On The Problem of Political Authority

 

Mike Huemer, in The Problem of Authority, argues that political authority - the state’s supposed moral right to command and coerce - is an illusion. Mike challenges two primary propositions, that of political legitimacy and political obligation: 

1.         The government is entitled to rule over the society, including doing things that would normally (if someone else did them) be considered rights-violations. This is called political legitimacy.

2.         The rest of us are obligated to obey the government’s commands simply because they come from the government. This is called political obligation.

(Mike's words)

One of his central beliefs here is that if ordinary individuals cannot justly coerce others, neither can the state. He concludes that government authority is an unjustified form of coercion, making anarchism - where voluntary cooperation replaces state control - the morally superior alternative. Mike's very impressive; he has been an influential and highly competent philosopher at seriously questioning long-standing assumptions about the legitimacy of state power, and advocates for a more voluntary libertarian society. He's also a jolly nice chap, and has been on my show for a very enjoyable discussion about God's existence (which you can access here).

What about his central beliefs in The Problem of Authority, though - is he onto something? I think he's onto a lot more than many people would countenance - and Mike and I are certainly similar in our advocacy of free market economics and the espousal of general human liberties. And, of course, on the inefficiencies and overreaching of the state, we also concur. But… I don't think I can go as far as Mike in his rejection of any moral authority of the state - I think it's too strong, and that there are conditions under which a central authority and/or top-down central intelligence are/is necessary to maintain social order.

In my book Benevolent Libertarianism, I lay out several ways in which some services and institutions require the kind of large-scale coordination that wouldn't be optimally performed by the market. It's not just the case that the practical challenges of implementing and sustaining a Huemer-esque stateless society are prohibitively complex and costly, I think the end result would be both unrealistic and sub-optimal too. Just because the state is inefficient at most things it does, that doesn’t mean we should abolish it.

Standard economics teaches that services should be provided by the most efficient agent. While the market often outperforms the state in delivering goods and services, that doesn’t mean the state has no role in the cases it provides unique value. Some functions are better handled by the state than the market. The key is not to eliminate the state, but to ensure it focuses on what it does best and leaves the rest to more efficient providers.

Moreover, I won't lay the whole thing out here, but I also argue in my book that abolition of state is a problematic idea on several other accounts, to do with hardwired human incentives, human will, and human nature in general when it comes to power struggles. To take the latter as a case in point, an attempted stateless society would soon see people forming new power structures in hierarchies that would not differ significantly from the state.

Consequently, I do think Mike Huemer makes a compelling partial (perhaps majority) case against the illusion of political authority. But I'd only go so far as to say that the fundamental problem isn’t the existence of a state but its inefficiencies and overreach. I think the purported problem of political authority is not an absolute, totalising problem, it can be ameliorated with a state that is restrained, accountable, and limited to those areas where it is the most efficient provider, allowing human liberty and voluntary cooperation to flourish wherever possible.

The Fundamental Political Problem

 

It hasn’t slipped my notice, and it shouldn’t slip yours either, that by and large, the services in this country that have been consistently performing the worst in recent times have been the services politicians have been attempting to heavily manage. Think about it; the most financially strained, under-performing, crisis-laden services are the health services, social care, education, and the parts of the economy that politicians attempt to govern. Don’t get me wrong, our health workers, social workers, teachers, etc are doing an amazing job under hugely challenging conditions – this is not their fault – but the industries in which they serve, and in which they are understandably so unhappy, strained and unsettled, are the ones that are most incompetently managed and poorly planned by our political overseers.

Despite the clear warning signs of more deeply rooted issues with this model, remarkably, the majority of the population seem to think that these issues can only be resolved by having even more government involvement in the matters, or more public money thrown at the problems, or that things wouldn’t be quite so severe if only the other party was in charge. This kind of wishful pleading and sub-standard party political group-think has been going on for decades, and it is perpetuating a narrative that has the dual effect of misleading the public further and further, and increasing the damage to society as it does so. I will explain both.

The first thing you should always remember is that humans are primarily selfish – by which I mean that they are primed to put their own interests first, and those of their family and strong tie connections, and think and act in a relatively short-term manner. There’s nothing outrageous or shocking about that – humans have limited capacity (time, energy, resources), so it makes sense that they do this. Just as when you’re on a flight that comes into difficulty, the wisdom of “putting on your own oxygen mask first before helping others” is sensible advice (you need oxygen yourself to enable you to help others, even your own children) – similarly, if you are going to have a widely positive impact on others, you need to get your own house in order first.

The kind of pattern of behaviour I’m describing generally works well in the free market too, where pursuing your own family interests first, also creates wealth and value for others too, in a broad competitive and cooperative society. Jack the furniture maker, Jill the florist, Susie the accountant and Dave the greengrocer all make a living by selling their goods and services, but they are of benefit to their consumers too (these are called consumer and producer surpluses). The key to all the value being created here is that, in a world consisting of billions of complex trade-offs, all the agents of participation know their own wants, needs, skills and individual preferences better than anyone else, so are (usually) optimally equipped to make those decisions.

The problem is, this kind of model does not translate very well into the political sphere. Humans being primed to put their own interests first works a lot better in a market where the Smithian ‘invisible hand’ is at work, than in politics. It doesn’t work brilliantly in the market every time, and it doesn’t work badly in politics every time – but, by and large, human selfishness is a bigger problem in politics than it is in the market. Here’s why. Even if you are selfish, greedy and profit-seeking in the market, you can’t make a living unless you are competent enough to provide goods or services that others want and are willing to pay for. But selfish politicians don’t have the same incentives to be as careful with their money, their actions or their policies as the everyday individual, because politicians rarely feel the full effects of their actions, and almost never pay the price of their bad policies. The only way they pay the price is by being voted out at the next election, but that simply means that those self-interests are most energised in favour of short-term decision-making and narrow perspectives that usually benefit a small minority at the expense of everyone else.

And it’s becoming increasingly difficult for society to hold politicians accountable for acting in such selfish narrow interests, not just because humans generally are self-interested and lack the incentive to bring about changes, but because the whole political charade has been partially created by the volitional endorsement of its model by the electorate. In other words, there is a co-dependency by the governors and the governed that acts as a tacit advocation of the human selfishness problem on which the political sphere operates - and this consists of numerous self-centred, short-termist decisions that range from being annoying and marginally costly, to being absolutely dreadful for society.

For example, the main reasons that the health services, social care and education are in such a mess is because politicians aren’t able to make decisions that factor in the range of complexities required for the services to be optimal. As a consequence, they mismanage the finances, and they continually try to solve problems with short term perspectives, meaning that they never keep up with the changing landscape. It’s not entirely their fault; we’ve become a society that demands that politicians solve problems they are ill-equipped and unmotivated to solve properly, so everyone has to keep up the facade – which is why we get the aforementioned futile cycle of the majority thinking that these issues can only be resolved by having more government involved in the matters, or more public money thrown at the problems, or that things wouldn’t be quite so severe if only the other party was in charge. This has been failing for so long, it is mystifying to me why so few people have got wise to this debacle.

To make matters even worse, the selfish, short termism of politicians is even more damaging when it comes to the influence they have on the economy. Again, many people are struggling with the cost of living, yet they seem to be perpetually convinced that if only the failing model grew even bigger, or another party took over to govern it, things would be better. Let’s take the confusion about inflation, prices and public spending as a good example of a long-standing and snowballing catastrophe.

I have a couple of blogs in the Economics sidebar that go into inflation more deeply, but let’s talk about inflation in relation to price perspective. Consider tomatoes. The media has reported this week that there is a shortage of tomatoes. Suppose for simplicity, tomatoes generally cost £2 per kilo. When a supply shock occurs, with no change in demand, supermarkets raise their price to £2.50 a kilo. This is generally a good thing, because nothing has changed in the UK’s money supply, and with the increased price, those who value tomatoes at less than their new retail price won’t buy them. Unfortunately, most politicians and social media commentators have joined the general public in confusing inflation with price increases. Higher value tomatoes caused by a supply shock or a natural increase in demand is a price increase, not inflation; inflation is largely connected to an increase in the money supply. If there was no change in the supply of tomatoes, but the government decided to increase the money supply to pay for a subsidy so that every citizen in the UK could have a kilogram of tomatoes every week, then the price of tomatoes would go up because people now have more money to buy tomatoes. When the money supply is increased, each pound you own becomes less valuable, because there are more of them in circulation.

Returning to self-serving politicians, part of their short-termism is in vastly increasing the money supply to pay for things that will help them stay in power. But when politicians increase the money supply and the credit supply, purchasing power goes all out of whack with the market’s supply and demand signals, hurting most of the citizens in the country (this is also mostly why house prices have continued to rise faster than real wages). In other words, the government and the banks usually benefit from an inflated money and credit supply, but most other people feel the costs – they just don’t often realise why they are feeling the costs.

All this new money hasn’t created significantly more value or any more material resources, which means there is more of it competing for the same resources, which means that, combined with higher taxes to pay for it, things like food, fuel, energy, etc cost more for the consumer like you and me. It is literally the case that short-termist governments are increasing the money supply to favour their own self-interested priorities first, and in doing so, they are diminishing the wealth and purchasing power of almost everyone else. It is also literally the case that this has been going on for decades, and that the public blithely encourages their own wealth diminution with consistent regularity by continuing to vote for this kind of governance.

Furthermore, such a system of governance has continually been manipulated by special interest lobbyist groups, who bid for first dibs on the extra money or credit that has been generated. The politicians are often happy to support these projects regardless of whether they provide value, whether they allocate resources efficiently and whether they make the nation poorer overall, because a) they know there will be little resistance from a general public that doesn’t really notice how these activities are harming them, and b) they know they can make the very same public pay for it through increased taxation, and burden future generations with much of the debt. At the time of writing, this official national debt (what the state owes to private enterprise, including banks) is about £2,800,459,700,000 (it’s even more than that, really, if you factor in other unmentioned liabilities – but let’s keep it simple), and is growing at the rate of about £5,170 per second.

The above is the kind of consideration you should be having when being forced to confront the daily realities of cost-of-living crises, rising prices, inflation, strained public services and a devalued pound sterling. Covid has only exacerbated the problems, of course – but this cycle of problematic and clumsy economic mismanagement has going on for a long time – and that is largely because of the way that the malaware of human self-interest and short-termism has become so infectious in our politics, and because the anti-viral software of the general public is so badly in need of an upgrade.

With This Basic Error, Trump Is Doing His Best To Hide His 'Genius'

Oh dear, Donald Trump really doesn't get this economics thing at all. We read today that he has now declared he will use NAFTA negotiations to make Mexico pay for the wall. Alas, a 'stable genius' like this really shouldn't be making so many category errors.

Trump has spent the best part of a year explaining to Americans how, under current NAFTA rules, Mexicans export far too many goods and services to America, and that that is hurting the domestic economy.

Yet now through NAFTA renegotiations he's "going to take a small percentage of that money and it’s going towards the wall” - which infers that Americans will receive either US dollars or Mexican pesos as payment for the wall.

At which point, one has to ask: what the heck is Trump on about? If he's on about payment in dollars, then Mexicans first must acquire the dollars to pay the wall bill – and to do this, Mexicans must sell goods and services to Americans. It is only through selling more goods and services to Americans that Mexico will get more dollars to pay for the wall. But this contradicts Trump's rhetoric about dissuading more Mexican exports to America.

And if Trump means payment in Mexican pesos, then his reasoning is equally flawed, because he unwittingly commends the very thing he has spent the last year rejecting - that is, increased sales of goods and services from Mexico to America. 

The upshot is, the only way that Mexicans can fulfil Trump's wish is if they export more real goods and services to America - something Trump mistakenly presumes is a benefit to Mexicans at a cost to Americans. Trump needs to make up his mind whether he wants to slow down the Mexican imports he thinks harm his domestic economy or whether he wants to speed up the Mexican imports to pay for the wall.

Lastly, there is an outside chance that a 'stable genius' like Trump thinks (although I doubt it) Mexico will pay for the wall through US import tariffs. Yet as anyone with even a sketchy understanding of economics will know, tariffs do not just hurt foreign exporters, they hurt the domestic economy too.

If Trump raises import tariffs he will raise the prices of imports from Mexico too, meaning Americans will buy fewer of those goods or pay higher dollar prices for the goods they keep on buying. Either way, Americans are paying for the wall.

And where Mexicans are hurt by higher tariffs, they will have fewer dollars from their exports to America, which means they will have less to spend on American goods, which will do the other thing Trump claims to hate - hurt American jobs. Must do better, Donald!

Hobson's Choice Of Politicians: Why We're In The Height Of Mediocrity

Get ready to be frustrated more and more in the General Election build up - there will be many politicians that are going to try to appeal to us by promising to offer something 'fair'. Ninety nine times out of a hundred you are going to know that they are not even attempting to talk sensibly or coherently.

If I stood in the street asking random passers by what a banana is, they'd say something like "It's a curved yellow edible fruit", and there would be no disagreement about that description. On the other hand, if I stood in the street asking random passers by what fairness is, they'd say something "The quality of being fair", but there would be countless disagreements about that description in terms of what fairness means in a given context.

Everyone knows what the concept of fairness is, but everyone disagrees about which economic situations are fair and unfair. Consequently, then, I'm fed up hearing politicians saying they want a 'fairer' society, or a 'fair' welfare system or a 'fair' pension system or a 'fair' tax system, because they never tell us what they mean by 'fair' - they just use it wantonly because they know it's a word everyone likes, and everyone will hopefully think them caring and noble.

But what exactly is fairness in these terms? Is something 'fair' if the process by which it arrived is fair? Or is fairness an equitable distribution of something? If a politician fails to explain what he means by 'fair' his statement is ambiguous to the point of being facile. An inequitable distribution need not be unfair. Take a factory as a good example: a floor worker, a supervisor, a manager and a company director have an inequitable distribution of the business's money, but that doesn't make their salary unfair. Equally, stealing from the business in order to give everyone a fair slice of the pie would be an equitable distribution, but the process by which it arrived is unfair.

Cunning politicians and how they try to dupe you
The ambiguity around the word 'fairness' is only a microcosmic example of the wider problem of the dividing glass between what politicians say and what those words actually mean when heavily scrutinised. Politicians are quite used to this sleight of hand rhetoric, because they are taught to speak as ambiguously as possible whilst remaining in the sphere of perspicacity.

If they speak with too much clarity then the electorate will be able to see that they are against the proposal or that they have employed selective information. But if they are too convoluted they will hold no appeal either. So the key to spin is to speak in a way that will get as many of the electorate on their side. And the key to doing this is in making statements that are hard to disagree with but that remain so abstract they continue to be distinct from any coherent policy.

You see, generally speaking the most illogical and fallacious and damaging ideas that politicians come out with are not ideas that make them look immediately senseless and outlandish. They are usually ideas that appear on the surface to be somewhat plausible because they have just enough about them to seduce the average person who is accustomed to only considering ideas in terms of their tangible benefits. To put it another way, if the truth is north, and falsehood is south, most of the dodgy policies that politicians try to run by us are somewhere between north east and east - enough to steer voters off from the best path but not quite enough to have the electorate feel they are going in the opposite direction to what is best for their society.

For two reasons, then, policy-making is likely to make the main parties become more homogenised over time. In the first place because to speak in a way that will get as many of the electorate on your side means choosing from a fairly narrow range of customary voter-friendly phrases. And in the second place, most politicians if they employ a basic standard of reasoning should arrive at more or less the same conclusions about what is the right policy. That they do not - at least not publicly - shows that emotional biases and spin-friendliness are impeding this.

A party really has three groups that are the target of their spin, with one group standing out a mile (this is an oversimplification but not in any way that affects the integrity of the point). There are the two groups who are dyed in the wool either for you or against you, and there are those in between, who make up a variety of comparably amenable individuals. And as I explained in my blog post entitled One Of The Big Ironies Of Blog Writing, there are some you'll never lose, some you'll never win, and a whole assortment of people in between.

Alas, even if we believe it's the inbetweeners that have the most serious decisions to make, and the ones most genuinely open-minded enough to ponder them, I'm afraid the options voters have in front of them is rather like Hobson's choice. Because in asking us to choose between one party or another, we are not being asked to choose between a rump steak and a fillet steak, it's more like being asked to choose between a medium rump steak and a medium-rare rump steak, which is unfortunate if you happen to prefer fillet.

On Why Those Polls Keep Misleading The Masses

The polls keep drastically confounding expectations, and lots of people want to know what's going on. How can something as relatively straightforward as asking people which way they will vote and collating statistics on that basis repeatedly turn out be so difficult? Like the weather, it should be impossible to nail it to an exact science, but surely the indicators should be more reliable than this, shouldn't they?

I don't want to claim to have a sixth sense - it's probably just good intuition, but the last three big political events have been cases where I felt confident of the result, even though the pollsters looked to convince me I was wrong. The majority seemed confident that Ed Miliband's Labour would win more seats than David Cameron's Conservatives last May, but I felt quite confident that the public wouldn't buy Miliband's message. Ditto Brexit - even though just before bedtime on the eve of the results I felt confident that we'd vote to leave the EU, the pollsters and bookmakers declared it highly unlikely. And now the same with Trump, who was a 5-1 outsider a few hours before the result, but who confounded majority expectations and won the Presidency. Assessing the feeling in the run-up, this wasn't much of a surprise to me either.

My record is not perfect, however - for quite a while I remained unconvinced that rank outsider Jeremy Corbyn would win the Labour leadership election the first time around against what I thought were more mainstream candidates (Andy Burnham, Liz Kendall & Yvette Cooper) - but I was completely wrong about the extent to which hoards of people were ready to vote for someone so far on the hard left.

Given that society can be divided into far more groups that many people ever do, there are clearly important sub-sections of society that are not getting captured in the polls. And anyway, populations are very large, and at best polls are only a small sampling of a demographic - it's difficult to take the pulse of the electorate if you place the measuring instrument on the sole of the nation's foot.

Polls are also seductive to people because many find it difficult to accept open-endedness and uncertainty in life. People are tendentiously drawn to simple stories with binary subplots that fit their preconceptions. The notion that things like elections and referendums are often beyond the scope of human predictions is something that few people wish to embrace, which is probably why the egoism of 'expert'-based prediction hangs around.

What's evident, aside from how polls fail to capture so much public opinion, is that polls are unreliable at capturing the following sets of society: the set in which people have been unsure how they were going to vote, or been unwilling to say, or been susceptible to an unexpected change of mind, or not been honest or open, and also the set in which people for whatever reason thought they'd vote one way but ended up not voting at all.

We have to face up to the fact that there is a huge epistemological gulf between the pre-voting opinion polls and what people have actually voted for on the day. The only sure-fire opinion poll of reliability is the result itself.

Finally, what would help people predict with greater accuracy would be an increased understanding of what the societal landscape is actually like. Taking the UK voting population as a whole, they can be divided roughly into 5 groups.

Group 1) Older people who think the nation needs a big state to govern its people, and like (within reason) the kind of governance we have at present.

Group 2) Younger people who think the nation needs a big state to govern its people, and like (within reason) the kind of governance we have at present.

Group 3) Older people who think the nation needs a big state to govern its people, and dislike the kind of governance we have at present.

Group 4) Younger people who think the nation needs a big state to govern its people, and dislike the kind of governance we have at present.

Group 5) People (older and younger) who think the nation does not need a big state to govern its people, and are gradually trying to influence change in a more libertarian framework of thinking.

Group 5 is currently the smallest group but is also quite a rapidly proliferating group. They are the people who would likely vote if economically savvy pro-market candidates came along, but may not be inclined to vote for the kind of politicians we have at the moment. Group 4 is a large group and is also a rapidly proliferating group. It consists of conscientious, left wing, green-friendly social justice warriors who want a big change of personnel in government. They want more of the same size government (bigger if possible), just not this kind of big government. This group, along with group 3, also feel quite stridently that inequality is a huge problem, that the government screws over the poor, and that the systems needs a complete socialist revolution type of overhaul.

Groups 1 and 2 are the two large groups (with group 1 being a lot larger than group 2) that help perpetuate the status quo by being somewhat complacently accepting of the system as it currently is, and not very much into revolutionary politics. These groups, in particular group 1, consist of lots of people who just vote one way out of habit, dyed in the wool allegiance, or just blithely out of a sense of duty to partake in democracy.

Trying to predict outcomes of elections and referendums involves getting a good grasp, not just of these 5 groups, but also of the multitude of potential sub-groups into which they could divide in the run up to voting day. That's why, once you offer the population a Remain or Leave vote in the EU Referendum, and then in the build up throw in all kinds of complications like reliability of claims, forecasting the cross-national outcomes of either decision, economic projections related to trade deals, immigration and market fluctuations, it becomes a very intractable business to predict - and ditto the UK General Election and the recent Presidential Election.

There's Something You Should Know About The Rise Of These Prominent Figures

The Corbyn phenomenon and Farage phenomenon in Britain, the Sanders phenomenon and the Trump phenomenon in the USA, the Le Pen phenomenon in France, the Wilders phenomenon in the Netherlands, and the Tsipras phenomenon in Greece are all very different in various ways. But they have a couple of notable things in common.

Firstly, they constitute a movement of people based on the personality, character and views of a single leader who titillates them ideologically and publically vocalises the beliefs they have. And secondly, they are groups of people, often the least well educated in society (though there are, of course, plenty of exceptions), that feel let down by other politicians’ fabrications, past and present.

These movements consist predominantly of people who’ve fallen for the half-truths and falsehoods that politicians have told them, and the misjudged promises they’ve made, about how our citizens will be well off in terms of jobs, education and well-being.

The mass disappointment that turns people onto the coattails of the figureheads above is based largely on the ubiquitous embellishments of economics that fail to account for how global trade and competition penalises uncompetitive domestic industries, and that domestically we were never going to continue to have the lion's share on the manufacturing we once had.

Because the reality is, a large proportion of the lost domestic industry that's lamented, the declining social mobility, the high levels of youth unemployment in some parts and the widening levels of income inequality are all the result of masses of people in the developing nations starting to prosper by becoming more involved in the global market.

Just like with science, economics goes through its own Kuhnian paradigm shifts as well. People are quite used to seeing how new technology changes the labour market landscape, and they embrace it because they see the tangible benefits of having better technological sophistication, and also that the economic pie isn't fixed, meaning better technology doesn't mean fewer jobs.

What they don't see anything like as well, hence the misguided hope they place in the aforementioned political icons, is that things like the lost domestic industry and the widening levels of income inequality are a natural process of people in poorer countries becoming better off through trade - they are not things that our domestic politicians can do very much about, and nor should they.

As I've mentioned before in this blog, the benefits of global trade are rather similar to the innovations of new technology in that on the whole everyone is being made better off by it.

Consequently, then, the Corbyns, the Trumps and the Le Pens of this world find themselves being hailed as the antidote to the laments and so-called injustices of large groups that feel left behind and not listened to by the establishment, when in reality what they want done for them, and what is promised will be done for them by these leaders, either cannot be done, or when it can, would actually make them far worse off than they currently are.



The Political Compass Test Isn't Very Good, Is It?

You may have seen the political compass test that's been doing the rounds - it looks to find where we are on the spectrum regarding whether we are to the left or right economically, and whether socially we lean more towards authoritarian or liberal. As you can see from the image above, the horizontal line is economically left or right and the vertical line is socially authoritarian or libertarian (meaning socially liberal), with the x and y coordinates (horizontal and vertical respectively) indicating where you fall on that spectrum after you’ve answered all the questions. Incidentally, it would have been better to have been labelled Authoritarian vs. Liberal, & Socialist vs. Economic Libertarian, but we’ll leave that and accept it as it is.

Alas, even aside from that slight quibble, whoever wrote the questions for the political compass test gives the impression that they are not very well informed. I will give a quick run down of the questions (in italic), including my answers/comments in bold (the choices are Strongly disagree , Disagree, Agree and Strongly agree), and also where the questions clearly needed revising.

If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations.  Daft Question

Trans-national corporations are made up of human beings, who by definition are also part of humanity.

I'd always support my country, whether it was right or wrong.   Strongly disagree

No one chooses his or her country of birth, so it's foolish to be proud of it.  Daft question

It's not the case of being proud or not proud - one can be proud of some things without being a fool or an extreme nationalist. For example, I'm proud of my country's literature, films and music, and many of its places.

Our race has many superior qualities, compared with other races.  Daft question

Daft by being loaded to the point of being meaningless. Every race/nation/culture (whatever you want to call it) has qualities that others do not have.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.   Strongly disagree

Military action that defies international law is sometimes justified.   Agree

There is now a worrying fusion of information and entertainment.   Hmm …I don't really know what that question precisely means.

People are ultimately divided more by class than by nationality.   Sloppy question

I think the subtleties behind that are too involved to be a simple case of agreeing or disagreeing.

Controlling inflation is more important than controlling unemployment.   Sloppy question

Sloppy for reasons no one surely needs explaining.

Because corporations cannot be trusted to voluntarily protect the environment, they require regulation.   Agree

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is a fundamentally good idea.   Agree

It's a sad reflection on our society that something as basic as drinking water is now a bottled, branded consumer product.  Disagree

Land shouldn't be a commodity to be bought and sold.   Strongly disagree

It is regrettable that many personal fortunes are made by people who simply manipulate money and contribute nothing to their society.   Sloppy question

If it were the case then it would be regrettable. However, in the vast majority of cases the biggest indication that your job is contributing to society is if someone is willing to pay you to do it. Crime is an exception, but I get the feeling the questioner thinks some non-criminal jobs contribute nothing to society, which is pretty much always false.

Protectionism is sometimes necessary in trade.   Strongly disagree

The only social responsibility of a company should be to deliver a profit to its shareholders.   Sloppy question

Technically that's the main purpose of a business - to deliver a profit (delivering a profit shows the company is running well and contributing value to society). However, while that's true, it is *desirable* that companies should be socially responsible.

The rich are too highly taxed.   Agree

I agree if the question is about what is most economically efficient in terms of growth. However, once we factor in what is best for the rich in terms of their behaviour, things get more involved (I'll do a blog on this at some point).

Those with the ability to pay should have the right to higher standards of medical care.   Strongly agree (although Sloppy question)

If by which we are supposed to mean, the right to purchase private health care - but surely hardly anyone denies this.

Governments should penalise businesses that mislead the public.   Agree (although Sloppy question).

It all depends on how they mislead the public - and that is the important point that is never considered.

A genuine free market requires restrictions on the ability of predator multinationals to create monopolies.   Agree

The freer the market, the freer the people.   Agree

At least, the conditions that engender freedom in society are likely to engender a freer market too.

Abortion, when the woman's life is not threatened, should always be illegal.   Strongly disagree

All authority should be questioned.   Strongly agree

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.   Strongly disagree

I'm assuming the questioner doesn't really understand this principle. In the Old Testament an eye for an eye does not mean if you do me wrong to the value of X then I am encouraged to reciprocate also the value of X. What it actually means is if you do me wrong to the value of X, the very most I can do to reciprocate is match the value of X. It's not an encouragement to take an eye for an eye - it's an instruction that the very most you should take is an eye for an eye. Jesus, of course, came up with something better (Matthew 5:38-48).

Taxpayers should not be expected to prop up any theatres or museums that cannot survive on a commercial basis.   Agree

Generally I agree, although government funded projects in the arts and in history can be beneficial.

Schools should not make classroom attendance compulsory.   Strongly disagree

 

All people have their rights, but it is better for all of us that different sorts of people should keep to their own kind.   Strongly disagree

 

Good parents sometimes have to spank their children.   Disagree (although poorly phrased question).

I put disagree. Although generally I feel one ought to avoid smacking, I could not put 'agree' because there are times when perhaps a light but very infrequent smack does more good than harm. The question was a bad one though - much better to have asked about people’s preferences for regular smacking.

It's natural for children to keep some secrets from their parents.   Agree

Possessing marijuana for personal use should not be a criminal offence.   Disagree

Although I'm almost 50/50 on this, I can see the pros and cons, but there's just something about me that disfavours drug use just enough to not want to legalise them. Only just though (in the case of cannabis).

The prime function of schooling should be to equip the future generation to find jobs.   Daft question

The prime function of schooling is education, which does equip the future generation to find jobs, but does so much more too.

People with serious inheritable disabilities should not be allowed to reproduce.   Strongly disagree

 

The most important thing for children to learn is to accept discipline.  Daft question

Children need to learn so much, of which discipline is a key part. It's daft to try to separate those qualities into a hierarchy as they all play vital, but different roles.

There are no savage and civilised peoples; there are only different cultures.   Sloppy question by being a false dichotomy.

We are all a heady mix of savage and civilised, and we all belong to varying cultures.

Those who are able to work, and refuse the opportunity, should not expect society's support.   Disagree

We must support them, but help them to be more dynamic and get to the root of why they are refusing opportunities.

When you are troubled, it's better not to think about it, but to keep busy with more cheerful things.  Disagree

Psychological indicators suggest that in doing this those troubles come back stronger. Experience backs this up.

First-generation immigrants can never be fully integrated within their new country.   Strongly disagree

 

What's good for the most successful corporations is always, ultimately, good for all of us.   Sloppy question

Given that 'always' is far too general, choosing either agree or disagree paints an inaccurate representation of the view. For example, technically I'd have to say 'disagree' because what's good for the most successful corporations is not, of course, *always* good for all of us. But generally it is - however, choosing 'disagree' is supposed to give the impression that generally it isn't, which distorts things.

No broadcasting institution, however independent its content, should receive public funding.   Agree.

 

Our civil liberties are being excessively curbed in the name of counter-terrorism.   Disagree (that is, I disagree specifically in terms of counter-terrorism rather than as a general statement)

 

A significant advantage of a one-party state is that it avoids all the arguments that delay progress in a democratic political system.   Strongly disagree

Although the electronic age makes official surveillance easier, only wrongdoers need to be worried.   Disagree

The death penalty should be an option for the most serious crimes.   Disagree

In a civilised society, one must always have people above to be obeyed and people below to be commanded.  Agree

Well, yes to laws and regulations, if that's what is meant.

Abstract art that doesn't represent anything shouldn't be considered art at all.   Sloppy question

Ah, this question is presumably intended as being one to tease out the authoritarians who want a critical monopoly on what art is. However, this is sloppy questioning - I think a lot of so-called art involves cases of Emperor's New Clothes critiquing, but I wouldn't want to say what should and shouldn't be art outside of my own personal subjectivism. There are some things I don't consider art that others do, but we each reserve the right to our opinions.

In criminal justice, punishment should be more important than rehabilitation.   Strongly disagree

Obviously to agree with that would be barbarism. Read Dostoyevsky's House Of The Dead if you're not convinced.

It is a waste of time to try to rehabilitate some criminals.   Strongly disagree

(see above comment)

The businessperson and the manufacturer are more important than the writer and the artist.   Sloppy question

Important for what, and for whom? They need to say. For human progression why separate the businessperson and the manufacturer from the writer – they need each other at various inextricable levels. To ask who is more important is a bit like asking which blade on a pair of scissors is more important. A much better question would have been: Which is more important for human progression, living standards and well-being, business and manufacturing or art? To which the answer would be business and manufacturing.

Mothers may have careers, but their first duty is to be homemakers.   Agree

That is, once you become a mother then until your child is old enough your primary duty (along with the father) is to look after and care for him/her.

Multinational companies are unethically exploiting the plant genetic resources of developing countries.    Agree

Another sloppily blunt question, but no question that is true in several cases.

Making peace with the establishment is an important aspect of maturity.  Daft question

Could they really not think of better questions than this?

Astrology accurately explains many things.   Strongly disagree

The one accurate thing astrology explains is that anyone who subscribes to it is gullible and uneducated about astronomy.

You cannot be moral without being religious.   Strongly disagree

Charity is better than social security as a means of helping the genuinely disadvantaged.  Disagree

Charity is great, but less reliable (I’m presuming the questioner does not mean government aid).

Some people are naturally unlucky.   Agree

I don't subscribe to luck generally, except to say that one's place of birth can be considered on a scale of lucky (England, for example) or unlucky (Somalia, for example) in terms of how your life will likely play out.

It is important that my child's school instils religious values.  Sloppy question

It's important my child learns facts about what religious people believe.

 Sex outside marriage is usually immoral.   Disagree

In the Christian sense, chastity is encouraged, but in terms of how the survey is framing the question, it would not be considered immoral.

A same sex couple in a stable, loving relationship should not be excluded from the possibility of child adoption.   Agree

 

Pornography, depicting consenting adults, should be legal for the adult population.   Agree

I don't like it, but making it illegal is a bit much.

What goes on in a private bedroom between consenting adults is no business of the state.   Strongly agree

No one can feel naturally homosexual.   Strongly disagree

 

These days openness about sex has gone too far.   Sloppy question

In some cases yes, in some no.

The End

FINAL COMMENT: Alas, could have been an interesting and pretty informative survey if the questions weren’t composed so sloppily.