The problem with cultural appropriation and public goods

Not that we generally turn to Rod Liddle here:

Everything that is good about us as a species has been enhanced and enriched by cultural appropriation, and you would think that the internationalist left would concur. But instead the left insists that we must all squat inside our respective ghettos, because no exchange between us can ever be quite pristine and equal. It is an absurdity.

While there’s many a truth spoken in jest Liddle’s position as the dyspeptic jester - say, the Jack Dee of the broadsheets - does leave him usually some way from our own interests.

However, here we’ve half of something that has long puzzled us. The varied and opposite claims made about public goods and cultural appropriation.

A public good is, in the economic jargon, something that is non-rivalrous and non-excludable. Once it exists there’s no way to stop someone from using it - excludability - and their use of it doesn’t diminish the supply available to others - rivalry. As the supply is therefore unlimited it’s something very difficult to make a living out of producing in the first place. Knowledge being exactly one of these things - once something is known then other people can also know it without reducing the supply to the originator.

All of this is well known within the hallowed halls of social science and it’s the argument in favour of government subsidy of basic research, the existence of patents and copyrights to produce excludability and so on.

It’s also the argument that we in the rich world should be doing all the spending upon vaccine and drug development, renewables research and design, all these sorts of things, then be giving them away to those poorer. Once the thing has been thought up, invented, designed, then humanity is made richer by it being free to use for all.

Well, OK.

But all of these cultural quirks that we must not appropriate are also public goods. The design of a hat - Liddle mentions the sombrero - or the making of a curry (and do leave aside that the vindaloo is an adaptation of the Portuguese vin d’alho to start with) is something which is done once and can then be enjoyed by all. It’s a public good in that economic sense.

At which point we seem to have the same people, for it is largely the same people who make both arguments, arguing that the drug which costs $1 billion to design and test in the first place should not have excludability created via patent, but the tweak to a recipe that was a few minutes of happenstance must be so protected by social conformity against appropriation.

We can’t help but think that there’s a certain illogicality to that stance. Even, that it has the entire thing wholly backwards. For public goods are lovely things, it is indeed true that their spread advances civilisation. Someone has a good idea, we all copy it, we’re better off. The only restrictions we might want upon this, even then only for some limited time like the effective decade of a drug patent, being to encourage the creation in the first place.

If people do invent these things for free anyway then why would we want to limit their spread?

That is, the ban on cultural appropriation is an insistence upon denying ourselves the public goods created by others. Why would we want to do that?

The costs of going green

We’re told that plans to go green will cost some £1.4 trillion:

And it will also cost an eye-watering sum – as much as £1.4 trillion, according to the Climate Change Committee, which advises the Government on its net-zero strategy.

This, very sadly, being an underestimate.

The actual cost of something is whatever must be given up in order to gain it. Which means there are further costs to consider, over and above the mere money:

According to Wells, the shift to electric needs to coincide with significant behavioural change in order to be a success in actually driving down emissions, with far less car ownership. The Government hopes half of all urban journeys will be taken by foot or bicycle by 2030.

“It is a mistake to think we can simply replicate our petrol and diesel fleet in electric and use our cars the way we do now,” he says. “That in itself is a significant policy failure.”

We’re all to have less freedom and mobility.

There are obvious health and societal benefits in eating seasonally, locally and limiting the amount of meat and dairy in our diets.

We’re to return to the diets of medieval peasants - meat to be for high and holy days only.

It has also pledged to introduce a standardised approach where green waste, food waste and tougher-to-recycle plastics – from single-use polyethylene plastic bags to the pump mechanisms in bottled lotion dispensers – will be collected from every home across the country.

We’re all to spend many more hours sorting things for the binmen.

We will be expected to bring an array of empty tubs and cartons to fill up at the supermarket, while high street fashion labels such as H&M are increasingly trialling repair shops where customers can bring in old garments for recycling, rather than merely buying new ones.

The assumption that washing the tupperware uses fewer resources than fresh single use plastic is very dodgy indeed. And don’t you just love that word “merely” about us all going back to wearing patched rags?

Unless new technologies are rapidly advanced, it seems to meet net zero, staycations are here to stay. “The unpalatable truth,” she says, “is we really have to fly less or at least not allow aviation to increase as it has done.”

Do not even think of jetting off to find the Sun.

The costs of going green are very much higher than that £1.4 trillion.

As the Stern Review itself pointed out, humans tend to do less of more expensive things, more of those cheaper. There has to be a concentration upon dealing with climate change the cheap way therefore - because that’s the way we’ll do more of it. Or, as the Review also pointed out, stop damn planning things and get the market prices right and leave well alone afterwards.

Well, yes Polly, but the NHS still isn't very good

Polly Toynbee tells us that the National Health Service is very green, as health services go:

But one event at Cop26 will raise the spirits. The NHS, far out ahead, will make a key presentation to the world’s other health systems to show what can be done. The NHS is responsible for 5% of the UK’s carbon emissions: the recently departed head of NHS England, Simon Stevens, put climate targets firmly into the NHS long-term plan, warning: “If health services across the world were their own country, they’d be the fifth-largest emitter on the planet.”

You might think going green was the last thing the NHS could do right now, after its decade of unprecedented underfunding, with waiting lists going through the roof, acute doctor and nurse shortages, and burnt-out staff being awarded paltry pay rises. But no. Jackie Daniel, head of Newcastle upon Tyne hospitals, has pioneered the green cause within the NHS and is making the Cop26 presentation to world health services. “A few, exhausted trusts did think this was the last thing they could cope with now,” she tells me. “But astonishingly, nearly everywhere has seized on this. We’ve found it’s something that really enthuses staff, and they have been the ones driving it forward.”

We also know that the NHS is very equitable, most fair and offers equal access to all. All quite possibly desirable attributes of a health care system.

We can’t help but keep reminding ourselves that even with all of this the NHS isn’t in fact a good health care system. As the OECD (and others, there are a number of attempts at quantifying this) points out the NHS just isn’t very good at “mortality amenable to health care”. That is, stopping people from dying from things which medical treatment could stop them dying from. We may indeed be merely neoliberal utilitarians but we do think that could be a significant aim of having a health care system.

Even to the point that worrying a little less about greenery, equity, equality and so on might - just possibly, you know? - lead to an improvement in actually curing patients?

Price caps never are a good idea

Sensible people would take the Californian deregulation of electricity supply as an example of what not to do. Of course, the powers that be took it the other way, as something to copy. Specifically, they insisted upon the silliness of allowing wholesale prices to vary with the market but retail prices remaining fixed. This had two effects. Firstly, when power became more expensive this did not feed through into consumer pockets and therefore prices didn’t do their thing of moderating demand. Secondly, all those suppliers in the middle between those wholesale and retail prices - all those unhedged at least - started to go bust. As happened in California.

One manager of just such a supplier says in The Guardian:

The frustrating thing is that a simpler approach to regulation that encourages competition and innovation, while guaranteeing that the most loyal customers are not penalised, is possible. Why not bin the price cap?

Quite so. Price fixing simply never does work.

Rather missing the point about economic development

Not that we are arguing that this specific person, or even these people, deserve to lose their jobs but it is necessary to point out an economic basic:

The steel industry supports thousands of high-quality jobs in some of our most disadvantaged communities. Steel jobs are good union jobs. They are jobs that pay well, above the national average, and they support families and communities as they do so. We don’t want to see these jobs go under any circumstances.

Yes, we do. The entire process of economic development is destroying jobs. That’s the aim, point and purpose.

Here, in this state, we require this much human labour to perform this task. There, in that more advanced state, we require less human labour to perform that same task. That’s what economic development is, an increase in the productivity of human labour. As Paul Krugman is quoted to the point of cliche, productivity isn’t everything but in the long run it’s almost everything.

We would, in fact, be absolutely delighted if the entire steel industry, with its labour demands, were replaced with a little black box which required just the one flip of a switch each year. We would then gain our steel with less labour. Meaning that that workforce could be off doing something to assuage or even sate some other human need, want or desire.

The entire point of economic advance, of economic development, is to destroy jobs. Any political argument which starts with the claim that we don’t want to kill jobs is doomed to logical failure. Not that that will stop people making such arguments but it does mean we must jeer at them when they do.

Mr Johnson, Tear Down Those Borders

Amidst 45 minutes of rhetoric, Boris Johnson’s conference speech did have a smidge of policy. The Prime Minister used this opportunity to briefly outline a key cause of Britain's stagnation:  mass immigration. Boris’ view is that an excessive supply of labour has ruined the bargaining power of native workers resulting in lower wages and higher unemployment. 

However, cutting immigration won’t reduce unemployment and it won’t increase wages. 

A reality of immigration, widely ignored by politicians, is that the aggregate demand curve also shifts to the right when people enter a new country. In layman's terms it means as well as taking up existing jobs, the money  the immigrants earn helps to create new jobs. And this isn’t just enough to replace the jobs that have been taken — it will actually create more jobs for native workers, expanding the economy’s ability to produce. 

An excellent paper by Gihoon Hong and John McLaren looked at this precise question for Mexican immigrants into the United States. They find that for every immigrant arriving in the US, 1.2 jobs are created as a result of their spending, with the bulk of them going to domestic workers. This is supported by a BIS publication from 2014 which found little evidence in the literature of a statistically significant impact from EU migration on native employment outcome. Since then we have enjoyed increased levels of immigration all while unemployment has fallen and remained low. There are also other benefits of migrants, such as filling skills gaps and bringing in new knowledge and techniques, that can expand domestic productivity and boost wages.

If Boris wants to end our stagnation, then encouraging more immigration would actually be a great way to address it. Between 2010 and 2020 productivity growth was just 0.3%. Looking at patents granted in the United States, a 2017 paper in the American Economic Review found that immigrant inventors were more productive than native-born inventors. Given the key impact technological innovation has on growth, it’s clear if we want to create growth an easy way of doing that is encouraging migration. 

It is admirable that Boris wants to create a high innovation high wage economy but cutting immigration is only going to push that ambition further away. Immigration is the way we attract the most productive workers to our shores, the exact people who would help encourage a transition to a better country. 

Now, what was it that Hayek said about the NHS making us slaves?

The Road To Serfdom does indeed make the claim that nationalised health care is the start of a slippery slope to a certain slavery to the state. It is a proper slippery slope argument too, not the logical fallacy. For the insistence is that if this first step is taken then the rest will inevitably follow.

It’s also worth noting what the argument is not, which is that government making or ensuring provision for health care will lead to such. Rather, that if it is the state itself doing it then that serfdom will follow. The serfdom itself being that we will be managed and manipulated in order to benefit the state health service rather than it serving our health.

Primary school children should be taught to treat their minor illnesses on their own to stop unnecessary visits to GPs, NHS leaders have said.

The call is part of a raft of recommendations for a national “self-care” strategy to ease the burden on the NHS, set out in a new report written by a coalition of health bodies.

The authors include NHS Clinical Commissioners, which is part of the NHS Confederation, the body which represents all parts of the health service, the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, and the National Pharmacy Association.

It’s entirely true that a scraped knee isn’t the most appalling of health care problems. And yet those injunctions to suffer the little children do come to mind, even the obvious point that our children are the most precious thing of all to each of us.

But how foul would it be if any of the priests of the national religion had to sully their hands in comforting a crying child? Quite, we must be managed for their benefit rather than they having to do anything we might want them to.

It’s only taken 73 years - for the NHS - or 77 years - since the publication of the forecast - but who really wants to try and insist that Hayek was wrong?

Why would we want to tax consumers more and landlords less?

The argument in favour of us having all those clever and informed people governing us, in such detail, is that they’re all clever and informed people governing us. Therefore they can correct our misbehaviours and solve our problems, in detail.

This all rather fails when those doing the governing are neither clever nor informed:

Rishi Sunak is stepping up plans for an online sales tax to level the playing field between tech behemoths and high street retailers after delaying an overhaul of business rates.

Treasury officials have accelerated work on a new e-commerce tax in the past few weeks and are scoping out details of a potential levy, including what goods and services will be covered, sources told The Daily Telegraph.

Whitehall insiders said that a so-called “Amazon tax” under a wider business rates shake-up is “clearly the direction of travel” being considered by the Chancellor, but that final decisions will be pushed out beyond the upcoming Budget.

Tax incidence is the study of who really pays a tax. The wallet of which live human being gets lighter as a result of the existence of the tax?

For business rates this is landlords. For a sales tax this is consumers.

Now, yes, we do understand the larger picture. It’s simply impossible that government could get by while devouring fewer societal resources. There are green boondoggles to fund, inefficient manners of providing health care to finance, diversity advisers who need paying and so on. Absolutely everything government currently does is essential, must be done by government and no reduction in the bill is possible by even the merest iota, penny or groat.

Therefore if the revenue from one tax seems to be sliding another must be created to make up the difference. Given the inability of any politician with a chequebook to spend less that’s just the way it’s gonna’ be.

But this still leaves us with that point the clever and informed seem to have missed. Why do we want to transfer that tax bill from weighing upon the wallets of the landlords to doing so upon those of consumers?

It is the failure to even note these not very small details that brings into doubt the idea that government is run by the clever and informed, isn’t it?

Waging war against asylum seekers

The Nationality and Borders Bill will make it more challenging for asylum seekers to access protection. The government has justified the changes by claiming that the system is overwhelmed, with 73% of claims having been in the system for over a year. While this is certainly an issue, the solution should be to improve the systems for the benefit of the UK and asylum seekers, rather than break the Refugee Convention.

The Refugee Convention requires states to provide certain protections to refugees: defined in international law as “someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.” In the Nationality and Borders Bill, however, the Government creates two classes of refugee status, allocating groups according to factors that are simply immaterial to refugee status in international law. The UK will then only grant the necessary protection to those in group 1.

One factor used for determining the group allocated is route of travel. Asylum seekers will be placed into group 2 if “an individual does not come directly from a territory where their life or freedom is threatened”. The notion that asylum seekers must make a claim in the first country of entry is not a requirement under international law or the Refugee Convention. Many asylum seekers may choose to continue past the first safe country to another due to connections, language or cultural reasons. If it were a requirement it would put an unnecessary burden on countries dependent on their geographical position, such as Greece who already accept far more asylum seekers per capita than the UK.

The changes will mean most refugees are automatically placed in group 2. To travel directly to the UK from their country of origin, asylum seekers would have to travel by plane. However due to the serious financial consequences faced by plane companies for allowing passengers without visas, this is often untenable. Without the option of plane travel, this pushes asylum seekers into travelling by boat. As this is unreliable and dangerous, asylum seekers are often unable to make the journey in a single voyage, requiring them to enter other ‘safe’ countries before entering the UK.

For those asylum seekers placed in group 2, temporary protection may be granted. With temporary protection, refugees have no recourse to public funds unless in the case of destitution, no route to resettlement, continued work restrictions and no rights to family reunion. Not only is this creating a hostile and solitary environment but any barrier to family reunification contradicts both article 8 of the ECHR and article 6 of the Human Rights Act. As temporary protection only lasts 3 years, it becomes far harder for people in this position to integrate into society, and find a stable source of income. In addition, barriers to employment mean that rather than becoming constructive members of society, refugees in group 2 are likely to be a strain on public funds or turn to alternative, even illegal, sources of income.

The Government ought to understand that simply stating that this bill is compatible with the Refugee Convention does not automatically make it true. Rather than warping international law to deny necessary protection to many refugees, in order to deter illegal travel, the government needs to improve and expand the safe and legal methods for arrival in the UK.

The Hume-Rousseau Affair

When David Hume learned in 1762 that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was interested in relocating to Britain, he got busy to make that happen. The two men first met in Paris in 1765. They travelled together from Paris to England in January 1766. Hume arranged lodging for Rousseau, otherwise tended to him, and successfully procured a pension for him from King George III.

Within a few months, things turned very sour. Rousseau wrote hateful letters to Hume accusing him of having plotted for his disgrace and humiliation by way of petty torments. An especially long letter, declaring enmity toward Hume, was written as though for publication. Hume felt the need to counter Rousseau’s version and defend himself against accusation and besmirchment.

What was published was a rushed version of the account, first in French in Paris in October, 1766, then in English in London the next month. The English version was, apart from the letters therein, mainly a retranslation of a French translation of Hume’s manuscript. Mishaps and communication problems between Edinburgh and London led to Hume’s extreme dissatisfaction with the English version.

The blow-up between two of Europe’s most illustrious intellectuals was an affaire célèbre throughout Europe at the time. The two protagonists could not have disagreed more in their moral and political tendencies and influence. The spectator feels divided sympathies with each of the two men. Their interpretations disagree wildly. Was Hume innocent in the matter? Was Rousseau?

Now, 255 years later, Hume’s original manuscript has been put before the public, by Jason Briggeman, Jacob Hall, and me. Hume “expresses himself bluntly and forcibly,” as Paul Meyer said about this never-before-published manuscript. Also provided is link to a PDF scan of the original manuscript itself, kindly provided by the National Library of Scotland.

Even after the blow-up, Hume continued to work for more than year to maintain the plan of a royal pension, and to keep Rousseau settled in England. Rousseau remained in England until May 21, 1767, but never accepted a single payment of the pension.

What was Hume thinking? What was he up to? In an article that accompanies Hume’s manuscript, I suggest that Hume went to such remarkable lengths because he felt that doing so would diminish Rousseau’s influence and legacy, and consequently improve the lot of humankind. I believe that, had Hume succeeded, Rousseau’s influence and legacy would have been greatly diminished, and the lot of humankind would have been improved.

Hume’s manuscript consists in large part of letters between the two men. One sees the relationship evolve and go bad.

An article about Hume’s original manuscript was published in 1952, by Paul Meyer. Hume’s manuscript account differs markedly from the London publication of 1766. There is, said Meyer, “a decided discrepancy in tone.” Hume’s original version has the tone of “a man sitting down in a rage immediately after a violent quarrel and giving his version of it.” Hume “is plainly beside himself at Rousseau’s behavior”. The 1766 publication, by contrast—and by way of the French editors—gives a voice to Hume that is more detached, sometimes even circumlocutive. “Certain of Hume’s indignant and spontaneous exclamations on reproducing Rousseau’s charges against him are not given in the published texts at all.” Hume’s original has him enumerating a dozen lies (“lyes”) as footnotes to Rousseau’s mammoth letter of July 10, 1766; such enumerating of points is absent from the 1766 published version. The original is stouter and more authentic.

The account oozes with psychological paradoxes, wrapped in a huge moral conundrum. Was Hume conspiring against Rousseau? Was Rousseau one of the conspirators?! Was the conspiracy against Rousseau for Rousseau? Was Rousseau playing Hume? Don’t miss it!

Dan Klein for Adam Smith Works. Hume’s manuscript account of the extraordinary affair between him and Rousseau can be downloaded here