Fischer–Tropsch

Not that we are making a prediction here, just pencil sketching in a possible route to viability. Andrew Orlowski points out that electric ‘planes, even hydrogen ‘planes, might not really work:

Hydrogen can’t power the green flight revolution

Aviation is an unforgiving battleground – review the physics and reality bites very quickly

We’re willing to agree for the point of argument. But only up to the point that the suggestion is that the hydrogen go up with the ‘plane.

Imagine that we do get to cheap, green, hydrogen. No, just imagine. If solar gets cheap enough then this will indeed be possible. Really cheap electricity from solar power, electrolyse water and there we are, cheap, green, hydrogen. What then?

Fischer–Tropsch

We know how to do this. If we’ve hydrogen - and we know there’s no great shortage of CO or CO2 around, that’s rather our problem - then we can make complex hydrocarbons. Like, say, aviation or jet fuel. At which point we can use the entire global installed base of ‘planes and technology.

You’re right, this isn’t terribly efficient as a pathway but if that solar power at the start of it is cheap enough then it does all work. We have seen estimates (pretty sketchy ones to be fair) indicating that if that solar panel derived electricity is 2 to 4 cents per kWh then the resultant jet fuel is price competitive with the more traditionally derived fossil oil stuff. We’ve also seen talk that certain bids in Abu Dhabi for solar installation have prices of 1.8 cents per kWh.

We don’t guarantee those numbers but they’re usefully indicative we feel.

This would make the future of air travel very like the present of air travel. Which we think would be nice for folk do seem to like their air travel. The only people who would be unhappy about this are those using climate change as an excuse to stop the proletarians enjoying that mobility which is properly the preserve of the antinomian classes. And of course there are just none of those around at all, are there?

Government doing the wrong things

It says much about a government when the list of things it has done wrong far exceeds the list of things it has done right. It is a consolation, albeit a small one, that it could have done even more things wrong but did not. A government composed of the other parties would certainly have done more wrong things, given what they have urged, but “least bad” is by no means the equivalent of “good.”

It has been particularly disappointing because in December 2019, when they were elected, this government came in with the high hopes of the nation that they would set things to rights after the zombie Parliament of 2017-19. It was particularly encouraging that the new Parliament was mostly devoid of the worthless contingent that had disfigured its predecessor. Those high hopes were soon dashed.

By continuing with HS2 they were committing vast and unquantified resources to a white elephant project. For many travellers, time spent on trains is not time wasted because they can work, so the small saving in travel times that HS2 might achieve becomes even less worthwhile than it was, and in no way justifies the vast costs involved. For a small part of such sums, commuting into Northern towns could have been made faster and easier.

By proceeding with HMRC’s IR35, government supported the Treasury’s hostility to the self-employed, and its determination to push as many of them as possible into PAYE rather than self-employment. Yet self-employment offers the flexibility the future UK economy will need. IR35 is one reason why so many self-employed truck drivers left the profession and created a shortage.

The “Online Safety Bill” being driven forward is an attempt to censor the internet, and will open the gates to restrictions on the free expression of ideas. Social media companies will be forced to crowd out virtual public spaces, making a public discourse ever more woke and radical.

The continuation of the absurd energy price cap that fixed retail prices has led to the bankruptcy of many suppliers unable to cope with wholesale price rises. And the abandonment of fracking has combined with it to create a totally unnecessary energy shortage combined with higher energy costs for both householders and industry.

Elsewhere the government has kowtowed to the extremist Green Lobby with its “net zero carbon” target imposed instead of a more phased withdrawal from fossil fuels. It has failed to prioritize nuclear as a carbon friendly power source. The requirement to replace gas boilers with heat pumps will impose a costly and less effective new technology on households and bump up their bills yet more.

It is all indicative of a failure to perform cost-benefit analysis, and calculate the costs of doing what are promoted as desirable things. This is especially true of its climate policies. A sensible government would assess the trade-offs and only proceed with those whose benefits outweighed the associated costs. In raising taxes, including National Insurance, the government has lost sight of the Laffer Curve, and failed to appreciate how higher taxes will impact upon economic expansion and job creation.

The government’s commitment to a “high skilled, high wage” economy is partly behind its restriction of low-skilled immigration, leading to massive labour shortages in certain industries, and chaos in others. The phrase is an intellectual supposition rather than an observation of the real world. Such evidence as there is points the other way, and suggests that immigration can increase economic growth and raise productivity with it.

The commitment to have more homes built for young people in places where they want to live has foundered in the face of a lobby that is comfortably off and wants to keep things as they are. The planning reforms have been diluted to the point of abandonment, so the chronic housing shortage will not be solved. One day a bold government will repeal the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act that strangles our towns and cities, but it will not be this one.

Government does not have a clearly defined drug policy. Trafficking, especially involving children, is rife, yet the talk is of going after middle class users of recreational drugs. This is a wrong policy, putting more people into conflict with the law and the police, whereas a right policy would look at what Canada and several US states have done, and learn how to legalize recreational drugs under controlled conditions to deprive the drug gangs of a market and to assure quality and safety.

The vaccines were done well, but there have also been wrong policies aplenty in the handling of the coronavirus pandemic. There was the failure to protect care homes by discharging patients from hospitals too early. There was the PPE procurement scandal, the chaos of the GCSE and A-Level exams of 2020 and 2021, the uncertainty of the travel ‘red’ list that left some people stranded abroad, and innumerable pointless restrictions imposed without evidence that they would make any difference. No-one counted the costs to industry, to jobs, to mental health, or to delayed essential treatment. It gave the impression of a government held in thrall by ‘worst case scientists,’ and not giving consideration to the public good.

Finally one cannot help noticing the somewhat cavalier attitude to following rules about procurement and payments, and about government keeping to the restrictions it had imposed on others. This has been a government addicted to doing wrong things. There is still time for it to make good by doing right things and reversing the wrong ones, but not much time. And it might take another government.

It is to giggle at the plans of bureaucrats and planners

We’re not holding out the Mail On Sunday as wholly and entirely accurate readers of the complexities of the insurance markets but:

New rules requiring insurance companies to stop discriminating against loyal policyholders have unleashed a wave of industry-wide price increases, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Customers are being hit by inflation-busting 20 per cent-plus premium hikes on home and motor policies renewing this month. The dramatic increases make a mockery of boasts made by the City watchdog that its rules would save loyal customers more than £4billion in premiums over the next ten years.

Evidence collected by the MoS shows the price hikes are being imposed on those who have a longstanding policy with their insurer – the very people that the regulator says its rules are designed to protect. The Financial Conduct Authority had said the so-called loyalty penalty – where longstanding insurance customers are charged more than new ones – would be banned on January 1.

We can certainly imagine this as being the actual outcome. Ban cut price offers to new customers on the grounds of that being unfair to old ones and the effect is prices to old customers rise.

It’s easy enough to sketch out how this might happen. Assume that companies are profit maximising - not the normative claim that shareholder primacy should be true, but the positive one that by and large it is - and add in that we all satisfact. Sure, we can and do model that we all rigorously maximise our utility, that we’re rational calculating machines that will do anything for a quid.

Except that rationality, calculating and utility should also include that many things are a faff to do. So, we need to see clear benefits before doing something like changing the car insurance (and perhaps moving from AA to RAC cover, having to change the emergency number of the phone and whatever else, even if comparison shopping is pretty easy).

The way that insurance companies did get people to switch was to offer those bargain rates for the first year, two. OK, those are now not allowed. What’s next? Well, apparently, given the lightening of the pressure to not raise rates as folk might switch, the insurance companies see that they can raise rates on their current customer base.

That is, competition didn’t used to be just about the effect on new contract rates. Removing that competition on new contract rates alleviated some of the competition on old contract rates - it was less likely that people would be offered a price differently large enough to overcome the faff of changing insurers.

Those discount bargains on new contracts served as a limitation on how much the profit maximising insurance companies could gouge the extant customer base.

So, the regulators ban the discounts to new customers in order to lower price to old. The effect is to increase prices to old consumers by removing some of the competition. Well done there, vry well done those men.

As we say, we’d not take an MoS article as being absolute proof that this is what is actually happening out there, nor that even if it is that this will be the final and stable outcome. But we certainly think that it’s a possible one.

At which point, isn’t it so glorious that we have such bureaucrats and regulators to make life better for us? For it clearly is a better world where insurance companies make more profit from us. Well, we assume that’s what the regulator was thinking, the idea that they might have messed things up just doesn't bear thinking about, does it?

A little point about the costs of renewables

The International Energy Authority says that the solution to not having enough power from renewables is to build more renewables:

Electricity prices and carbon emissions will keep rising unless more money is invested in renewables, the International Energy Agency has warned.

Well, yes, although we’re not sure how having more windmills produces more electricity when there’s still no wind.

However, snark aside, there is an important point here. One solution to the intermittency problem is said to be deliberately overbuilding. Say, sometimes solar only produces one third of rated power. Cloudy days say, or short winter daylight hours. So, overbuild by a factor of three.

We have seen this seriously suggested.

But here’s the problem. Rather the point of renewables is that near the entire cost is in the capital, construction. Once built the energy comes - near enough - for free. So, building 3x the renewables capacity means that the system costs 3x.

So, imagine that solar power costs £50 MWh just to use some number or other. That’s the cost of electricity from one set of panels. But if our system, in order to deal with cloudy days, requires 3x capacity then actually the cost is £150 MWh. No, we can’t use just the cost of the electricity we actually use at peak performance because all of the cost is in the building out of the system itself. Therefore all electricity from the system as a whole has to be priced at the cost of the system as a whole.

Marginal cost isn’t something that really works with a renewables system that is because there aren’t, to a useful level of accuracy, marginal costs as they’re all fixed. In this it is very like nuclear - once you’ve built and fed the reactor that’s pretty much all of the costs involved, actually operating the thing costs next to nothing.

Now of course benevolent and omniscient planners would have already incorporated this into all discussions of the system. Our problem here is that we just don’t feel lucky, today or any other day, about the omniscience nor even benevolence of those planning the energy system. Our proof being that if either were even vaguely true then we’d not be right where we are, would we?

The British Museum and NFTs - exactly why we use markets

We do understand, it is the job of the newspaper columnist to suck teeth over the way society is going. And yet there’s a significant point to be made about the British Museum and their issuance of NFTs:

The British Museum should think again on NFTs

We agree entirely, they - or it - should.

Institutions could come to regret joining the rush to cash in on collections by issuing digital art tokens

We think that entirely possible.

Leaving that debate aside, the two most likely outcomes are that NFTs soar in value, in which case those that sell them may face accusations having offloaded them on the cheap, or they crash in value, in which case sellers may face accusations for duping buyers. I will leave others to decide which of these two eventualities is more likely.

We’d not agree that those are the most likely outcomes and certainly not that they are the only likely two. But the essence of our point is in the word “likely”.

We all face uncertainty here. We cannot even calculate probabilities, we simply do not know. This is something new that might become a common feature of the future society - like the automobile - or some forgotten byway as with the Pet Rock. Shrug, absolutely no one has a clue.

Which is why we use markets of course. Changing tastes mean that what people wish done, umm, changes. Changing technology means that what can be done similarly changes. The societal task is to sort through those two sets of changes and see where they can meet. Among the things we can now newly do what is it that folk want done?

The entire point of the system is that anyone gets to do anything possible and then we see how it turns out. Most of the time it is Pet Rocks but sometimes it is that car, or new fangled permanent dyes from coal tar, or aspirin, or….or, well, all the things that make up our civilisation. They all did start with some nutter running wet down the street shouting Eureka!

Which is why we allow, encourage, even applaud, the attempts. Because we face uncertainty and can only find out by doing. The time for the rethink is after the having done and the collapse of that uncertainty down to “Ah, so, that’s what happens then”.

This is the entire and whole point of the use of markets in the face of changing technology - to find out what does and does not work.

I Spy With My Red Eye

With recent news of espionage in the heart of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition, we have a responsibility to bring the public to further attention of communist malfeasance in politics. Barry Gardiner’s willingness to accept Beijing bucks and take the Chinese Communist Party’s line from Hong Kong to climate change, should bring goosebumps to anyone proud of the West’s liberal institutions, respect for democracy, and protection of human rights. 

The Chinese spy, Mrs Christine Lee, used charm, intelligence, and finances to leverage influence with a self-avowed “democratic socialist” until she was eventually outed as an agent of the United Front Work Department. This wing of the Chinese Party, and therefore of the Chinese State, operates a complex network of financially-backed agents to actively undermine Western institutions. Without a firm and aware stance from liberal institutions, our superior system of governance will soon be shunted aside - all due to fifth column manipulation from within.

Communist spying and manipulation is not just confined to today’s Labour Party. Giles Udy’s Labour And The Gulag: Russia and the Seduction of the British Left examines how the British Labour Party responded to the endemic genocide and terror regime of the USSR; frighteningly, he discovered that figures within the British left actively defended this horrifying system in the face of the more peaceable liberal democracies which sheltered them. Sound familiar? 

Liberal internationalism is having a reckoning against the many-armed octopus of Beijing. In Australia, the Labor Home Affairs spokeswoman, Senator Kristina Keneally, proudly boasted of meetings with anti-Taiwanese agents of the United Front. Meanwhile, universities across the US, UK, and EU are awash with Chinese money through Confucius Institutes; academic free speech is curtailed and research bends from autonomy to instruction. During the early pandemic, United Front agents based in embassies around the world mobilised to deprive their host countries of PPE and Covid-supplies by exporting them to China, before Beijing leaked the news of an embryonic but devastatingly growing pandemic. 

How can liberalism stand its ground against this malevolent force? Liz Truss’ leadership of the Foreign Office is an encouraging development. Truss has argued that the West, not just Britain, needs to stand firmly against Beijing. Aware of Communist espionage and threats in Europe, she has agreed security partnerships with a specifically anti-China bulwark across the world, including the Five Eyes security network.

Our own institutions require greater strengthening against bullying and espionage. Universities should take a more robust stance in response to pressure from Chinese authorities; the LSE received abuse from the Chinese state (and students on campus) after unveiling a work of art that displayed Taiwan as an independent country. Anti-Beijing students have also been harassed on campus by Workers Front agents across the Western World, which should prompt universities to further stand with democratic values against the dictatorial communist threat which is increasingly present in universities. 

The Chinese espionage state should be actively confronted and curtailed across our institutions. Gone are the days of a Golden Age between liberal democracies and Chinese authoritarianism; a Muscular Liberalism is required, confronting anti-democratic and anti-Western values wherever they are present in our world.

Barry Gardiner’s disappointing receipt of Chinese manipulation will not be the end of the effrontery by Communist state action against the free world. Our liberal institutions must provide support to one another in order for the successful liberal world-order to survive a new era of skullduggery and cloak-and-dagger international affairs. Without such strength against a genocidal, imperialistic, and belligerent power, liberals can begin to write the epitaphs of our most successful civilisation yet.

In praise of Freecycle and Buy Nothing groups

One can see the waved - and clenched - fists, hear the whoops of joy, as the hippies and communalists get one over on us capitalists and free marketeers:

There are 7,000 Buy Nothing groups with more than 5 million members worldwide. But their appeal goes beyond the chance to swap everything from nettles to power tools

See? People freeing themselves from the confines of hyperconsumerism!

…but what distinguishes the Buy Nothing project from Freecycle, Freegle, Olio and their ilk is that the emphasis is less on stuff, per se, and more on community. In what Buy Nothing describes as its “hyperlocal gift economies”, users are encouraged to let items “simmer” rather than giving them away to the first person who asks, perhaps suggesting they share a joke or provide a story explaining why they would like the item.

This is Polanyi’s web of mutual community rather than the impersonal, monetised, transaction with a stranger.

However, it does need to be pointed out that this is entirely part of the plan, our plan.

Our aim in having an economy, a civilisation even, is in enabling folk to be as rich as they can be. As liberals we define that richness as being according to their own lights. Worth, value, these are always in the weighing of the consumer, no one else.

Some folk do value that recovery of something seemingly of no use to others. Some do value that communal feeling, that not transacting with someone a continent away. At which point, good for them.

We value global markets, capitalism even, simply because they are useful ways of producing that value that many do, umm, value. They are not reifications of some ideal, they’re simply useful tools. If value is created by not using those tools well, tant pis and so what? It’s the value creation which is the goal and who, really, cares how it is reached?

Or, more simply, by their own standards and evaluations people are being made richer through voluntary transactions. Why would we be against that?

Party? What party?

“Prime Minister, I fear the troops have become a little restive.” 

“Yes, Humphrey, I had noticed.  The question before us now is whether they will recognise that all great men have their peccadillos.  I mean look at Lloyd George.  Churchill never paid for his cigars and Kennedy was in cahoots with the mafia.  They certainly can’t accuse me of that.” 

“All true, Prime Minister, but don’t you think we should consider how to extract ourselves from the hole, if I may call it that, we ourselves have dug?”  

“Well, you certainly got me out of a further investigation into the refurbishment of our Downing Street flat. Carrie was delighted.  How did you get the Cabinet Secretary to stand aside so that you could exercise your charms with Kathryn Stone?” 

“My relationship with the Parliamentary standards commissioner is purely professional. I simply reminded her that she’d found you guilty of misreporting your Christmas holiday in Mustique in 2019 and her conclusion was promptly overturned by her committee of MPs. I gently suggested that the same thing happening again would be a little unfortunate. No blandishments were required.” 

“Good thinking, Humphrey. What do we do now?” 

“I fear Sue Gray is more formidable mettle. As fine a civil servant as you will find; she is unalloyed.” 

“Metal? Unalloyed?  What are you talking about, Humphrey?” 

“She understands that a good report should not be rushed. The substance of your excellent, if I may say so Prime Minister, statement to the House yesterday was that no one should rush to judgement. We should await Ms Gray’s report.” 

“We appointed her on 17th December when my boss Simon Case recused himself from the parties investigation on the grounds that his department had been having some of their own. Then of course we were into the Christmas break and Ms Gray would have had to attend the gatherings that were all entirely legitimate this time around.  So she could only start work this month.” 

“Stop dithering, Humphrey. She’s only asking a few people whether they went to any parties they should not have attended.  How long can that take? When can she publish?” 

“Well, the draft will have to be reviewed by the Cabinet Office and then by our lawyers and you know how quick they are.  And we may need to check it out with the European Court of Human Rights to ensure no one will be upset by her findings.” 

“OK, so when?” 

“Obviously this will have to be published at the beginning of a recess to ensure the MPs are on their hols. Easter is a good long break.  Shall we target 31st March?” 

“That’s excellent, Humphrey.  With the local elections just coming up none of my backbenchers will be looking for trouble.” 

“May I suggest, Prime Minister, that you spend a little time in the Commons’ tea room today? A few pats on the backs and intimations of promotion will work wonders.” 

“What do you think of my argument that I thought the May 2020 gathering was a work meeting, not a party?” 

“I don’t think it has had the credit it deserves.  No one who knows you would believe you would stay only 25 minutes if you thought it was a party. Furthermore, staying as long as 25 minutes at a business meeting is both unusually long and shows dedication to duty.” 

“Quite right, Humphrey, quite right.” 

“But the real clincher is that the rosé came from Tesco. Standards have undoubtedly slipped, Prime Minister, since David Cameron’s time, but who could possibly believe that Tesco rosé, probably from some cheap cooperative favoured by M. Macron, could possibly be served at a Number 10 party.” 

“You have to be right, Humphrey: that was no party; it was a business meeting.” 

Just when we could be free

Brexit is, of course, a controversial subject. Something that should not be controversial about it is that food prices within the EU are higher than those outside it. On the grounds that the entire Common Agricultural Policy is designed to make this be so. With food the EU is a zollverein - yes, a seamless market inside but with high walls to keep the outside out there, outside.

At which point we get this:

But as an island nation outside of the Continental trading bloc, the UK is going to need domestic farmers more than ever, while the pandemic was a wake-up call to the importance of food production self-sufficiency.

The correct conclusion is of course entirely the opposite. We are now free of that zollverein. It is possible for us, as it wasn’t before, to tear down those tariff and quota barriers that locked us away from the global food markets. We can - if we so wish - enjoy the finest foods from the globally finest suppliers at our leisure. Being outside the bloc enables us to actually be an island trading nation that is.

Yes, we do grasp that there are other issues here, what about that second Range Rover for the barley baron and all that. But the idea that leaving the EU means we must grow more of our own food is an absurdity.

Don’t forget, we have actually done this before. We abolished the Corn Laws in 1846, threw the British food market open to those finest global suppliers. That’s actually when British living standards started to markedly improve after the Engels Pause. We know the idea and action works.

We’ll even concede that maybe this is something to be talked about. But as we do so we’ve got to get the facts straight in the conversation. Being outside the EU makes it easier to import more of our food. As this would lead to cheaper and better food that’s not an argument in favour of more self-sufficiency in food production, is it now?

Bernard Levin told us to beware the Single Issue Fanatics

Not that we intend to pose as experts upon diet but:

Analysis of the government-funded National Diet and Nutrition Survey revealed that 11 per cent of males aged 11 to 18, 54 per cent of females aged 11 to 18 and 27 per cent of females aged 19 to 64 consumed less than the minimum recommended level of iron. Only 2 per cent of males aged 19 to 64 consumed less than the minimum recommended level of iron. Red meat is a source of iron, though it is also found in beans and nuts.

Givens said iodine deficiency was particularly worrying in young women approaching child-bearing age because it was essential for foetal health.

He said milk was the biggest source of iodine for most people but relatively few plant-based milk alternatives were fortified with the mineral.

We do grasp that idea that many have, that meat - or dairy - contributes to climate change and so vegetarianism or even veganism is warranted. Or on moral grounds and so on and on.

The point we do want to make is that one that Bernard Levin made for so many decades, beware of the Single Issue Fanatics (SIFs). Life is complex, it’s a series of more or less difficult trade offs. There is no one single true and pure answer to most of the questions that afflict us.

Take this nutrition thing, what we suppose would be called micronutrients. The iron problem is one that’s well known and it’s even true that certain vegans are, because of their problems, prescribed liver to eat in order to boost their intake.

Lack of iodine in the diet leads to goitre, that itself potentially leading to cretinism - no, not the insult, the diagnosis - in children. The usual population wide cure for this is to add iodine to salt. But we have those Single Issue Fanatics demanding that our diet be cleansed of salt as well.

We have so many SIFs shouting about - and with power over unfortunately - our diets that we are, as noted above, seeing falls in population health in some areas.

Our point is that this is testable and thereby proven in this area of diet. But that SIFs problem applies to all things. We have those insisting that climate change simply must be dealt with however - at whatever cost to life, living standards, liberty or anything else. Or that fracking cannot be allowed because earth tremors. Or that inequality must be fought with every available weapon no matter what those costs to liberty and so on again.

Life’s complicated, it’s a series of trade offs and those who become Single Issue Fanatics need to be either dialled back into an acceptance of that or ignored.