That Labour Theory of Value....

To cast the Labour Theory of Value into colloquial terms - including the conclusion often reached from it.

It’s only human labour that really adds value to things. Therefore, all the value added to something should flow to labour. If capital, or the capitalists - who have not laboured to add value - gain some of that value than that’s expropriation. We should therefore stop that and make sure that labour gains all the value added.

Yes, pretty crude but at the general level of understanding that is what is meant by it.

A veteran metal detectorist hit the jackpot when he turned up late to a group dig only to stumble across the largest gold nugget ever found in England after just 20 minutes of searching.

Richard Brock, 67, travelled three-and-a-half hours from his home in Somerset in May 2023 to join an organised expedition on farmland in the Shropshire Hills.

Despite his metal detector not in full working order, Mr Brock, who has been metal detecting for 35 years, discovered the biggest find of his life after unearthing a 64.8-gram (about 2.28 ounces) golden nugget.

To a useful level of accuracy that’s some £4,000 worth of gold.

The nugget is estimated to sell for £30,000.

Well, maybe it will and maybe it won’t. But this does pose a terrible problem for that Labour Theory of Value.

Yes, of course, we can go through any number of rathole iterations and insist that the labour of detectoring is what added the £26k in value and all that. Or say that natural finds are different or summat.

But what we’ve actually got there is that the prices humans allocate to things are not objective. They are subjective. £4k of gold becomes £30k of nugget because there’s a nice story attached.

We can also continue down the rathole iterations and insist that the absence of a metal detector would lead to no value at all, therefore capital is being expropriated by not gaining all, let alone any, of that value.

But the correct answer here is that the Labour Theory is simply wrong. Sure, we can construct ethical or moral systems in which it should be true. We can even insist that humans be reformed so as to make it true - tho’ we’d observe that New Soviet Man sure took a long time comin’.

Reality is simply that humans do not price things by the labour value in their production. Prices are subjective opinions, not objective realities. Sure, when 8 billion subjectives are aggregated we get to the “real price” of something but we’ve not an objective analysis underlying all of that. Given this it’s not possible to have an objective split of the value added - for that value just isn’t commensurable in that manner.

That is, the Labour Theory of Value is just great except for the one thing - it doesn’t apply to us, us humans, and the prices and values we apply to things.

One of those times we agree with George Monbiot

As ever, it’s only the diagnosis, not the solution:

The primaries won’t deliver a perfect system. We’ll still be stuck with a centralised and coercive politics, unmatched to the needs of the complex system we call society, based on the illegitimate concepts of presumed consent and remote decision-making. We will properly reclaim that power only when our representative politics are accompanied by participatory and deliberative decision-making.

George is talking about how the people who might get voted in as MPs are chosen. We are - as is our wont - rather more radical. Make who is the MP irrelevant to those areas of life.

We agree entirely that there are vast areas of life that simply shouldn’t be subject to presumed consent and remote decision-making. We agree that those vast areas of life should be dealt with in a participatory and deliberative fashion. Further, locally, by the people directly involved, without imposition by the centre or even the tyranny of the majority.

That means simply not having government, nor the majoritarian tyranny of democracy, involved at all. Just remove government from those areas of life - leave ‘em be for individuals and groups of people as they wish to combine and accumulate to get on with it. Remove, entirely, the power of other people to determine and make it direct decision making by those concerned.

You know, free markets.

Sure, there are some things where that majoritarian imposition is necessary. But the key word there is “some” and the correct definition of that some is “very many fewer than it is currently applied to”.

In a radically free country how we choose the people who might run for the job of getting the bins collected becomes some mild trivia, of interest to the occasional anorak and no more. So, the way to achieve that better politics is to be radically free, no?

So cheap, renewables, so, so, cheap

We’re fully aware of the claims about how much - how little - it costs to generate electricity using renewables. We’d also point to this:

A £58bn plan to rewire Great Britain’s electricity grid to connect up new windfarms off the coast of Scotland is expected to trigger tensions with communities along the route.

The £58 billion is a cost of renewables. It’s entirely possible that it’s a worthwhile cost - equally, that it isn’t. But it’s definitely a cost of renewables.

The ESO said three times as much undersea cabling would be laid than onshore infrastructure by 2035 and estimated its blueprint would add £15bn to the economy, creating 20,000 jobs a year.

Those 20,000 jobs are also a cost of renewables, not a benefit.

Note that all of this is true whatever one’s view of climate change, the necessity or not of dealing with it and so on. These are costs of doing that dealing. So, cheap may not be quite the right word. For the cost of renewables is not to be measured by the generation of a watt, it’s the cost of delivering, reliably, a watt to when and where it is to be used.

But our real ire is aimed at this:

Britain’s electricity networks will not hit net zero until 2035, National Grid has said, undermining a key pledge by Labour to hit that target by 2030.

…

The deadline prompted a backlash from Ed Miliband, the shadow energy secretary, who said a Labour government would make ESO accelerate its programme to hit the 2030 target. A spokesman said: “We said 2030 for decarbonising the grid and we meant it.”

No, not who is demanding what, which political party etc. Rather, that something like this is being determined by political pledges in an electoral (well, almost certainly one) year.

Whether we have a decarbonised grid or not depends upon the benefits of having one against the costs of having one. Accelerating the process makes it more expensive - and thus reduces the net benefit of doing so. It is possible to calculate either way. But who believes that anyone is? We’re being treated to political performativity over the spending of £58 billion and perhaps more. That is, we’re not being treated to rational decision making in the slightest.

Which is why we don’t like politics as the method of economic decision making. Simply because the economic decisions are not, therefore and thereby, made upon economic grounds.

This is not a party political point in terms of who it is demanding whichever - it’s a complaint about party politics itself as a method of economic decision making.

A small thought on increasing MPs' wages

One of those superfically attractive answers to our collective problems is doing the rounds again. A possibly general feeling that we’re not getting the quality of MP that we deserve and therefore we should raise the price we’re willing to pay and thus gain better ones. This modern world is sufficiently complex to govern that the sort of duffers who think £80k a year is a good income just won’t cut it any more. Therefore pay proper wages and gain those better. Say, oooh, £250k a year?

Well, it’s an idea.

Now, we’ve read our Hayek and know that the problem isn’t the quality of MP, it’s that the modern world is complex and therefore cannot be governed in any detail. The best that can be done is to set the general and base rules and then society is what we end up with from having got those right.

But, OK, all too many have not read Hayek nor understood his point.

So, what we need is an experiment. Those are difficult in economics as it’s terribly difficult to produce a control group, those the change doesn’t happen to, for comparison. We must therefore look for a natural experiment.

Which we do in fact have. For we pay the managers of local councils - not the councillors, the managers - those two to four times what we pay MPs. The result is as we see at Croydon, Birmingham and so on, organisations crumbling into bankruptcy as a result of the decisions taken by those nicely expensive managers.

A beautiful theory killed, once again, by an ugly fact.

Even if Hayek is not right, in that it is theoretically possible to manage in detail but we’re just not using the right people, we find that Britain still cannot be managed in detail because Britain doesn’t contain that management talent necessary to manage in detail.

Thus raising MPs’ wages will not make Britain better governed it’ll just make it more expensively governed. Which, given that we’re at a post-war high for the portion of the economy that flows through said government already doesn’t sound like a desirable - nor even viable - solution.

The necessity therefore becomes reducing the complexity of societal management - and economic, of course - down to where the available talent is capable of doing it. As you might have guessed given our views that means something between Singapore on Thames and radical laissez faire. Not because these are the policies that will make us richer - tho’ they are - or freer - they are - or even those which are logically and ethically correct - which they again are. But because the Rolls Royce minds of this country are incapable of managing anything more than that.

Hey, science is science, experimental outcomes are experimental outcomes and we do, really, have to respect the science. Don’t increase MP pay to try to attract that talent we’ve not got. Cut government to where the duffers can do it.

Shaft the poor, subsidise the rich in French fashion

Sometimes, just sometimes you understand, even cynics like us are shocked at the venality of politics:

It was a pair of $0 faux fur boots that signalled a new low for the fast fashion industry last week. Spotted on an Instagram ad for US customers, it was the latest in an aggressive campaign by Chinese retailer Temu to win market share. Just when you thought fashion couldn’t get any more disposable – it just did.

But fast fashion may have hit a roadblock: last week French lawmakers unanimously approved a bill to impose increasing penalties on fast fashion products, rising to €10 (£8.56) on each item of clothing by 2030. The bill also proposes a ban on fast fashion advertising, effectively undermining the algorithmically attuned, hyper-personalised digital marketing that has become a loaded weapon in the hands of these retailers.

A free pair of boots - faux fur or not - sounds to us like an excellent idea. Some consumer, somewhere, is better off to exactly the value of one pair of boots. Good, the aim of the economy is to make the consumer better off.

Clearly we’re out of touch with modern mores:

A surcharge linked to fast fashion’s ecological footprint of €5 (£4.20) an item is planned from next year, rising to €10 by 2030.

The ecological footprint of a €1 t-shirt is not, by any calculation at all, €10.

We’ve noted before how this appalling idea that the poor might enjoy a change of clothes or two is bringing back sumptuary laws. For if even the poor can dress like a Parisienne in the know then what method left is there for a Parisienne in the know to distinguish herself from the rabble by? If all can eat cake then what value the expensive patissier?

The effect of this is obvious. The poor much pay more for their clothes. Those who currently make them - the poor in those poor, producing, countries - lose work, jobs and income. The only people who gain are the French capitalists who happen to own French clothing factories.

We do wish we were joking but the last time we saw a French taxation idea this bad was the gabelle. Which didn’t lead to a happy time for all concerned.

Aching stupidity over tax on stock buybacks

Leave aside which political party this comes from for of course we don’t do party politics here. Without that party politics - and the possible effect on political fortunes - it’s an achingly stupid idea.

The plan, the set-piece announcement of Saturday’s first full day of the gathering in York, would impose a 4% tax on any share buybacks by FTSE-100 companies, which on the basis of the past two years of such activities would raise about £2bn annually.

As a taxation idea, this would have the appeal of being most probably popular, given that critics of share buybacks say the practice – used to inflate share prices – is often done at the expense of spending on investment, and can be a way for executives to cash in on their stakes.

…

The party argues that many buybacks are launched by corporations in areas such as banking, food and oil and gas, and that in the latter case the money could instead be used for more investment in green energy.

So, let us start by at least taking the idea seriously. The claim is that if a corporation buys back its shares then that money leaves the company and is not invested by that company. OK, that’s true.

The further claim is that the money which is paid out is not invested anywhere. At least, that’s the implication of what is being said. If it stayed within the company it would be invested, if it leaves it won’t be.

That’s crazed.

For that is then going on to say that only money which stays within the company which made the initial profit is invested. As we say, crazed.

Money that is paid out - whether as a dividend or as a share buyback - can do only one of two things. It can be spent upon consumption by the recipient. Or it can be re-invested in something else. That is all that can happen to it. Money that stays within the company can also do only one of two things. It can be spent upon consumption - say, higher incomes for the workers - or re-invested. That the money is inside or outside the company changes nothing about the only two things that can happen to it.

Except, of course, what the money might be invested in. Take, just as an example, BP. So, they’re good at - optimised for - finding hydrocarbons, pumping them up and delivering them to market. Capital which remains inside BP will be optimally used - because BP is optimised to do this - only if it is used finding, pumping and delivering more hydrocarbons. BP is no good at - say - solar as they’ve already proven. BP used, after all, to be the world’s largest producer of solar panels. They really weren’t all that good at it.

However, we have other companies out there too. Dale Vince at least claims to be good at building windmills. Ecotricity (?) Tesla and so on claim to be good at solar cells. Pensana is - perhaps not well but still - trying to sort out the rare earths supply chain. And on and on - there are other organisations already optimised to do this other green investment apparently desired.

We therefore desire the past profits of fossil fuel production to move out of organisations optimised for fossil fuel production into other, newer, organisations optimised for the challenges of this Brave Green New World.

That means surplus capital crossing the boundaries of these organisations.

The recipients are, largely enough, us. Or at least our pensions funds. There’s whatever it is, £6 trillion, £8 trillion of household wealth tied up in those pensions funds. None of us change our decades long consumption plans because, or despite, capital earnings being returned to us as a share buyback rather than a dividend. The surplus today over current consumption desires (and for decades for a pension fund, that’s all income in whatever form) gets reinvested.

It’s not that we desire to stop this capital reallocation from those optimised for the old economy to those struggling with the new. Nor is it that we’re indifferent to such capital movements. We positively lust after the process happening.

Now some fool wants to tax the very thing we desire? As we say, a proposal of aching stupidity.

Just the one dig at party politics - apparently this is supported by SirEd. Ho Hum. It’s still an achingly stupid idea, a tax on the very solution we desire - moving capital from the old to the new. So, you know, let’s not embed crazed nonsense in the tax system, eh? We’ve quite enough of that already, thanks very much.

Yes, we know the Biden Administration is trying this, we know that Senator Elizabeth Warren desires it too. What other proof does anyone require that it’s crazed?

Parliament should respond to the Wright Affair by reforming UK defamation law

Last week brought us the news that Dr. Craig Steven Wright, an eccentric Australian who has long claimed to be Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto, was bench-slapped by the High Court, where Mr. Justice Mellor ruled at the conclusion of the proceedings that Wright was not Satoshi Nakamoto, not the author of the Bitcoin white paper, not the author of its software and, by extension, not the creator of Bitcoin.

This bench ruling comes after years of litigation and weeks of hearings around the question of the provenance of the Bitcoin white paper and software. Full details of the court’s findings on these points will be provided in a written judgment at a later date so I refrain from offering my own conclusions on the evidence, or an assessment of correctness of the ruling, here.

As is public knowledge, I was one of the first lawyers – if not the first lawyer – to represent a client on the business end of Wright’s years-long litigation campaign, when, in 2019, a Twitter user I know was the first crypto community member to receive legal threats from Wright's lawyers for claiming that Wright was not Satoshi, the very conclusion Mr. Justice Mellor also reached today. 

A short time later, an acquaintance of mine, Peter McCormack, dared to say the same thing. Peter was promptly sued by Wright in England. Wright won his case against Peter, albeit winning only nominal damages of £1 due to certain deficiencies in Wright's case.

In my view, Wright's legal team chose to bring these claims in England for one reason, and one reason only: England is, and long has been, the easiest place in the English-speaking world to win a defamation action, because in England, the playing field is tilted so to the advantage of a claimant that even weak claims can win.

This is not a new problem, and its roots go deep. Defamation is an ancient tort with its origins in the landed aristocracy seeking to protect their names and reputations from lesser men. The Anglo-Saxon tort of scandalum magnatum, a “fake news” tort for defaming great men of the realm (and thus not a tort capable of being inflicted on lesser men), was used as early as the 13th century. In later years, various other torts like seditious libel were used to punish political dissent – even where that dissent should be substantially true – and the imposition of these ancient rules in the Thirteen Colonies, most famously in the John Peter Zenger trial of 1735, served as focal points around which a new, young nation, the United States of America, began to develop its fledgling judicial system which led, eventually, to its free speech doctrine embodied today by First Amendment jurisprudence.

In the modern formulation, defamation is the publication of a statement of fact to a third party, which is false, which is likely to cause serious harm to their reputation. In this respect it differs little from the tort in the United States. However, in England, the history of the tort – protecting the powerful from the powerless – has never been fully written out of its bones, because the burden of proof in a defamation action rests not with the claimant but with the defense. 

Not with the Saxon noble with the ear of the King, but with the humble pamphleteer who dared to speak out about his abuses. Not with the Member of Parliament accused of some lecherous or disreputable conduct, but the journalist who reported on it. Not with a person claiming to be Bitcoin’s creator, offering nothing approaching definitive proof that he or she is (being a transaction or message signed with one of Satoshi’s private keys), and armed with institutional financial backing, but the humble Twitter user who simply observed what appeared to be true, based on a cold assessment of the facts, and dared to repeat what he thought was true in writing. 

Put simply, at any time, in any defamation claim, the deck is always stacked against speakers and favors those who are most likely to be spoken about.

On a practical level, this means that it is conceivable that a future plaintiff in England seeking to conceal certain truths or propound certain falsehoods, but with knowledge of the totality of the circumstances concerning that conduct, confidence that he or she can control those variables, and possessing the resources to reasonably predict that he or she will be able to use lawfare to intimidate others from discussing it, can stifle freedom of speech by using the threat of defamation litigation and, in some cases, being less than forthright with the courts. We need not look back to the Saxons to find a proven example of this: see, e.g., Jeffrey Archer, Baron Archer and former Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, who famously won a defamation case against the Star newspaper over a visit to a prostitute whose life was ruined by the case in the late 1980s, only to be sent to prison a decade and a half later, when his testimony was discovered to have been false.

The point is not that Archer lied, or that he was punished for a lie. The point is that his initial case was so weak that he should never have won a civil action in the first place, or assumed that victory was possible, but the structure of English defamation law made a victory possible if not inevitable, thus incentivizing Archer to bring it anyway. Requiring a defendant to prove the truth of his statement, particularly where seeking to prove a negative, can be nearly impossible. It is far fairer and in the interests of justice to require a claimant, who starts the dispute, seeks the remedy, possesses direct knowledge of all of relevant facts about his past conduct, and is the party asking the state to intercede on his or her behalf with the full might of its power, to prove the truth under these circumstances.

I offer no view on the truth or falsity of Wright's statements or evidence in this case. That is a matter for the High Court to address in its fuller ruling. What I do know is that the question of the truth of his claims should have been addressed years ago in Wright v. McCormack, but it was not dealt with because the burden of proof was on the defense and the cost of going through the exercise COPA - a coalition of very well-funded corporations - just went through was likely too much for an individual defendant like Peter to bear. 

In future, it is possible to make England a fairer place for speakers and help the English marketplace of ideas be a home for the truth. Ask claimants in a defamation action to bear the burden of proving their case. It’s a simple change. Parliament should make it.

So, how does this subsidy of the green economy work then?

We should all be aware how public goods work. The problem is that they’re extremely difficult to make money out of. Therefore there’s a role for government in producing them. Not, not necessarily, that government should produce them, but that government should do some stuff to make sure they’re produced.

So, we get government to directly provide defence, enable excludability through copyright and therefore profit and so on. Which system works best - direct provision, regulation, law, or heck it’ll all work well enough anyway, just depends upon the specifics of what is being discussed.

There’s nothing there even vaguely controversial about public goods.

So, politics has defined the climate as being a problem that must be dealt with. There is a significant public goods problem here - given that emissions are not in market prices we at least have something hugely akin to the public goods problem. Politics has also decided that planning and subsidy are the way to deal with these - we disagree but then OK, we disagree.

Now we get to an absurdity.

The entire point of public goods is that it doesn’t matter who produces them. By their very nature once produced all can enjoy them. That they are produced matters, who by does not.

Yes, going green is akin to this. That someone develops cheap solar panels means we can all enjoy cheap solar panels. Windmills that work - when someone achieves that - similarly. Fusion only needs to be designed and proven once for us all to benefit from it.

As we say, politics has decided that planning and subsidy is the way to gain these desirable things:

The remarks are the first public acknowledgement by a minister that Britain could resort to trade tariffs if Chinese cars are found to have benefited from large state subsidies.

Since 2009, China’s central and local governments have subsidised domestic EV businesses to the tune of $100bn (£78bn), according to a study by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

The claims have triggered an anti-subsidy investigation by the EU, which could put pressure on the UK government to act if it is found that Chinese brands have received an unfair advantage.

But this is insane.

We’ve decided that we must subsidise all sorts of people to develop the technologies we need. Because those technologies are, once they exist, those public goods. However, the moment Johnny Foreigner subsidises something that we all benefit from then this isn’t allowed. Because something or other absurd.

To repeat, the current conversation insists that cheap EVs must be achieved for climate change reasons. China’s taxpayers have spent $100 billion on getting to cheap EVs that we can now enjoy - and also save the climate. But we can’t have those cheap EVs and save the climate because it’s dirty, Johnny Foreigner, money that solved the problem?

This is entirely, wholly, fruit loop, insane.

This is before we even begin to consider how much of what we’ve expensively subsidised China will be willing to buy if we ban their stuff.

Just to remind, only local things for only local people is a joke in League of Gentlemen, not a blueprint for the running of a nation nor an economy.

And now really try thinking. The claim is it took $100 billion in subsidies to make EVs cheap enough to actually use. We’re now rejecting those cheap EVs because what? We want to spend $100 billion ourselves? It’s madness.

Why not have compulsory physical training every morning?

If the population being managed is not, as is claimed, fit enough for our Glorious National Health Service, then why not insist upon compulsory physical training every morning? That way we could make sure that everyone did the approved stretches, steps and sweats to make us supportive of the efforts made by those Angels in Blue.

Think of the jobs that would be created! Trainers, obviously, but the block captains to keep an eye on all doing their bit. Punishments for those who do not turn out at 6 am. Think of the employment opportunities of proper, wholesome, management of the population.

Of course, we’d also need to severely limit the food intake anyone were allowed - fortunately, Henry Dimbleby already has that in hand.

We wish we merely jested here. Freddie Hayek pointed out that this would happen, we’d be dragged down that road to health serfdom by the government direct provision of health care - we’d all be managed so as to benefit the government health service rather than what should happen, the other way around, it servicing us and our desires.

It’s also true that while we enjoy having a crack at Dimbleby - as all right thinking people do - we really are not joking about this:

Policies to help people walk and cycle such as low-traffic neighbourhoods can create public health benefits as much as 100 times greater than the cost of the schemes, a long-term study of active travel measures has concluded.

The research, based on six years of surveys among thousands of people living in three outer London boroughs that introduced LTNs or similar schemes, found they tended to prompt people to switch some trips from cars to active travel, although the effects were varied.

The cumulative public health benefit of people being more active was estimated at as much as £4,800 per local adult over a 20-year period, the authors found, as against a cost per person to build LTNs of about £28-£35, or £112, depending on the type of scheme built.

That is the justification being used for those low traffic zones. That the population does more exercise, this is good for the NHS. Therefore, because it is good for the NHS therefore people must be forced to do more exercise by low traffic zones.

It is not that we are joking, or satirising, by suggesting mandatory physical jerks each morning, it is that we are already ruled by those imposing them upon us.

Perhaps we should let them know that the point of this democracy thing is not that they manage us, but they manage for us. They run the difficult bits in our name, not that they run us.

Invent a new accounting method, apply to everything - profit!

We have a little outbreak here of people solving the Underpants Gnome problem. It’s all very well desiring to make money but it is necessary to have a plan about doing so. The solution here is to invent some new - and absurd - accounting method, apply it to ever more areas of the economy, then profit by charging political actors for the reports that show this new measure in all its glory.

Today’s example of this is the horror - The Horror! - of private equity investing in child care.

The Guardian and the JRF analysed the annual accounts of the 43 largest childcare providers in England for which relevant information is available, which represent 13% of the nursery places.

….

The analysis also found that the cost of servicing debts is higher in providers backed by investment companies, with interest payments and other fees associated with having borrowed money representing a quarter of their income. In comparison, debt repayments represent on average 6% in other for-profit nurseries and 2% in non-profits.

…

The companies backed by private equity or investment firms covered by the analysis – which represent some of England’s largest childcare providers – reported average profits equivalent to 22% of their turnover over the five-year period between 2018 and 2022.

This is twice the 11% reported by other private providers not backed by investment companies, and more than seven times the 3% reported by the non-profit companies analysed.

Ah, yes, now we recognise this. For we saw it - have been seeing it for some years in fact - with reference to childrens’ homes, not mere child care.

What is being done here is, umm, most odd as an accounting method. For the analysis looks at “profits” as being EBITDA margin. Earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation. This is a measure that has its uses, sure it does. But it’s useful as a measure of the operating cashflow of an organisation before it starts to service its capital costs - that interest, amortisation and so on. But using it as a measure of “profits” is wrong, conceptually wrong.

But by doing this it is possible to claim two wildly contradictory things. Both that vast profits are being made and also that the debt piles are so high as to call into question the viability of the business model. Those with even a vague grasp of business will note that vast profits mean debt burdens are not a problem, or equally, that vast debt burdens mean that not much profit is being made. It’s only possible to claim the wrong pair of that quartet - high profits and also dangerous debt - by entirely misusing EBITDA as a measure. Firmly grasping the wrong end of that ordure encrusted stick that is. Then stirring.

Now, true, this “analysis” was done by Trinava Consulting, which is a different company from Revolution Consulting which did the care homes “work”. But then as Adam Smith himself pointed out, once someone does solve the “?” in the Underpants Gnome problem then other capitalists will quickly follow suit. For there is money to be made.

Which really only leaves the one final problem. Who is it being exploited by capitalism here? Is it the likes of The Guardian who seem to believe this? Or is it us out here who are expected to believe this dreck?