On Religious Barbarism

If only the perpetrators themselves could see it, but the so-called 'sacrificial deaths' one sees in Islamic terrorism are, ironically, the opposite, because to engage in an act that causes death and suffering to innocents must, in the primary sense, be driven by self-interest (whether apparent or sub-conscious). To subvert one's own moral conscience as an act of genocidal appeasement involves an outrage on the conscience that one might suggest only really comes about in acts of extreme parochialism and selfishness, where the suffering of others is callously disregarded in favour of placating their own image of the their man-made war god.

It remains one the most interesting questions: would anything like the horrors of ISIS have occurred if Saddam Hussein hadn't been removed from Iraq's top position? Is it the case that, as Shakespeare suggested, Western politicians have untuned that string and witnessed the discord that follows, or are people overestimating the extent to which Saddam was a cork holding the prospective genie of Islamic jihad tightly in the bottle?

Evidently it is a little bit of both, plus a lot of other complex factors alongside, not least the gradual emergence of radical Islamic groups in Syria in response to Assad's Baathist dictatorship. I suppose while it cannot be denied that the war in Iraq left the nation in a real mess, and that the post-Saddam political quagmire that emerged created a vacuum from which forces like ISIS could gain more prominence, there are numerous other Islamic groups like al-Qaeda, Boko Haram and al-Shabaab unleashing similar horrors around the world, so it was probably only a matter of time before we ended up with something as disgusting and megalomaniacal as ISIS wreaking this much havoc in the Middle East.

Regarding the nature of ISIS members, I'll grant you, such horrific Islamism doesn't just come in a vacuum. I always think it's important to see the hurt in people and see what pain is behind people's dreadful acts, because there is pain and insecurity somewhere in people's terrible behaviour. To try to imagine what it must be like for a young man in ISIS, one can't fail to realise that in many cases there is a legacy of oppression, pain, dispossession and maltreatment.

Given how primed we are to tribalism, it is unsurprising how easily people find a group in which they can be manipulated to be the wickedest version of themselves - but these are people who've taken it upon themselves to become the most evil, inhumane people on a par with any evil behaviour the modern world has seen, and for that reason they deserve our contempt, irrespective of any precursory reasons they think they may have for joining ISIS.

It's a curious thing the most extreme, barbaric religious fundamentalism that grows roots in susceptible people's minds (it isn't new, it's been going on for centuries) - because what drives it is a peculiar cognitive state of opposites. On the one hand it involves the complete and utter self-abnegation of the agent in total deference to the unchallengeable supremacy of their man-made war god, yet on the other hand it involves a totalising self-righteousness whereby the certainty they place in their beliefs lacks even the basic crumbs of humility most people can call upon through their own moral conscience. Save for a few exceptions where people have seen the error of their ways, ISIS members' absolute unchallengeable confidence in their religious cause is not even able to be challenged by appeals to morality through the conscience, because their dyed in the wool feelings of certainty supersede even their own moral compunction. There really is no surrender to inhuman barbarism quite like a religious one.

It's Important To Understand The Difference Between Complements & Substitutes

To have a basic grasp of what is likely to be a good policy, it is important that politicians understand the vital economic distinction between substitutes and complements. The evidence for most of my life is that many do not. When it comes to substitutes and complements the clue is in the words themselves. For example, in a pub you might find you can get peanuts for free in a dish on the bar and tap water for free by asking for a glass of it. Tap water is a substitute for bought drinks, whereas peanuts are free items that go alongside the drinks you buy. Obviously if you eat a lot of peanuts you're more likely to buy a drink, whereas if you drink lots of tap water you're less likely to. That's a simple illustration of complements and substitutes.

 

Elasticity in the market means that substitutes and complements affect prices. When the price increases for one good, the demand for the substitute will be likely to increase; whereas with goods that complement each other if the price of one increases the demand for the other will be likely to decrease. That's only a simple summation - things get more involved when we start to look at the relationship between different goods, but that basic distinction will do here.

 

In the UK it has recently become a crime for shops to sell e-cigarettes or e-liquids to someone under 18. Now I don’t know how extensive the research has been in the UK, but we know from this recent well-publicised report that in America more than 40 states have banned the sale of e-cigarettes to under-age buyers, and in pretty much every state in which this happened they've seen increased usage of standard cigarettes from minors.

 

Now I'm not suggesting these studies are all that informative, given the complexity of society and numerous other concomitant factors, but it does seem at first glance that the question of whether e-cigarettes are a substitute for standard cigarettes is not really factored in much in our politicians' thinking. If there is a problem with under-age smoking in the UK, and e-cigarettes are a viable, less-unhealthy substitute for the much more harmful standard cigarettes, it might well be the case that allowing them to be sold to minors is a better alternative than banning them outright, particularly given that the American studies indicate that they could increase the usage of more harmful cigarettes.

 

Then again, it might be the case that there is a tangible stigma to smoking (not to mention the cost and bad teeth on top of health deterioration) that's gathering momentum all the time, meaning that the ban of standard cigarettes and e-cigarettes are merely precursors to a diminution in habit that will play out alongside this legislation (apparently, proportionally fewer people smoke now than ever before).

 

Either way, an important rule of thumb for any politician considering any type of legislation that looks to lessen the usage of a thing, is that they must first ensure they can develop a justified confidence that the thing in question is not a substitute for something else that's even more undesirable.

 

Ironically this might be a particularly pertinent distinction to bear in mind with the upcoming debate over the costly renewal of Trident. Those that claim it is an unnecessary expense that could be channelled elsewhere may like to consider that, actually, the prodigious nuclear capability of the world's leading nations is very probably a desirable substitute in place of the global carnage that could be wreaked by some of the less stable nations led by dangerous fundamentalists and megalomaniacal dictators were those deterrents not in place. Given how many centuries it has taken for the world's most developed countries to reach the stage they have in terms of stability and prosperity, it is quite understandable that they would want to guard against having all that undone by failing to invest properly in national security.

 

 

Don't Twist The Facts, Your Great-Great-Grandchildren Won't Be Impressed

In this blog I wrote about history and how best to manage it. In this blog post I just want to add something else important to it - something that probably isn't considered often at all. A good reason to be accurate on your views is the danger of how those views can be mapped in history. In other words, if we are sloppy in the present we run the danger of distorting future perceptions of history. Here's an example of what I mean. You'll hear some people say that Tony Blair is a war criminal and should be tried for war crimes for his involvement in Iraq. Now you may think the Iraq invasion unjust, that it was based on faulty intelligence, and that Blair is very culpable in the emergence of ISIS. But it absurdly distorts the picture to put Blair in the same 'war criminal' category as people like Adolf Hitler, Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein. Even the most entrenched anti-war propagandists don't really believe that Tony Blair has the same propensity for wickedness, oppression and cruelty as those men.

But a long time in the future, people's version of ancient history (our present) will be compressed to less detailed packets of information, just as ours is now when we speak of long and complex periods such as the Bronze Age, or Acadian times, or early Roman times, or the Dark Ages. Even though every generation records more information than past generations did, future humans will still have the same cognitive limitations when it comes to memory and attention span, so they will still oversimplify history, and they will still distort information in a way that their distant ancestors would see as being carelessly inaccurate. 

Suppose we fast forward to a time so far in the future that Blair's involvement in Iraq was seamlessly lumped in among other historical events involving crimes against humanity like Nazi Germany, the conflicts in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. A distant future citizen might inaccurately believe that Adolf Hitler, Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and Tony Blair belong in the same category together, just as someone unapprised of Roman history might think that Augustus belonged in the same category as Tiberius, Caligula and Nero. Even the most impassioned anti-war propagandists don't really believe that Tony Blair resembles Adolf Hitler, Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein in his motivations, much less his actions, and this is why we must not be sloppy when laying down the historical foundations of information for our descendents.

On Interventionist Foreign Policy

Interventionist Foreign Policy does throw up some interesting situations, where ‘interesting’ sadly often means ‘bloody awful’. The West has contempt for Assad's government in Syria, where initially any insurgency against him was thought by many politicians to be the lesser of two evils. Similarly in 2003 Blair and Bush thought they were making Iraq a better place by removing Saddam, but over a decade later the country is now overrun with Islamic fanatics who make Saddam’s Ba’athist regime seem like the lesser of two evils.

Islamic State was, of course, one of the insurgency groups against Assad’s regime in Syria. Now they’ve seized lots of Iraqi territory, and regularly slaughter innocent people in front of cameras. And if you want to go further back you may also recall that our enemies in Afghanistan were once our allies against the Soviet Union.

The wisdom of all this is that our foreign policy has to be based not just on the present but on our past legacies and on future forecasts too. It’s not too difficult these days to consider military intervention against a government or group that was once our ally against some other government or group we disliked. Equally it’s not too difficult these days to consider military intervention against a government or group that will one day be our allies, just as we regularly consider that current allies may well be enemies in the future.

Consequently, in order for our foreign policy to be prudent, politicians must correctly ascertain which governments or groups are going to be our enemies and which are going to be our allies henceforward, otherwise they may get into wars trying to defend Iraq (Japan) from Iran (China), and soon find out that Iran (China) are very useful allies against ISIS (the Soviet Union).

 

Stop The Tyranny Or I'll Give You Something Nice

Robert Frank is generally considered to be one of the smartest economists in America. In an essay on consequentialism, however, he seemed to hit a stumbling block with this issue regarding why the British supported intervention in the Falklands rather than philanthropy:

"The British could have bought the Falklanders out—giving each family, say, a castle in Scotland and a generous pension for life—for far less than the cost of sending their forces to confront the Argentines. Instead they incurred considerable cost in treasure and lives. Yet few in the UK opposed the decision to fight for the desolate South Atlantic islands. " 

Two obvious things he's missing. In the first place, governments always severely underestimate the cost of wars - they go in hoping for a quick and inexpensive resolution - they act as though they hope they won't have to fight lengthy and costly wars. And in the second place, military mobilisation acts as a deterrent to aggression for dictators.

Somehow I don't think the warning: "Stop invading other countries and maltreating your citizens or else we'll pay for each one of them to have a Scottish castle and a generous pension for life" would have had much of a preventative effect on the likes of Adolf Hitler, Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein or the current vicious Islamic thugs slaughtering people in Iraq with the intention of establishing a caliphate.

Crimea River

As expected, with the tension in Crimea and the rather impotent threat of economic sanctions, some people on the left have used the opportunity to take issue with Russian ownership of UK business, complaining that profits made in the UK are sent overseas and are not being filtered into the British economy.

This is a foolish and absurd comment to make - it completely misunderstands the value of business and how financial exchanges are made. When a foreign investor looks to buy a UK business they pay less than the price at which they value it, and the seller sells for more than the price at which they value it. The buyer is buying a business that has been valued by the seller on the basis of future profits factored into the price. If Coventry Clive sells his tennis club to Moscow Mary he is exchanging his expected future profits for the buyer's price in the here and now. Moscow Mary on the other hand is buying the tennis club at a purchase price in the here and now in exchange for future profits henceforward to come.

So, far from any worry about her profits leaving the UK, when Moscow Mary buys the tennis club her forecasted profits are all contained in the purchase price which has just come into the UK. When her future profits leave the UK and go to Moscow they are future profits that have been paid for in the purchase price.

It is true that sometimes future profits will exceed the purchase price, but it is equally true that other times the purchase price ends up exceeding future profits. In fact, one might expect the latter to happen more than the former. If the buyer's offer was less than or equal to the seller's expected future profits then in many cases no sale would take place. Hence, in most cases the seller must value the expected future profits as being less than the buyer's offer - and every time this happens there is a net gain for the UK.

Finally, to criticise foreign ownership is often to be blind to other benefits. Take a Russian billionaire who buys a football club as a good case in point. The net gain for the UK is significant (and that's aside from the other ancillary benefits his wealth brings). In spending lots of money on players' wages he uses money that wouldn't have come into the UK economy to buy players whose tax from high earnings does come into the UK economy.

Don't listen to misguided politicians who complain about foreigners' profits going overseas - they are missing most of the picture.

What about the situation in Crimea?

Regarding the circumstances in Crimea, while I understand the fears about where Putin will go next, the actual situation in Crimea seems to me to be centred on a desired destiny that Westerners usually support - most notably self-determination and democracy. 

I can't see that mobilising troops, holding a referendum at gun point and claiming a democratic vote is something for which Putin would want to be thought responsible by his European associates. Thus, it seems to me that if he wanted to argue the case for democracy and self-determination for the Crimeans all he had to do was to push for a referendum under the rule of the Ukraine, observe that most Crimeans want to be Russian, and then push for that outcome. Given Ukraine's frosty reception from major EU countries, I can't think that he wouldn't have had a case, even perhaps being able to appeal through the conduit of international law. There are a few possible reasons why Putin didn't take that particular course of action:

1) He didn't think of it.

2) He did think of it but thought the Ukraine would be unwilling to offer the Crimeans a fair referendum without his intervention. 

3) He was feeling intense pressure from Russian people to stand up for fellow Russians in Crimea, so he took the more reactionary route.

4) He is starting of a series of aggressive military mobilisations under which he plans to annexe other small nations.

For me, 1 is highly unlikely; 2 and 3 are quite likely but if true then perhaps not really deserving of the Western reaction, and 4 is the biggie on which the European and American response hinges.

Let's discount 1. For me, 2 and 3 do not seem to me to be reasonable pretexts on which either Europe's elite or America can have too many complaints, particularly if you consider their military escapades in the past few decades supposedly for the cause of self-determination and democracy. Which leaves us with 4. Now I'm no fan of the Putin regime - but I can't help thinking that if Europe and America's present response has been because they fear it is number 4 then it seems to me to be an extreme response.

Whichever is the case, the Western understanding of local Crimea issues is bound to be both exaggerated and inadequate. People immersed in the immediacy of the troubles are going to have a broader and clearer perspective of their own troubles than those on the outside. Think of the difference between our perception of the Iraq conflict and those caught up in the Iraq quagmire. Imagine the difference between the UK perspective of the Syrian crisis and those actually afflicted by the tragedy. Or, if you want an example with the signs reversed, recall when the IRA were bombing on UK soil and remember the difference in reaction between the American government compared with the British government (and its citizens).

Just as the reality of the situation is felt much more intensely at home in those three examples above, it is bound to be the case that the Crimeans' push for self-determination regarding their own destiny and identity is much more meaningful to them than it is to us.

Iraq Ten Years On; Success or Failure?

It is ten years since the Iraq war began - and as you’d expect, we’ve heard lots this week from political and social commentators arguing for and against the success of the war.  Add to that the fact that we’re still stuck in a quagmire in Afghanistan, and facing lots more unrest in the Middle East, and in parts of Africa, and in North Korea too, and you’ll see the question of success or failure regarding our military mobilisation looms large.

The issue largely boils down to two questions; were the Government members’ intentions wise in the first place, and was what they did a success?  I’ve seen just about everyone asking those questions, but I’ve seen no one come up with what I think are the right answers.

In the case of Iraq, the answer to the question of success is, we just don’t know yet.  Lots of people argue for and against, but the reality is, it’s just far too early to tell.  The reason being; the variables are so diverse and complex that it’s going to take a notable pendulum shift for the outcome to be revealed, and we haven’t had that yet.  There have been big changes in Iraq – but those changes have made things better for many of its citizens and worse for many others.  That’s why when you hear from people who actually live in Iraq (people who have lived there throughout the entire passage of time), you’ll find they are divided in opinion, with a great many more feeling unsure. 

I personally think that with the benefit of longer term considerations and the luxury of lengthier retrospective analysis we will begin to see that the removal of the sadistic dictator Saddam Hussein was one of the catalysts for improvement for the Iraqi citizens– but only more time will give a real indication of this.  It might be the case that the people who most benefit from the invasion haven’t even been born yet –but that is how history must be viewed.  Viewing it any other way is usually (although not always) hasty and frivolous, because when it comes to the planting of fruit trees, at the national level most epoch-changing events take a long time for the fruit to be visible.

Now, regarding the question of whether the Government members’ intentions were wise in the first place – from what I can gather from the continuous rhetoric of Bush and Blair, and more recently, David Cameron, I’d say no, they were misjudged.  The reason for their misjudgement appears to me to rest on not understanding how to achieve their aims – which have always been civil liberty for the citizens under the priority of democracy.  What they should have focused on is economic freedom – that is a much more reliable tool for emancipation. 

Now liberty and democracy are nice things to have – but compared to economic freedom they fall short when it comes to helping people out of quagmires.  India is the world’s largest democracy, and there are plenty of civil liberties there, but it is stricken with some of the worst poverty in the world.  Honk Kong’s institutions are much less democratic than those of India, but it is one of the world’s wealthiest and most prosperous countries.  Singapore is politically repressive when compared to some of the freer democracies, but it is more economically prosperous than many of them.  So a nation’s civil liberty and democracy aren’t always good indicators.

When the likes of Bush, Blair and Cameron talk about ‘nation building’ they only seem to mean things like “Giving the citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan the ability to vote”.  I’d like to think differently of them, but whenever I see them talking of the success of Iraq, they usually measure it by the fact that its citizens are now voting in free elections.  This success won’t last long if that is the only true measure, because free elections in quagmires are only likely to disenchant once the novelty wears off.  However, free elections in countries with economic freedom are elections worth having. 

While it is true that political freedom and per capita income are closely linked, we’ve seen above that it is not true in all cases – and even in the high end cases, the economic freedom is much more of a prominent factor than political freedom. When you live in a country with free trade, healthy imports/exports, high employment, sensible and equitable Government spending, the repeal of artificial price controls, more moderate marginal tax rates, and monetary policy stability, you find you usually have a nation with a good legal system, cultural plurality, reasonably proficient welfare systems (these things are usually only reasonably proficient), lower tariffs, human rights, property rights, family rights, freer citizens, and a greater sense of care and regard for your global community. 

The fact is that very little the West has done in Iraq and Afghanistan has made this scenario conducive.  At best they have helped nudge in more democratic systems which may or may not last, but which hopefully will in the future lead to the things I mentioned.  Sadly, they’ve taken a slow route by getting their priorities wrong.  Their ‘nation-building’ ideology was misjudged; they should have worked out how to nudge in economy-building rather than nation-building (where nation-building = democracy building), because the only way to build a nation properly is to have its citizens economically free and prosperous.  In almost all cases, citizens with an economically free and prosperous country to uphold won’t need military intervention from the outside, because they will care enough about, and have enough invested in, that country to work very hard to see to it that individual rights, equal opportunities, jurisprudence, civil law and order, cultural and religious plurality, and democratic feeling will prevail.