Adam Smith's Legacy

On this day in 1790, the great economist, moral philosopher and social psychologist Adam

Smith died. The story is that he was entertaining friends at his home, Panmure House off

Edinburgh’s Canongate, when he felt unwell, rose and said: “Friends, we will have to

continue this conversation in another place.” He died soon after.

It’s a nice story, though greatly exaggerated for effect. Adam Smith’s religious beliefs are a

matter of debate, and it unlikely he believed in an afterlife anyway. Indeed, though he died

seventy years before Darwin’s Origin of Species, he was grasping towards an evolutionary

explanation of why human life, in economics, morality and other areas, seems to serve us in

generally beneficial ways, without the need for any conscious direction from governments

or anyone else. As if directed by an Invisible Hand, he wrote, though he knew there was no

conscious entity moving that hand. Or Providence, he suggested. How it generated the

harmony that F A Hayek would later call spontaneous order was a mystery to Smith, and to

his friend David Hume and other scholars of the age.

Smith ordered that, on his death, all his papers should be burned, apart from one essay on

The History of Astronomy. It was not such an uncommon request at the time: people did not

want to be judged on the basis of their random notes and half-though-out jottings. But we

were lucky he spared The History of Astronomy, which is a remarkable essay in the

philosophy of science, advancing a trial-and-error thesis that would not be lost on the

twentieth-century author of The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Sir Karl Popper.

The fact that Smith wrote on scientific method demonstrates how wide his interests

and his expertise were. As well as the economics for which he is most remembered today, he also

wrote and lectured on the use of language, on the arts, on justice, on politics and on moral

philosophy. In fact it was his first book on ethics, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, that in

1759 made him internationally famous — and guaranteed him a generous income for life

that would give him the freedom to think about economics and write his 1776 masterpiece

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which he referred to as his

Inquiry, but to us is known as simply The Wealth of Nations.

In this, Smith offers an explanation of why, in economics, the spontaneous order idea

works. For centuries, people imagined that the only gainers in any economic transaction

were those who ended up with the money. But Smith noted that their customers benefited

too, by getting goods or services that they valued more than the cash. Indeed, the trade

would not happen unless both sides thought they were getting value from it. To maximise

the creation and distribution of value, he concluded, we need to be facilitating free

exchange — not thwarting it with protectionist measures against foreign imports or

domestic regulations on what and how people are allowed to trade.

This simple ‘system of natural liberty’, explained Smith, was what allowed the spontaneous

society to flourish and raised nations from poverty to prosperity. It enabled individuals to

strive to ‘better their condition’, and that of their families. By contrast, regulations and laws

were too often laid down by politicians and their business cronies: to promote their own

interests, most generally in opposition to the interests of the working poor.

Smith would have regarded a government that controls nearly half the economy, spending

nearly half the nation’s GDP — a concept that he introduced to the world on the very first

page of The Wealth of Nations — as the greatest tyranny. Taxes, he thought, were another

way in which established interests skew things in their favour and block potential

competition. Taxes, he argued, should be as low as possible, should encourage rather than

restrict free trade and innovation, and should be simple, understandable and convenient to

pay. One can imagine what he might have thought of a tax code like the UK’s, which is

longer than The Wealth of Nations itself, and a regulatory rule book that is even longer.

When economic freedom, tempered by Smith’s moral virtues of prudence, justice,

beneficence and self-control, has been allowed to flourish, it has led to the greatest

increase, and spread, of human prosperity. The free trade era of the nineteenth century

enriched much of the world and brought humanity cheap food and manufactures. The

globalisation of the twentieth and twenty-first brought nearly all nations into the world

trading system and thereby pulled a billion people out of dollar-a-day poverty.

Adam Smith’s intellectual and practical legacy is plain enough. The issue is whether the

world’s governments will ever stop frittering it away.

Cheap, clean energy is on the way

Eight years ago in 2015, I published “Britain and the World in 2050,” setting out my predictions for the world ahead of us. It was widely covered in the media, with journalists going to town on the recreated woolly mammoths and dinosaurs, not revived from mosquitos preserved in amber, but by back breeding and genetic manipulation of flightless birds.

Some also picked up and covered my remarkable prediction that the cost of energy would have dropped dramatically by 2050. I wrote:

“Energy costs will by 2050 be a fraction of their present-day costs. For most consumer uses, energy will be effectively free.”

The cost of energy has witnessed several spikes since then, and is now more expensive than it was. Partly this is down to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with some contribution made by a go-green agenda that shuns the cheaper sources in favour of more expensive ones.

Nonetheless, I remain convinced that my prediction will come about. The fossil fuel we’ll still be using will be gas, but nuclear will take a larger share, particularly with the new small reactors coming on line. Solar will be making a major contribution, as ways are found to increase the efficiency of photo-voltaic cells by combining ultra-thin surfaces on the silicon.

There are several new technologies that could be game changers. There are vast reserves of natural hydrogen beneath the Earth’s surface, more than previously supposed, and more accessible.

The US Geological Survey concluded in April that there is probably enough accessible hydrogen in the earth’s subsurface to meet total global demand for “hundreds of years”. Currently, the effort to extract it commercially resembles the early days of fracking, with ‘wildcatters’ setting the pace. It portends cheap and clean generation of electricity, bypassing fossil fuels and emitting no greenhouse gases.

Another possible technology involves the use of thin layers of materials flecked with nanoholes. The pores are essentially small enough (100nm) that the molecule's electrical charge can pass through them and be harvested to generate electricity. Water molecules pass through, generating a charge imbalance that produces harvestable electricity plucked not from thin air, but from naturally moist air.

The device is called an Air-gen and can operate at all times despite the weather conditions because moisture is always in the air. When scaled up, it offers low-cost, clean electricity.

A newer technology from scientists at the University of Rochester uses semiconductor nanocrystals for light absorbers and catalysts and bacteria to donate electrons to the system. The system is submerged in water and driven by light. Bacteria interact with nanoparticle catalysts to make hydrogen gas more cheaply than can be achieved by electrolysis.

It is not that any of these might necessarily be the magic bullet that gives us cheap, clean energy. It is that some of them, in combination with yet more ingenious ways still to be developed, will give us the energy we need at a price we will be prepared to pay. And that price will be very low. We won’t use less energy; we’ll just produce it more cleverly.

Bernard Levin's warning about the Single Issue Fanatic

Bernard Levin spent many years warning of the Single Issue Fanatic. Someone who was so convinced of the importance of this one, single, thing that there was no acknowledgement of the fact that life is a series of trade offs. The recommendation was that no SIF should ever be given any power at all in our governance system. Simply because government never is about the one single issue. We live in a constrained world, everything is a trade off, there are always opportunity costs:

New housing is being blocked unless councillors agree to introduce green schemes such as Ulez and low-traffic neighbourhoods, in an approach that the environment watchdog is preparing to roll out across the country.

Natural England, which is already accused of blocking up to 145,000 homes, has commissioned a review of “mitigation measures” that could be used to limit emissions associated with new properties in the vicinity of more than 330 designated areas across the country.

Here we now have a statutory body which carries great power and is run by SIFs. That it’s currently run by Tony Juniper - why any Tory government made that appointment is a thing of wonder - is not the grand error. It’s that an organisation which will so obviously end up being run by fanatics over this single issue even exists that is the problem.

We have far too many of such as well, the CCC being only the most obvious of the others. The reason we can’t do anything is because the political system has these veto points and there is no system for being able to insist on consideration of the trade offs. The answer is to abolish them all.

No, all of them. We’re against much of the interference politics makes into lives, that’s true. But a useful insistence is that anyone who does wish to interfere politically has to stand for election. Whatever political power there is needs to be exercised by politicians we can get rid of - along with their plans - rather than this series of isolated power centres deliberately walled off from the body politic.

If there is to be politics then let there be politics, not bureaucracies accountable to no one.

Mr. Colville suggests that it’s the policies that are the problem. We insist that it’s allowing anyone to even have a policy.

Kill the quangos, stone dead.

On the young being later to buy their first house

A common enough statement these days is that the young of today are buying their first house later than did the young of our own youthful times. This does have the advantage of being a true statement. But it is also worth musing over why this is happening.

Yes, obviously, there is the price of housing - we really do need to blow up the Town and County Planning Act 1947 and successors, kablooie - and so on. However, there’s something else here which makes this delay a mechanical certainty.

The Times runs a piece about a lady who didn’t go to university and has bought at the age of 23. And that is the crux of the matter. Again, we agree there are other influences, but the crux of the particular point we wish to make here.

Back 50 years some 10 to 12% of the population went on to university. Today that appears to be very close to the 50% target proclaimed. We’ve therefore an extra 40% or so of the population delaying their entry into the world of work and earning by at least that 3 years. There’s also that little point that professional salaries tend to start lower than blue collar ones, it being in the middle and later years of career that they soar above.

So, yes, some substantial portion of the young have less money than the generations before them. Thus they’re buying their homes later. Note that this happens however university is financed, whatever other influences there are on the economy. A huge portion of the age cohort now takes years longer to work and earn. Therefore the things bought by work and earnings are bought later.

A surprise that really, isn’t it?

We should therefore be wary of those insisting that the system must change to deal with this problem. Because it has been caused - in part at least - by that previous system change. If it’s all so awful - people delaying buying their first house - then why not attack the root cause, too many people going to university first?

Sorry about this but we just can't afford any more government

This is a point that we’ve made before, a number of times. Britain hsa already got more government than Britain is willing to pay for. Therefore we cannot have any new government. No new plans for this or that - simply because we’ve already promised ourselves more than we’re willing to pay for.

The OBR is saying this now:

The Government must find more than £100bn to keep the UK’s debt mountain from spiralling out of control, the budget watchdog has warned, suggesting that steep tax rises or spending cuts are on the horizon.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said pressures from an ageing population, surging debt interest and the shift to net zero meant Britain’s £2.5 trillion debt pile was on course to soar in the coming decades.

Debt is expected to surge from 100pc of GDP today to more than 300pc within 50 years without spending cuts or tax increases.

This is without anything new. Without “making child care affordable”, without “investing in the climate” and without, even, giving the NHS 4% more each year. This is just the totting up of what we’ve already promised ourselves. A pension in our dotage and all that.

We pointed this out 5 years ago and we did so before that too.

Or as we’ve been known to point out, we aren’t willing to pay for the welfare state we’ve already promised ourselves, let alone anything more or new.

The expansion of what government can do for us - or more likely, in our view, do to us - cannot continue simply because we’ve already spent more than all we’re willing to send to pay for it.

Sorry about that and all for those who have further grand plans. But you can’t have them - not unless you identify which bits of current spending you’re going to kill to make room for the new.

Resource constraints always are interesting, aren’t they?

Welcome to the Growth Commission

A welcome new initiative is the newly-formed “Growth Commission” that will analyze policy suggestions to assess their likely long-term impact on the UK’s GDP. This is useful because all too often policies are proposed without consideration of whether they will adversely affect the UK’s ability to grow its economy. Instead of cost-benefit analysis being performed, there is a tendency to consider only the benefits the new policy might bring, without looking at the costs it could impose.

The new Growth Commission aims to fill that gap, drawing on the work of more than a dozen expert economists. There was a similar, but not identical, initiative under the Presidency of George H Bush, and headed from the White House by his Vice-President, Dan Quayle. It was called the Council on Competitiveness, and its mission was to study every new initiative emerging from Congress and the bureaucracy, and to assess its likely impact on American competitiveness.

Well-meaning and possibly worthwhile initiatives would be set forward without any thought to the costs they might impose on American business, or how less competitive they might make it. The Vice-President’s Council on Competitiveness changed that because the initiatives would have to be examined before they could proceed, and changes were made and amendments inserted to lessen the impact on competitiveness that initiatives might otherwise make.

It met with strong criticism on with the American Left, largely because it kicked many of their costly proposals into the long grass. Some called it “the roach motel of congressional legislation.” This was because a popular series of TV ads at the time featured a box called a roach motel into which cockroaches were attracted by the scent, but once inside were killed by the poison. The voice of Muhammad Ali accompanied the ads saying, “They check in, but they don’t check out.” The same fate was alleged to happen to Congressional initiatives.

One difference is that the Growth commission will look at likely effects on growth, not just on competitiveness, although there is overlap. The big difference is that the Quayle Commission had real powers emanating from the Vice-President’s office. The Growth Commission is independent and outside of government and has no similar powers. While it is an immensely useful body to oversee what Departments and the bureaucracy are doing, it might be more effective if it were allowed to operate from within Downing Street, with direct access and input to decision makers.

If something's not worth repairing then it's not worth repairing

As with recycling - if it’s worth it, do it, if it’s not, don’t. Recycling ciopper into new plumbing fixtures works, makes a profit. Recycling concrete into hardcore works economically, recycling concrete back into cement does not (yes, it is possible) so don’t.

France will soon begin paying people to have their clothes and shoes repaired instead of throwing them away in a push to reduce waste.

From October, the French will be able to claim a “repair bonus” worth up to €25 (£21) for clothing alterations and shoe repairs as part of a government mission to divert textiles from landfills and fight fast fashion.

This is silly and we’re actually given the example of why it is:

For years, tailors have been fighting an uphill battle against fast-fashion brands, Mr Liotet said, pointing out that consumers are less likely to pay €10 to repair a torn shirt when they can buy a new one for €4.99.

Quite. Prices do contain the information about the resources required to make or do the thing. Repairing a shirt requires more resources than a new shirt. So, to save resources have a new shirt, don’t repair the old.

The problem here is that people have reified the concept of “saving resources” without ever bothering to think about the resources being saved. And the information is all there in prices - things that are more expensive require more resources.

News just in - freer markets work

Pew is not one of those right wing and free market organisations over in the US. We’d put it, in British terms, somewhere between the Labour Party and Novara Media - that range between wrong but not mad and wrong but….well, you understand.

They have just found out that:

Pew has examined several jurisdictions that updated their zoning codes to allow more housing and found that this flexibility helped these jurisdictions add new housing stock faster than new households were being formed. And while rent remains detrimentally high in many communities throughout the country, this research shows that communities updating their zoning laws in this manner kept rent growth to less than 7 percent over the most recent six-year period, even as rents rose by 31 percent nationally.

The solution to rising rents, to the price of housing more generally, is to build more housing.

Note that the US doesn’t have anything - not of any size - even vaguely comparable to council or social housing. Not since they reformed HUD they don’t - they have Section 8 vouchers, akin to our Housing Benefit. The finding here is that building more housing - of any kind - moderates the price of housing.

As, obviously is going to be true, increasing supply does that. Even if half this country is adamant that it won’t.

But, there we have it. If we liberate planning so that more houses are built then the price of housing will moderate. So, why don’t we liberate planning?

Blow up the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors. Proper blow up, kablooie.

Let’s house the nation, eh?

Well, here's the problem about economic growth

Perhaps we should get really basic here. Economic growth is the new things we do. Can be doing old things in a newer and more efficient manner which frees up resources to then do other things as well. Can be doing something entirely new. But growth simply is those new and additional things.

The rate of growth is therefore the speed at which we do those new things.

The boss of National Grid has complained that it takes a decade to build a new power line in an attack on planning red tape.

John Pettigrew, the company’s chief executive, said that Britain’s planning rules add seven years of delays to the construction time for cables.

A planning system which triples the time necessary to do something new therefore slows economic growth.

We are observant enough to note that there are many complaining about the speed of economic growth in the Britain of today. If we’ve a planning system that is a soul-sucking leech on the potential speed of economic growth then this could, we submit, be part of the problem.

Our suggestion would therefore be to kill the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors. Proper blow up, kablooie. We’d also insist that anyone who does not adopt this approach is not being serious about the slowdown in economic growth.

Well?

Well, yes, this is how competition works

The general lesson here:

Rail fares could be cut in half under government plans to allow trains to compete on the same lines, a leading rail body has said.

Rail Partners, which represents private rail firms, suggested passengers could see huge reductions of between 15 and 50 per cent in ticket costs if the Government pushes ahead with its plan to increase the number of open access operators.

This is simply how competition works. What limits the amount that Heinz can try to charge for baked beans is what others are willing to sell baked beans for. What limits the margin Sainsburys can charge on Heinz baked beans is the margin Morrisons, Waitrose, the Co Op and others are willing to accept on Heinz baked beans. And everyone is limited in what they can charge by the existence of those hundreds and thousands of substitutes that exist for baked beans (although not, of course, on a proper breakfast).

How much we can be charged for a rail ticket depends upon all those substitutes - the price of a car journey, cycling, the bus, just not going and so on. Adding in also that direct competition, someone else offering the same journey but in a different steel tube, at a different price, will indeed reduce prices to consumers.

Which would be good - consumers are made better off and that’s the aim of our having even a civilisation, let alone an economy. Lower prices would, we expect, also entice some of those journeys by car, foot, cycle and just not going onto the substitute of the train ride. Which would, we assume, please the environmentalists.

So, umm, yes. The interesting thing is therefore seeing what excuses are to be given for why it shouldn't be done, isn’t it?