complaining they’ve got no protective equipment and they are running out of beds. Where’s this plan?”
“Owing to an unfortunate concatenation of circumstances beyond our control, Minister, the virus is not the one we had anticipated. We will make bed space by sending all the DTOCs - that’s the bed blockers, Minister - into care homes.”
“Even if they are infected with the plague.”
“You have to make difficult decisions, Minister, but you can say you are doing so with a heavy heart. And thanks, by the way, for getting supplies of PPE from, if I may be so bold, unlikely contacts of your associates down at the club.”
One month later
“Humphrey. Jeremy Hunt is still going on about test and trace. Maybe he’s right?”
“Yes, I think your decision, Minister, not to commission the necessary technology, may possibly have been on the obverse side of optimal.”
“My decision?”
“Civil servants, merely advise, Minister. But all is not lost: we can have a world beating system up and running in a month. You remember you appointed Lady Harding to do nothing at the NHS? She has mobile phone leadership experience, she was at Oxford with David Cameron and, as a rider of racehorses, is used to doing things at speed?”
“Excellent, Humphrey, just the person we want. And ordering 100 million vaccine doses was excellent too. We don’t know when we’ll get them but shouldn’t we plan the distribution and jabbing for when we do?”
“If I may say this, Minister, with the deepest respect, your suggestions sometimes verge on the hasty. You do realise we have a plethora of impediments demanding our closest and immediate attention. We have no doses today, so a distribution plan today would avail us nothing.”
Six months later
“Good news, Minister, the Pfizer vaccine has been approved and is immediately available. The Today Programme want a Minister to discuss your rollout plan. To spare your blushes, I had a word with my opposite number at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. They are good on planning and have several ministers with nothing much to do. They’ll send someone along and we can just announce that we have 800,000 doses now, five million by the year end and there’s finally light at the end tunnel.”
“But without a distribution plan, Humphrey, there’s no hope of five million jabs by the end of the year.”
“No one else knows that and it will give cover while the new minister comes up with one.”
One month later
“Humphrey, I have had to admit to the media that we’ve only done one, not five, million jabs. Luckily the Oxford vaccine has now come on stream and they say they can deliver two million doses a week with immediate effect. So I’ve announced we’ll vaccinate the 13 million health workers and over 80s by mid February. How about that for a shot in the arm?”
“Very droll, Minister. How did you work it out?”
“One million in December and two million times the six weeks from when the Oxford vaccine became available.”
“Oh dear. I fear that was verging on, if I may say so, the jejune. Indeed, jejune seems to be busting out all over. Forgive my little joke. You may not be aware of four problems: when we ordered the 100 million doses, we didn’t order the 100 million vials to put them in. All the NHS doctors and nurses are over-stretched dealing with the new peak Covid cases so they cannot take on jabbing as well. There are 30,000 recently retired doctors and nurses but they have to complete 21 forms each and the NHS doesn’t have the staff to check them. Finally, using the army, which could sort this out in the blink of an eyelid, is unacceptable to the NHS. You must realise, Minister, that the NHS is our national religion and must emerge as the hero. We cannot have the army taking any of their credit.”
“Phew! It all just shows we should have had a plan.”
“True, Minister. It’s a pity you decided against having one.”
Wages aren't a distribution thing, they're a supply one
The High Pay Centre has its annual whine about how much CEOs get paid. As part of which they say the following:
Luke Hildyard, director of the High Pay Centre, said: “These figures will raise concern about the governance of big businesses and whether major employers are distributing pay in a way that rewards the contribution of different workers fairly.
But wages aren’t a distribution thing, they’re a supply one.
Given the complaints about the government currently - vaccines, track and trace, PPE and so on - it shouldn’t be difficult to grasp the idea that competence in managing large and complex organisations is scarce. Both scarce and valuable in fact. Thus there’s competition to gain access to those with those scarce skills.
That is, paying someone more than they can gain for going and working elsewhere. The entire race and game is about accessing the supply of those rare and valuable skills. As is also true of all the other skills, talents, labour and so on that make up the rest of the labour supply to those very same organisations.
To talk about the “distribution” of wages in a company is to be looking at the problem through the wrong end of the telescope.
This before we get to the point that it is, after all, the shareholders’ money and who the heck is Luke Hildyard to tell them how they must dispose of their own property?
Well, yes, Sir Simon, so let's have less of it
Simon Jenkins tells us that the entirety of British government is incompetent:
No government in Europe has had an easy ride over the past nine months, but none has had a worse one than Britain’s. Indecision on lockdown was followed by chaotic PPE supplies, the “world-beating” test-and-trace shambles, school exam confusion and now the multi-form bureaucratic deterrent to potential vaccinators.
We tend to think that’s a little unfair because the important question is always Thomas Sowell’s “Compared to what?”
Those PPE supplies may well have been make do and muddle through but that system worked rather better than the EU’s centrally coordinated efforts. As was true of the earlier dash for ventilators. The UK approved vaccines earlier and, bar Israel, seems to be getting more doses into arms more quickly than anywhere else. It’s difficult to point to anywhere that created an effective test and trace system once the coronavirus had become endemic.
But leave all that aside and consider the central point being made:
Coronavirus has revealed a country so ill-governed that current politicians cannot be blamed for all of it.
....
Come the inevitable inquiry into the events of the past year, it is not only politicians who should carry the can. All the components of Britain’s government, central and local, should be tested – the constitution as a whole should be under examination.
OK, British governance is terrible. So, let’s have less of it then. Free the people from this terrible ball and chain of incompetence, leave the money to pay for it fructifying in the pockets of the populace and watch as we become more efficient, more effective, freer and richer. We even have a little stock of plans and pointers, decades worth of them, about how exactly to do this.
We must dig up Cornwall to meet local content rules
Further evidence of the European Union - in common with all too many politicians - not understanding the point of trade.
UK carmakers face a three-year scramble to source electric car batteries locally or from the EU to avoid tariffs on exports following the Brexit free trade deal, according to industry analysts.
The Christmas Eve deal means that all UK-EU trade in cars and parts will continue to be free of tariffs or quotas after the the Brexit transition period ended on Friday, as long as they contain enough content from either UK or EU factories. The deal came as a major relief to the embattled car industry.
Batteries will at first be allowed to contain up to 70% of materials from countries outside the EU or the UK. However, from 1 January 2024 that requirement will tighten to 50%. This will mean that sourcing battery materials from within the UK or EU will be the only realistic option for UK carmakers to avoid EU tariffs from 2024 onwards, according to Alessandro Marongiu, a trade analyst at the lobby group the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).
The major material need for these batteries is lithium, with a substantial addition by value of cobalt. There are no mining operations in the UK for either material. Cornwall has some possibilities for lithium but that’s something to be worked upon. There’s no substantial (a very marginal operation exists in Portugal) lithium source in Europe at all. Although, obviously, more mountains can be blown up to provide one.
Global supply comes from either Australia, areas too desolate even for wombats let alone kangaroos, or salt flats in Chile and Argentina, places too desolate for any form of life. A further substantial amount is known, at high altitude, in Bolivia in again a salt flat carrying near no life of any kind.
But because people have the wrong view of trade the imperative is going to be to mine Cornwall and such other marginal European deposits while ignoring - actually, positively insisting they not be used - the cornucopian deposits elsewhere in the world.The ignorance being of the very point of trade itself, the gain being that we have access to those things done better and or cheaper by Johnny Foreigner.
As it happens the engineer The Man got in to place mineral deposits around the place didn’t place them here. So, we should go get the stuff from elsewhere. This being exactly what these local content laws insist we do not do.
That is, in order to have tariff free trade we’ve got to ignore the point of having trade at all. Only politics could make such a clusterscrum out of a simple concept.
If we want lithium batteries then we should get that lithium from wherever it is easiest or cheapest to do so. Why burden ourselves with a law insisting upon exactly the opposite?
Say Goodbye to British Fish
The EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement may be a good deal for the UK overall but it is a rotten one for the British fishing industry. We were led to believe that regaining sovereignty over our waters would mean that the long decline in British fishing would be reversed. The rot set in when the UK subscribed to the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) in 1973. The new Agreement only gives the UK a marginal increase in fishing rights by value. See Table for the shares of key fish stocks according to the new Agreement and what the shares should have been according to the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations [1] :
UK shares of agreed total allowable catches
The government, however, claims that there will be a 25% increase “from just over half of the quota stocks in our own waters now, to two thirds of the stocks in our waters after five and a half years.”
The EU version of that is less specific: “Under the Agreement, EU fishing vessels will continue to have the current level of access to UK waters for a transition period of 5.5 years, with a gradual and balanced reduction of EU quotas in UK waters over time.” Neither version can be confirmed from the text of the Agreement as the annexes simply show the shares of the combined UK and EU total annual catches (TACs) and not the separate shares in UK and EU waters nor the tonnes nor the values nor any totals. The word “balanced” may well mean that the reduction of EU fishing in UK waters will be offset by a reduction of UK fishing in EU waters.
The EU has insisted on “grandfathering” existing practices into future rights, e.g. EU boats will continue to fish in inshore UK waters between six and 12 miles out (p.271). This is akin to saying the squatters have a legal right to own the premises in which they squat. What about our sovereign rights over our own waters? Forget those too: the CFP is replaced by a Fisheries Specialist Committee, co-chaired by a UK minister and an EU Commission equivalent who have to agree everything. For example, “If the Parties have not agreed a TAC [in UK or EU waters] for a stock listed in Annex FISH.1 or Annex FISH.2A or B by 10 December, they shall immediately resume consultations with the continued aim of agreeing the TAC. The Parties shall engage frequently with a view to exploring all possible options for reaching agreement in the shortest possible time.” (p.269). If either side’s claim is not agreed by the other, it will be entitled to the average of the previous three years [claimed] catches. (p.271)
Half a loaf is better than no bread and, as fish do not respect national borders, it does make sense to manage fish stocks jointly, based on ICES (International Council for the Exploration of the Sea) science. Decisions should be made by a qualified majority based on the relative sizes of fishing areas.
The UK may have the weaker position on the Fisheries Specialist Committee. UK secretaries of state serve an average two year term and junior ministers half that. The current UK Fisheries Minister, Victoria Prentis, took the role in February 2020 with no relevant experience. UK ministers will be concerned with fair play and their co-chairs will be professionals trying to please their member state ambitions for maximising their catches. The last 47 years have demonstrated which side wins. The UK joined the EEC in 1973 landing almost all the fish from its own waters: it now has half that. Stripping out the foreign owned, UK flagged vessels, the true UK share is much less: “Around half of England’s quota is ultimately owned by Dutch, Icelandic, or Spanish interests.” As a result of this decline, the UK, which should be a net exporter, imports about a third more fish than it exports.
Greenpeace has provided a good account of the reasons for the decline of UK fisheries. Three factors were responsible: the CFP and the allocation of quotas based on claimed catches, short-termism by parts of the fishing industry and lack of stewardship by the UK government. “From the 1980s onwards...the free movement of capital enabled EU shipowners to purchase vessels and to use national quotas in other EU countries. British fishermen have called this phenomenon ‘quota hopping’.” If a UK citizen wishes to sell overseas an obscure work of art that hardly anyone has ever seen, massive scrutiny is involved whereas UK fishing rights have been just waved away.
The Scottish government issued a scathing analysis of the fisheries deal on 29th December, showing that the UK share of most types of fish would actually reduce although the total tonnage would probably remain much the same. However, the new Agreement loses the UK’s right to the “Hague Preference” which usefully allows the UK to up its share of quotas under certain circumstances. “In the stocks where there has been a nominal increase in UK quota share, in the majority of cases the UK has only secured access to stocks where the EU was not currently fishing its full allocation.” And the UK has been granted new rights to fish, e.g. North Sea sole, which would be good if the UK had the facility to catch that species in that area.
The Agreement ignores the fishing in UK and EU waters by third parties. “9.3% of EU catches (2014-18) are made in the EEZ [Exclusive Economic Zone] of third countries engaged with the EU in fishing agreements” notably those of Norway, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. The extent to which these match reciprocal fishing in UK and EU waters is unclear. In 1976, the UK lost the “Cod War” with Iceland essentially because the Americans told the British government to concede because Iceland was threatening the American, sorry NATO, base in Iceland and submarines lanes nearby. That established the 200 mile EEZ principle which became the international convention in 1982. The Agreement is unclear about the current extent of third party fishing in UK and EU waters, reciprocally in theirs and from whose shares third party entitlements should be taken. All the UK and EU shares in the Annexes in the Agreement total to 100% of TACs.
The final problem with the new Agreement is that, although the UK is allowed to set the rules for fishing in its waters, it cannot police or enforce those rules: “2. Each Party shall take all necessary measures to ensure compliance by its vessels with the rules applicable to those vessels in the other Party’s waters, including authorisation or licence conditions.” (p.268) Here is another good idea: the British police will no longer deal with French motorists speeding on British roads. Instead, the French police will divine the culprits and decide whether to prosecute.
In summary, the fishing deal enshrines the status quo and the decline in the UK fishing industry looks set to continue. It is sad to say but the UK negotiators were inept. The EU position was declared in 2017, namely that they would maintain the status quo. The fishing assets acquired by the other member states during the UK’s 47 year EU sojourn were now theirs by right. If the UK had any objections to the means by which those assets had been obtained, they should have complained at the time. What is, is, and if the Brits want them back, they will have to pay full whack for them. Article 9 (p.272) of the Agreement seems to indicate that the party being squeezed out can claim full compensation even though its own actions were the cause. The arbitrators, under this Article, are only allowed to consider the amount of compensation, not the equity of the whole situation.
This negotiating failure compromises Downing Street’s defence of the union: Scotland lands 60% of the UK fish catch, by value and volume, and 72% of quota species.
Knowing the EU negotiating argument as they did, the UK team should have created maximum publicity across Europe for the equity of returning the UK to the pre-EEC position. Being discreet civil servants, they kept their cards, if they had any, close to their chests. This is akin to the defence counsel confiding his case to the prosecution but failing to mention it to the jury. The “sovereignty” argument was rightly mocked in the EU as any trade agreement involves some sharing of sovereignty. An indication that the government recognises its failure can be taken from the 4th January announcement that the fishing industry will get a £100M sweetener.
The best that can be said for this fishing Agreement is that it kicks the can 5.5 years down the road. The UK government may then do better.
[1] Email from Barrie Deas, CEO of NFFO, 3rd January 2021.
It isn't us having access to their market, it's their having access to our services
If we start out by thinking that trade is all about what we can export we’re going to get into such terrible trouble. A logical fallacy as a base assumption is going to lead to gross error after all.
The point of trade is to gain access to those things that Johnny Foreigner does better, cheaper, faster, shinier, than we are able to do ourselves. This is also true when we consider Johnny Foreigners’ access to those things that we do better, cheaper, faster, shinier. Only if we get this the right way around are we going to be able to make sense of the subject:
Services account for around 80% of the UK’s economic activity and about 50% of its exports by value to the EU. While Britain runs a large deficit on the export of goods to the EU, there is always a modest surplus in services – much of it accounted for by the success of London’s City financiers – to close the gap.
There may be little sympathy for bankers and insurers complaining about being left to fend for themselves. But the sheer scale of the foreign earnings that the sector brings back to the UK, which also closes the yawning balance of payments deficit Britain runs with the rest of the world, is crucial, at least in the short term.
No, that’s all the wrong way around. From our point of view if those services exports decline then the pound does too and the balance of payments will balance, as it by definition always does. Deficits on the current account - not the balance of payments, as they suggest, when they mean balance of trade - are always balanced by a surplus on the capital account after all. This being inherent in our very use of the word “balance”.
It is this though which is to be entirely wrong:
The chancellor said he hoped a planned memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the issue would reassure the EU and persuade Brussels to give the City of London the access it craves.
No, it is European businesses - consumers, economies if you prefer - which crave access to the services of the City. This is, after all, where most large scale financing is done and economies like to have a better, cheaper, faster, shiner, source of financing.
The argument is about whether they gain access to us. Not about whether we do to them.
The glories of adding just another little bit or two to the bureaucratic requirements
The Telegraph has been noting that many trained - and perhaps retired - clinical staff are having problems with being able to sign up to aid in rolling out the vaccines:
Retired doctors and nurses desperate to help with the UK's mass vaccination drive have been kept out by bureaucracy and seen their offers of assistance ignored.
Earlier this week, The Telegraph revealed that, of the 40,000 doctors and nurses who applied to return to the service in March, 30,000 were eligible but only 5,000 had been given jobs by July.
Following the approval of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine earlier this week, the Royal College of GPs warned that the "jabbing workforce" would require a significant boost in order to deliver doses to vulnerable groups as quickly as possible.
But retired medics have told The Telegraph their offers of help have either gone unanswered or the lengthy bureaucratic and "insulting" application process has prevented them from returning.
We thought it might be fun - a perverse sense of what is fun is required for being a think tanker - to find out how true this all is. So, we went off to find out.
Join the NHS vaccine team, then being a retired clinician, looking for a paid job (£11 or £12 an hour) as a vaccinator. Among the requirements is this:
NHS statutory and mandatory training
The portal that tells us what that is is here.
Level 1
Conflict Resolution – Level 1 (updated)
Data Security Awareness – Level 1 (updated)
Equality and Diversity and Human Rights – Level 1 (updated)
Fire Safety – Level 1 (due for review 2021)
Health, Safety and Welfare – Level 1 (due for review 2021)
Infection Prevention and Control – Level 1 (updated)
Moving and Handling – Level 1 (updated)
Preventing Radicalisation – Basic Prevent Awareness (updated)
Resuscitation – Level 1 (updated)
Safeguarding Children – Level 1 (updated)
Safeguarding Adults – Level 1
That’s right. In order to jab people with a vaccine in the middle of a pandemic you need to have training in human rights, diversity, equality and radicalisation prevention. Oh, and you have to have the document to prove that you have this training or no helping out in the middle of a pandemic for you.
We can’t help but think that perhaps some parts of this statutory and mandatory training might be put aside for the moment. You know, emergency, pandemic, all that? That not being, though, how bureaucracy works.
At the larger level this is the problem with the continual accretion of rules about who may do what, where and when. It might be - possibly, you understand - a good thing that all companies sign a modern slavery statement. Or, as in the US, listed companies a blood minerals one. Or here, all medics have training to aid in noting that teenagers turning up in a full body burqa might not be an entirely and solely cultural issue. But as we continue to add such requirements, each possibly justified, or sensible, or even just nice to have, then the entire system becomes incapable of actually doing anything, or of varying from the normal, run of the mill, course of events.
This being a problem because that reality outside the window doesn’t stay still. Thus one of the necessary requirements for our institutional arrangements is flexibility. Exactly the thing that the requirement for 21 different forms to jab arms doesn’t allow.
Drowning in a welter of forms, trainings and licensures just isn’t the way to run a country. Perhaps we should change our system then?
You may even be right but you can't, possibly, be allowed to say that
A claim from the United States:
America’s current disinformation crisis is the culmination of more than two decades of pollution of the country’s information ecosystem, Wardle said. The spread of disinformation on social media is one part of that story, but so is the rise of alternative rightwing media outlets, the lack of investment in public media, the demise of local news outlets, and the replacement of shuttered local newspapers with hyper-partisan online outlets.
“Disinformation” here is used in the sense of people saying things not approved of by fashionable orthodoxy. The solution, from the US, seems to be:
This “serious fragmentation” of the American media ecosystem presents a stark contrast with, say, the UK, where during some weeks of the pandemic, 94% of the UK adult population, including 86% of younger people, tuned into the BBC, a taxpayer-funded broadcaster, according to official statistics.
This would only work if that taxpayer-funded broadcaster limited expressed views to those that are fashionably approved of. We have Owen Jones for that:
But there is nothing so cruel as false hope, and during a pandemic in which people’s lives depend on adherence to social distancing measures, it can be dangerous. Sikora is not a virologist or an epidemiologist: he is a cancer specialist. That should not preclude him from commenting on coronavirus: newspapers and TV programmes abound with non-specialists discussing the government’s response to the crisis, which is as it should be in a democracy. What matters is that he dissents from the medical consensus on how the virus should be defeated.
We would say that dissent from the fashionable mantras is actually the point of that free speech. In fact, of democracy, the aim being that the people decide rather than the fashionable. This is not what Jones means, not at all:
Whether the aim is balance or sensationalism – or perhaps the latter hidden under the guise of the former – the producers and editors who provide Sikora with a platform should pause to reflect on the consequences of their decisions.
Doesn’t that just sound so Soviet? Of course all are free to speak, write and publish. But you should reflect on the consequences of your decisions as you do so for The Party is watching.
Even if we sidestep those historical overtones the claim itself is ludicrous anyway. In the utilitarian, rather than liberty, sense this free speech and information flow thing only works if all views are included. This is the lesson of the wisdom of the crowds, or further back of Galton’s Ox. It is only when all views are expressed then weighed in the balance that reality is approached. Curtailment, whether of just the extremes or more worryingly of one side or another leads only to groupthink.
And let’s be honest about it the perpetuation of groupthink is propaganda, not anything else.
It also seems to be remarkably short sighted of progressives in both the US and the UK to insist upon such Right- and Wrong-Think designations. After all, they see themselves as speaking truth to power, of educating all into overthrowing that comfortable orthodoxy. But if the orthodoxy is all that can be publicly said then how are they going to do that?