So planning does cause constipation in the viscera of the body economic then?
We have people telling us that it’s all the planning system:
Zero onshore wind plans submitted in England since de facto ban was ‘lifted’
So, erm, if they’re now allowed to why aren’t they? We have, after all, had it insisted at us that onshore wind is the cheapest form of electricity generation. Electricity prices are still high, there should therefore be vast profits to be had from building onshore wind. So, why isn’t there a rush?
Greenpeace UK’s policy director, Doug Parr, said: “As predicted, the government’s futile planning tweaks amounted to absolutely nothing and the de facto ban is still well and truly in place. Why would a developer risk putting their cash behind a project that remains beholden to woolly guidelines and the unworkable decisions made by some local councils?
“Onshore wind is the cheapest, quickest and greenest way to produce energy. Ramping up production would lower energy bills, slash emissions and bolster the UK’s energy security. We should be building them everywhere it makes sense to generate. But as things stand, you’ve got more chance of spotting a flying pig than a new onshore windfarm in the UK.”
Now, yes, we do know that it’s a category error to take Greenpeace at their word. But let’s just indluge ourselves for a moment and accept what they say.
So, what else are we short of? Houses. What else is also affected by the planning system? The supply of houses.
If the planning system causes that constipation in the viscera of the body economic over onshore wind - the cheapest, quickest and greenest way to increase electricity supply - then does anyone really want to be caught insisting that this affects just that and not also housing?
We do tend to think that that would be illogical.
It's not the Nanny State we're worried about here
We’d use a much stronger word to describe what is being insisted upon here. Perhaps those words more usually associated with jackboots and spiffy uniforms:
England heads for obesity disaster as minister frets about nanny state
The power that is being demanded is:
Until action is taken to curb the attraction and availability of ultra-processed food and foods high in fat, sugar and salt “their most serious by-product – namely obesity – will continue to rise”, he says.
The insistence is that they must be able to determine what you will be allowed to eat. A certain Blair got this right nearing a century ago:
Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots.
The modern panic is entirely confected:
Obesity is a devastating public health problem harming millions of people in the UK that will never be resolved by tips on what to eat and what to avoid. Two in three adults are overweight or obese and the problem costs £100bn a year.
The £100 billion simply is not true.
In England, two in five children are leaving primary school overweight
Nor’s that true as Chris Snowdon has been valiantly pointing out these years.
But the insistences are becoming ever more shrieking all the same. How much more “Tutto nello Stato” is it possible to get than that government determines what you may eat?
There really are people out there who gain a pleasure from ordering other people around, defining what may be done, insisting upon the rules that must be obeyed. The trick of a liberal society is to have them running the bridge clubs not the government. A trick we’re clearly failing to perform currently. Perhaps we should get better at it?
Billy Hague and citizens' assemblies
We’re told this is a great idea:
Yet the citizens’ assembly was established nonetheless, and over the following six months something fascinating and inspiring occurred. An appointed chairwoman and 99 “ordinary” people, chosen at random and therefore completely varied in age, gender, regionality and socioeconomic status, did a remarkable job. They adopted some commendable principles for their debates, including respect, efficiency and collegiality. They listened to 25 experts and read 300 submissions. They heard each other out and compromised more effectively than elected representatives.
We’d have a certain sympathy for the idea if we all went with only such assemblies and thereby managed to kill off, entirely, the parasitism of the current political class. To the extent that that’s not just the post-consumption grumpiness of the Christmas port kicking in.
On a more considered, umm, consideration we’re against it. From the Electoral Reform Society:
Members were given information on the topic, heard from 25 experts and reviewed 300 submissions (out of around 12,000 received) from members of the public and interest groups.
The problem with such sortition and committee is that the power to determine the outcome rests with the selection of the experts to do the speaking, with the pick and choose of the 300 from the 12,000 submissions.
This is just a replay of the commitology of Leacock or Parkinson. Or, for those who remember their student politics, how everything was really decided in the junior sub-standing committee on committee submissions, which was really all four members of whatever the Trot Party was called that term, meeting at midnight on a Sunday in the basement behind the beware of the leopard sign.
Citizens’ juries, assemblies, sound great. Until one realises that all the power will belong to those who feed the information to them. We’ve just removed political power away from elections, away from democracy and deep into the bowels of the junior sub-standing committee on committee submissions.
So, no.
Now it is possible that that second bottle of port was a bad idea and therefore this is a little more grumpy than should be taken seriously. But we have heard of an idea from Athenian democracy. Where anyone could propose a law, everyone voted on it and if it passed then, well, that was the new law. If it didn’t pass then the proposer was taken ‘round the back and strangled. No, too extreme. But it would reduce the number of damn fool ideas put forward, wouldn’t it.
Well, yes, those Sci-Fi dystopias
Charlie Stross tells us of how:
SF is a profoundly ideological genre—it’s about much more than new gadgets or inventions. Canadian science-fiction novelist and futurist Karl Schroeder has told me that “every technology comes with an implied political agenda.”
Well, yes, we’d run with that. Although we’d go further, a major strand of Sci-Fi is exploring the political agendas, even outcomes, that might come from a specific technological change. Many of which do become dystopias of course - partly that’s because “and then everything was lovely” isn’t a hugely gripping storyline.
But OK, there’s a lot of politics in there, at least there’s a lot of discussion of politics in there:
Science fiction (SF) influences everything in this day and age, from the design of everyday artifacts to how we—including the current crop of 50-something Silicon Valley billionaires—work. And that’s a bad thing: it leaves us facing a future we were all warned about, courtesy of dystopian novels mistaken for instruction manuals.
Which, well, we doubt we share many political thoughts or ideals with Mr. Stross so let’s just say that’s possible. But then Sci-Fi really has discussed many of the available dystopias along the way. Possibly the grandaddy of the genre, “We”, tells before the event how Stalinism isn’t going to work. “Brave New World” can obviously be read as a warning about the then very fashionable in left wing circles eugenics programmes (the Fabians were virtually founded upon the idea).
More recently “Fallen Angels” can be read as a warning of actually allowing any greens, anywhere, to hold the controlling reins of politics. There have been novels about how the govt of Earth tried to strangle any freedom among the space colonies by denying water for reaction mass (again, cod-green arguments) so they go corral a moon of Saturn. A whole series that has the UN controlling all new technologies.
Our point here is not that Mr. Stross is wrong in identifying some dystopias that result from a possible excess of corporate power. Rather, that the universe explored also includes those with an excess of government control. Which brings us to this:
We were warned about the ideology driving these wealthy entrepreneurs by Timnit Gebru, former technical co-lead of the ethical artificial intelligence team at Google and founder of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR), and Émile Torres, a philosopher specializing in existential threats to humanity.
Gebru is famous among those who pay attention to these things for insisting that AI cannot be allowed unless it accords to her definitions of what is moral. It must include - work by, produce outcomes that lead to - equity, for example. But as the universe is inequitable by those current standards of how equity is defined - equal outcomes - Gebru’s definition insists upon the only AI we’re allowed being an AI that doesn’t work. For it doesn’t describe, start from, the world that exists, it becomes a projection of the desired world. Desired by a certain set of morals and ethical stance, not a building upon what is extant.
We’d argue that the dystopias for us to avoid as described in Sci-Fi are not those in which Marc Andreessen gets to cackle at us mere mortals from his private space station. Rather, those in which bureaucrats prevent private space stations from ever existing.
But that there is to betray - just as we insist Mr. Stross is doing - our own ideological biases.
The real point we want to make here is that yes, Sci-Fi, among other things, explores dystopias. But many dystopias, formed by different stretches and exaggerations of current society and technology. They’re by no means all - or even mostly - about an excess of capitalist, corporate or even market power. There are many about that potential excess of state, bureaucratic and just plain foolish power too.
SciFi doesn’t tell us to worry purely about the current crop of Silicon Valley capitalists. It tells us to worry about all who would direct our society. A little more equity from Mr. Stross and others in the dangers faced here would be welcome. For we’re really very certain indeed that the potential dangers do not stem merely from those trying to make a buck or a billion.
It is a day to think about the children
Rather than, as the Observer is doing here, mislead about the children.
Profiteering fears as global investment firms increase stakes in England’s child social care
The first complaint is that governments with lots of capital - those sovereign wealth funds - are investing in children’s homes in Britain. We see this as being rather a good thing, capital being invested where capital is needed, but obviously opinions can differ on that.
Where this passes over into an untruth is here:
A recent analysis found that the Keys Group, whose services also include specialist care and education, had pre-tax profits last year of £27.7m on all its activities – 22.4% of its income. It also had net tangible liabilities of £128m.
The emirate of Abu Dhabi entered in the market in 2021, acquiring the Witherslack Group via its Mubadala sovereign wealth fund. Witherslack’s annualised pre-tax profits were recently estimated to be £39m last year.
This is not true. The report - it’s this one - said that EBITDA, that’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, were of those amounts. As we’ve said before about this report:
They’re not including property costs.
Or even, they’re not including the costs of buying property via debt (ie, a mortgage or the like) when estimating profitability but are looking at debt levels when measuring going concern basis. Which is, as we say, a contortion too far.
These companies are not making 22.4% of turnover as profits - nor the £39 million. They’re making that as operating profit before the costs of having a home to put children in, the property costs of interest, depreciation and so on.
Now then, it is possible that these people are simply too ignorant to understand the difference. It’s also possible that there is lying for political effect here. If it becomes an established part of the political conversation that massive profit margins are being made upon running children’s homes then politics will be driven by that outrage. Whether it’s actually true or not doesn’t matter to a political “fact” which is why so much effort goes into their creation.
We’re open to the idea that this is simple ignorance, as to that this is an attempt to deliberately mislead. Neither seem to us to be a great justification for taking the blindest notice of this rubbish.
Yes, this is that day of the year that’s about the Boy Child and all that. Be interesting if people used this season to be rigorously truthful, no?
Merry Christmas all.
We'd better hope that green hydrogen works
Somewhere along the line that is - a source of hydrogen that is both cheap and also fits in with whatever are insisted upon as the rules of our new green overlords.
The reason?
No, not the A. Hitler vileness, back a generation to Imperial Germany. The observation was that those nations with a higher population would survive (this doesn’t have to be true but it was thought so then). From that logically, and correctly, follows that more food supply is necessary in order to feed the higher population. But there’s a limit to how much food can be grown from a piece of land - therefore more land is required, that lebensraum. In Germany’s case, Poland and the Ukraine.
That was indeed the line of thinking in those 1890s and so on. And given the constraints of the time (and the refusal to believe in importing food in large quantity) we might not like what they believed but believe it they did.
This all changed with the Haber Process - being able to make ammonia from natural gas. CH4 into HN3. Now it’s not necessary to have more land, one can slather ammonium nitrate (NH4NO3 and made from that HN3) onto it instead.
Artificial fertilizers mean it’s not necessary to conquer more land in order to feed the population. Huzzah.
But as a part of the Mitsubishi Group is pointing out, the price of gas inside Europe is currently such that there’s pretty much no fertilizer production. And if we all stop, entirely, using that natural gas, the CH4, then that old way disappears. We then get back to fights over enough land to feed people.
No, going organic doesn’t solve this. Precisely because fertilizer is a substitute for that more land, organic requires more land than fertilized. We’d be back with the battles - and also have, to a useful approximation, no land at all left for wildlife once we’ve fed humans from our now more extensive but less productive fields.
We really don’t think we’d like that world at all. Our conclusion here being that we really do hope that some form of green hydrogen production does work. At scale and cheaply. For that’s the essential input to this process of being able to feed the 8 billion of us.
A cheery thought for Christmas Eve, eh?
Grift and rare earths
MPs tell us that China has a stranglehold on those essential rare earths:
Last week, Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee warned that Britain’s net zero drive has been left dangerously exposed to a reliance on Beijing for supplies of crucial materials.
The committee said in its report: “In the early 2000s, China began to ‘weaponise’ critical minerals exports, restricting access for political leverage.”
Then China announced a ban on the export of rare earth processing technologies.
China has banned exports of technologies for processing rare earths, the latest sign President Xi Jinping’s administration is hitting back against US-led curbs on advanced computer chip sales to Chinese companies.
Therefore, obviously, taxes must be higher so that MPs can lash out more cash to those with long enough ladles to get into the political gravy. A new orgy of industrial development grift.
Except when we examine the details the justification is rather less. For example, the ban on those technology exports was already there, de facto. We’ve also already got a vast development programme under way in this western world:
According to the International Energy Agency, China accounts for about 60 per cent of the world’s rare earth mining production
The thing is, 13 years ago that was 95%. And then China tried to weaponize its control of mining as we said, back in 2010, all that will happen is that western mines will open. As they did to produce that 60% share today.
We already know the truth of this. China’s dominance here is contestable. So, if they’ll not allow us to have those rare earths nice and cheap then we should contest. And the impetus of current pricing is such that it all requires no subsidy whatever. This really is one of those things that markets unadorned can take care of.
So, you know, we should allow markets unadorned to take care of it. However much politics would enjoy the ladling out, the recipients the arrival of gravy, it’s not necessary to tax Peter to subsidise Paul here. So, don’t.
American wages are higher than British by more than you think
We think we’re all pretty much aware that US wages are higher than UK by and large and in general? To which a fairly usual response is “But free health care!” and therefore Nanunanu or some such. Well, yes, except the way we usually measure wages means that US incomes are even higher, when we consider health care costs, than we think.
This is not an earthshaking point, it’s just one of those little grubby nuts and bolts issues we so delight in around here.
To use comparable figures, for the US: “ Median weekly earnings of the nation's 122.1 million full-time wage and salary workers were $1,118 in the third quarter of 2023” and UK: “Median weekly earnings for full-time employees was £682 in April 2023,” (OK, there’s 6 months of inflation to account for in there but….). Or, on an annual basis, the US is $58,136, the UK £35,464. The FX rate is £1: $1.26. Or perhaps PPP at $1: £0.68. (ie, $1.47). By PPP rates the Americans are still gaining substantially more than Brits.
The US is a richer society, thus wages are higher. The US economy is lower tax, less regulated, than the British. We’ve not found anything here that violates long held prejudices therefore.
The standard response to this is that but, but health care! Americans have to pay for theirs, we Brits get it free from the NHS. Which, at this level of wage measurement, is to get that the wrong way around. For what we are measuring here is wages, not compensation. Compensation is what you get from going to work, not merely wages.
In Britain we gain those wages then have taxes taken off them. Some part of those taxes then pay for the NHS which is then free at the point of use. But UK wages are therefore the £34k minus the cost of health care. USians, on the other hand, gain their wages plus health care. For, for the significant majority of full time employees, health care insurance is something they gain from their employer. And which is not included in this measure of cash wages. It’s part of compensation, not wages.
No, we are not advocating a move to employer paid health care. Of all the varied ways health care can be done we do not think that’s one of the ways it should. We are also not suggesting that doctors should be paid as much here as there and so on. We might just note that for those who do have that health insurance they do actually get to see a doctor in less than geological time and so on but still, the point here is not about health care, it’s about wages.
Yes, who pays health care makes a difference when we compare UK and US wages. But we’ve got to get this the right way around. The standard measures of wages for the UK are before health care costs. In the US they’re after. US wages, when accounting for health care, are even higher than the standard comparison states that is.
Again, UK wages are before the tax to pay for health care. US wages are after employer paid health insurance. US wages are significantly higher than UK when we account for health care costs.
We did say this would happen and Lo! it is happening
We can’t claim to be Cassandra because some people do believe us some of the time. It’s just that more people should believe us more of the time:
But there are growing concerns over the vacuum of lending that has been left in its wake.
Loan sharks and other unregulated lenders are stepping in to replace the likes of Amigo. Buy now, pay later lenders, which offer an alternative form of lending, have also filled the space.
A survey of debt advisers by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that 16pc of lower income households were borrowing from unlicensed moneylenders last year, equivalent to around 1.9m households.
The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) also estimates as many as 1m people in England are in debt to loan sharks, up from 300,000 in 2010.
While the end of high-cost credit is good for customers, what’s replaced it could be much worse.
The reason for this? As we said would happen:
Even though payday loan fees seem competitive, many reformers have advocated price caps. The Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), a nonprofit created by a credit union and a staunch foe of payday lending, has recommended capping annual rates at 36 percent “to spring the (debt) trap.” The CRL is technically correct, but only because a 36 percent cap eliminates payday loans altogether. If payday lenders earn normal profits when they charge $15 per $100 per two weeks, as the evidence suggests, they must surely lose money at $1.38 per $100 (equivalent to a 36 percent APR.) In fact, Pew Charitable Trusts (p. 20) notes that storefront payday lenders “are not found” in states with a 36 percent cap, and researchers treat a 36 percent cap as an outright ban.
The interest rate was capped. It has acted as an outright ban. Therefore people who wish to borrow small sums for short terms are turning to illegal lenders. The one’s where it’s the kiddies’ kneecaps that are the security.
We suggest that this is not a societal advance. As, in fact, we said back then.
Now, we are willing to accept that things could be better. Generally and specifically better. That’s rather the point of believing in free markets, that people can think up better ways and then have the freedom to do them. But we do want to insist upon a very important part of this process.
The bad thing, whatever it is, that should be replaced by the better. Do not ban the bad thing and hope the better then turns up. Instead, invent, develop the new thing and then watch, in astonishment, as it replaces the worse.
Create first then outcompete, do not ban then hope.
Because that second is how the babbie’s kneecaps end up on the line.
It's the 15 months, not the banning of the deal, that matters
As we’ve pointed out before, it’s the time taken by bureaucracy that matters more than the actual decisions:
Adobe is ditching its planned $20 billion takeover of Figma, the app design business, after the deal’s future was thrown into doubt by UK and European competition watchdogs, which said they were minded to block it.
Maybe the block is the right decision, maybe it isn’t. We’d not even pretend to enough knowledge of the sector to know. But we would insist that the actual problem is here:
It (Adobe) will now pay Figma a $1 billion break-up fee, as set out in the agreement they made when the tie-up was agreed 15 months ago.
As we have indeed said before:
This productivity increase - it comes from either doing new things, or doing old things in new ways. As above, this has historically been 80% of total growth. The speed of GDP growth is the speed at which we do those new things or things the new way. This is also the same, in concept, as the speed of productivity growth.
So, now we’ve a bureaucracy taking 15 months to even decide whether they might have a concern about someone suggesting a new arrangement for doing something or other.
Sure, that new thing might be bad. Might be good too. But at some rate of bureaucratic cogitation the time spent to think through it causes as much damage to economic and productivity growth as simply allowing a bad thing to happen.
We’re not getting richer precisely and exactly because we’ve a bureaucracy deciding how we should be getting richer.
The answer is obvious - simply abolish the Competition and Markets Authority. Replace it, perhaps, with something efficient, that doesn’t, by definition, make us poorer. Or a coin toss, likely to do less harm.
Or, perhaps to revive that old joke about why’s there only one Monopolies Commission, we should ponder whether the correct number of CMAs is none or three. The multiplicity would provide the competition leading to thumbs being extracted and decisions reached in less than geological time.#
We’re ideologically opposed to an economy in which the main question about anything new is “May we?”. But if that is the way that it’s going to be can we at least start employing people who can make up their minds in, say, a week?