Taking the £ out of £hristmas

There's a famous paradox called the Abilene paradox, based on an account of a family who had taken a day out to Abilene even though none of the family members really wanted to go. Each family member expressed an interest in going on the trip due to thinking the other three family members wanted to go, only to find out on their return that none of the four had wanted to go in the first place. They did it to keep the others happy – which is a noble gesture, even if initial honesty might have produced a better outcome.

The situation with that family is a bit like the situation most of us are in regarding the excessiveness of Christmas gift buying and card-swapping – except in this case keeping our family and friends happy is only a small part of it - the biggest part is the intense cultural pressure we have put on ourselves as we’ve become caught in a knotty web of unwanted card and present buying– one that most of us don’t really want, but from which many don’t feel able to escape. 

Let me be clear, this is not meant to be a commentary on present buying for immediate family or close friends – I am talking about the much wider circle of friends, family, colleagues, and extended social milieu with whom we are entangled in this web of cultural pressure to exchange cards and presents. 

You know what it is like – you receive a card from someone to whom you hadn’t planned on sending one, and before you know it the emergency card is pulled out of the drawer by way of compelled reciprocation. And think of the dozens of gifts that have been exchanged from within those “much wider circles” I mentioned a moment ago. Auntie, cousin, niece or neighbour drops round a bag of presents for you and your family, and you hand them your bag of presents to them – both families are caught in a cycle of obligation that neither really wanted, and one that doesn’t really benefit either of them very much. 

 

The width of your card-swapping and present exchanging circle is much wider than that of your parents when they were your age, and theirs was wider than their parents’ circle. The reason being; each decade has seen an increased effort by shops and businesses to have more £s put into Christmas – and before long it has become the social norm; a norm that has been adding heaps of pressure on most people in Britain for quite a few Christmases now.

Most gift exchanges tend to be in the region of financial equivalence; you open your present from Jenny and find a £20 set of cooking utensils. Jenny opens her present from you and finds a £23 bath robe. Unless you wanted to spend £23 on cooking utensils, and Jenny £20 on a bath robe, no doubt you and Jenny could have done better things with your money – treated the kids, paid a house bill or a bit of money towards school fees, or reduced your debt, or one of the many other things that take priority over the £23 on cooking utensils that you probably already have. 

You know that those in the “much wider circles” very rarely buy you things you actually need (nor you them) – much less things that you would spend the value of your gift to them on.  And things are worse, of course, for those who cannot afford to reciprocate, but feel obliged to do so due to seasonal pressure. If you buy a gift for someone who cannot afford to buy you one back, you’ve probably made things worse for them, despite your nice gesture. 

I think we would be doing each other a favour if we broke this taboo and wised up to the fact that we have gotten ourselves under the thrall of consumerist pressure - and I'd hazard a guess that most people agree. Here's why I'm fairly confident people generally agree with me. Apart from the extreme unlikelihood that these feelings are unique to me, there are two protocols in place in offices that give exhibition to this feeling of avoiding excess in obligation; one is Secret Santa, and the other is the written agreement that people send round via email saying we as a team have opted out of card buying because we feel the money spent on cards would be better going to charity. 

They are right. The charity option is a method of transferring money from the unwelcome obligation of card giving (not to mention the environmental issues) to more worthwhile causes. Secret Santa is good too; it is posited as each team member buying a gift for the one person they draw out of the hat. In reality, though, it is each team member entering into an obligation to not have to buy for the rest of the team that they didn’t draw out of the hat. This is understandable too – a work team of 8 members would exchange a total of 54 gifts if they all bought one for each other. The total number of Secret Santa gifts purchased is 8, which makes Secret Santa fun and worthwhile. 

Whoever originally thought up the Secret Santa idea did so because he or she knew that things are better when all the pressure is off staff members - when they don’t have to worry about who is buying what for whom, whether there will be an imbalance in the giving-receiving ratio, and whether exchanges have price equivalence. There is sound economics behind Secret Santa and sound economics behind opting out of card giving to make a charitable donation to a good cause.

Is Christmas good for the economy?

It’s clear that many people share the same view that the mass consumerism of Christmas has got way out of hand. So the other question that needs asking is this; is Christmas good for the economy? I think not, for two reasons: one it engenders poor use of spending (as we’ve seen, a great many gifts are either unwanted or not the sort of items the recipient would buy for themselves); and two, as a consequence of this, given that many presents are not ideally suited to the recipients, that means an excessive waste of labour, energy and raw materials that would have been more beneficially employed in the hands of people who actually want the things that are produced. 

It's equally false to say that Christmas must be good for the economy because people spend more in December than the rest of the year. Such people have this picture of all the extra money spent 'tricking down' and being 'good for the economy', but this is a myth. Most of the money spent excessively in December would have otherwise been more thinly spent throughout the rest of the year. If instead of buying cards and presents in December the money was spent throughout the year on clothes, furniture and having the decorators in, then retailers and tradesmen gain. If the money stays in your bank, then people who want to borrow from banks gain.

And here’s the real key thing; given that all those unwanted or unneeded gifts are bought predominantly because of social obligation – if everyone could help catalyse a big culture change and bring an end to the mass consumerism of Christmas, it would lift the burden of festive obligation and free us up to spend the money more wisely. If we turned all the money spent on unwanted or unneeded gifts into money given to the neediest people in the world, we really would make Christmas something even more special. Whether it be helping to save starving children across the world, helping to provide fresh drinking water in deprived communities in third world countries, or clubbing together to fund the local help centre that gives support to troubled families, I think it would better than what we have now.

Of course, I’m not trying to take the joy out of gift buying – there will be plenty of gifts given and received that will add joy to our lives. But how sad that this cultural pressure has crept up on us gradually over the years, as shops increase their powers of selling, kids become more acquisitive, and adults become more pressurised into meeting the demands that society imposes on them. 

Not only have we let it get out of control, but my guess is that just about everyone probably can put their hands up and say they too can recognise the need for a cultural change. I suspect fear of being the first one to bring this up in the office or the family gathering makes you reticent; and I assume that it’s easier to go with the flow and avoid the ‘Bah humbug’ or ‘Scrooge’ or ‘Party Pooper’ accusations. 

But I suspect that what I’ve said is a forecast about a change that will surely come to pass at some point. I predict that when our distant descendants look back on how we let Christmas consumerist pressures get so out of hand, I think they will recognise in us a fault that went on to be corrected by a changed consensus, once people found the courage to speak openly and honestly about feeling trapped in this culture of excessive gift buying and card-swapping. 

This is not a call to become mean and stingy - just the opposite, in fact - it is a call for extra generosity, but a generosity that will do more good than excessive present and card cycles. Besides, if you’re worried this might bring forth the stigma of stinginess, you can always spend extra on people when it is their birthday.

Finally, remember that giving can be much more; to give to those you care about, write an email or make a phone call more frequently throughout the year; or treat them to dinner; or offer to babysit their kids so they can have quality time together; or help with decorating; or offer lifts; or do something to help your elderly neighbours – these are the kinds of giving that really enrich people’s lives in addition to well chosen presents.

 
 

 

 

 

  

Tax The Rich: Why It's Not As Moral As You Think

George Osborne wants us to think that he is preparing an economic blitzkrieg on companies like Starbucks and Amazon, as he acquiesces to the general public opinion that their tax avoidance is 'immoral'. I have written before in defense of richer people paying more tax, but as this blog is about the 'moral' issue of taxation, there is something I think many people are missing here.  Have a think about this question; on what grounds is it moral that rich people pay more tax?  I think you'll find that question is harder than you think. I don't think I've ever heard anyone be able to proffer any moral principles from which they can derive a conclusion that Mr. Starbucks and the like are paying less than their fair share. The reason it is hard is because I suspect that the reasons you assume are valid reasons for higher tax for the rich are almost certainly wrong. I gave a few of them in this blog post, but they were economic reasons.  Here I'll give you some moral issues to consider.

The primary reason why people think it is more moral to tax the rich at a higher rate is that culturally they have the old Marxist maxim ingrained - "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". This amounts to the favouring of maximising the well being of the poorest and least well off people.  Surely this supports the notion of the rich having a moral duty to pay more tax to ensure the poorer people of Britain have a more even distribution.

Most definitely not - that reason just won't do.  Following the "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" to its true conclusion, this does not support the view that the rich should pay more to support the poorer people of Britain - it says that the rich (and middle earners, and even some of the lower earners) should pay to support the poorest people in the world.  Even today around 1.5 billion live in poverty around the world - their condition would make the poorest people in Britain seem comparably well off. The Marxist principle insists that British people stop complaining that rich people's tax is not going into their reasonably well off pockets in the UK, and instead start complaining that that the money isn't going to help those around the world that most need it.  Giving it to those in global poverty is how you maximise the well being of the poorest and least well off people.  Claiming that not enough of it is coming to Britain is the howl of a person who doesn't care enough about the people who really do need the money - many of whom need it just to stay alive.

Ah but wait a minute, you may say - even if we can't get justification on grounds of 'the needs of the worse off', everyone should be paying their 'fair share' of the aggregate tax bill to cover the total cost of Government spending, shouldn’t they?  The trouble is, I've no idea what everyone's fair share is, because Government spending isn't a singular dimensional expenditure.  Some of our State funded goods are public, but private goods are provided by the state too.  You’ll notice that rich people tend to pay higher prices for their private goods – they usually pay for private health care, they usually are privately educated and they usually pay into more lucrative pension schemes than lower earners.  If a high earner wants to pay for better services then there is nothing ‘unfair’ about that – in fact, he lessens the burden on the non-private sectors of the service.

So ‘fair share’ really limits the consideration to the public goods the State provides, because they are the goods that we all share more or less equally.  That is to say, whether a man is on £200,000 per year or £20,000 per year, he has the same basic access and benefits of the public goods the State provides, such as emergency services, law and order, roads, street lighting, bridges, armed forces, and national defence.  If our troops are called to defend us against an invading nation, Mr Starbucks has the same level of national defence as Mr low-middle earner, just as they both have access to the same police force, motorways, street lighting, road sweepers and dustmen.

So if your concern is ‘fair share’ based on equal treatment for equal services then Mr Starbucks is paying more than his fair share, because he is contributing a lot more tax than Mr low-middle earner for the same level of State provided public goods.  Moreover, if on the other hand you base your view on the notion that everyone should make an equal contribution to society then Mr Starbucks needs to stop paying tax until all those who have been paying less tax than him over the years catch up on their payments, because in the process of acquiring huge wealth, Mr. Starbucks has already contributed more to society than the average earner.  The ‘fair share’ argument doesn’t fly here.

Another way to measure value is by what is called ‘consumer surplus’.  When The Rolling Stones played the O2 recently the ticket prices were high – but not too high, because they sold out.  They sold out because Rolling Stones fans valued the performance more than they valued the cost of the ticket (if they did not they wouldn’t have gone to see The Rolling Stones).  So the consumer surplus of the gig is the difference between what Rolling Stones fans are willing to pay for O2 tickets and what they do actually pay.  If I would have paid £100 for a ticket, but I am able to purchase one for £75, then the consumer surplus is £25.  When a consumer has £25 consumer surplus that means £25 of consumer surplus has been contributed to society.  Given that each ticket sale generates consumer surplus to society, and given that The Rolling Stones only get a proportion of the ticket sales, they must have contributed much more consumer surpluses to society than the vast majority of low and middle earners (this pattern follows in just about analogous situation).  To translate that, the Rolling Stones can argue that if everyone should make an equal contribution to society, then their share of the tax burden is too generous.  So the argument doesn’t really fly on that one either.

Hence, the problem is twofold; it starts with the issue that so far as I’ve seen nobody has any idea how to logically justify their belief that it is ‘fairer’ if the rich pay more tax.  And it carries on with the issue ‘fair’ and ‘more preferable’ are not the same things.  It is not fairer if the rich pay more tax, but it is preferable – and it is especially preferable if the tax of the richest people in the world goes to the poorest in the world – those who need that money for food, health care and regular supplies of drinking water. 

There is only one way to have a system that is not unfair yet at the same time ‘especially preferable’ – but that would involve living in a world in which the rich were glad to pay more than their fair share to provide revenue for their own country, but were also glad to pay a proportion of their tax money for food, health care and regular supplies of drinking water for the poorest in the world.  And that would only happen if the richest Governments got together and set up tax systems that directed a lot more of their own revenues into the mouths of the world’s neediest.  What you’d then have is greater incentives – and people do respond to incentives.  A company like Starbucks or Amazon whose tax avoidance means money is being kept out of the mouths of the world’s neediest would be frowned upon a lot more than a Starbucks or Amazon whose tax avoidance means money is being kept out of British pockets.  Moreover, the tax avoiding Starbucks or Amazon that keeps money out of the mouths of the world’s neediest is likely to be seen as hugely uncaring and immoral, and will likely increase the chances that customers will go to Costa and Play.com instead.  Naturally this fear of mass boycotting will provide greater incentive for Starbucks and Amazon to pay more tax.  But things like that only happen when there is a big collective effort to do more for those most in need.  

Foster Parents: What Politicians 'Say' They Think, And What They Actually 'Do' Think

Just recently Rotherham Council took away three foster children from parents who belonged to UKIP*.  In most cases, the politicians’ reaction (including those on Thursday’s edition of Question Time) has been to overwhelmingly repudiate the view that political affiliations should have any bearing on parents’ ability to foster children.  "Political opinions should not affect a couple's ability to foster children" we hear them assert. 

The problem with this view is that almost no one believes it is true, which makes it a rather strange widespread assertion from our political representatives.  The first mistake being made is that the extent to which political views or affiliations should affect people's ability to foster is not a binary consideration, it is a spectrum - rather like whether a room is thought to be hot or cold is a spectrum, not a binary 'hot' or 'cold' fact.  Saying "Political opinions should not affect a couple's ability to foster children" is a bit like saying "There is no such thing as a hot room".  There are many degrees of temperature increase that would constitute the view that a room is hot - and similarly there are many degrees of political extremism a couple could exhibit that would constitute the widespread view that they should not be able to foster children. 

Let's take an extreme hypothetical; suppose a couple starts a political party called the 'Take them home and shoot them’ party, which has a manifesto urging all foreigners to be taken to their own places of provenance and shot.  Imagine after a year their party has a few thousand members, and that that same couple decides they want to foster children - do you imagine that any of us would support the decision of the Children & Young People Services to grant them a fostering licence?  Of course we wouldn't.

Taking a less extreme case, suppose everyone in the UK had to decide on a couple to foster two children, and with no more information they had to choose between voting for a Labour voting couple from Bradford and a BNP voting couple from Bradford, we feel sure that most people would choose the Labour voting couple from Bradford.  So, evidently, it is not true that political affiliations have no bearing on feelings or wishes.

I think a good indicator of how people really feel is to ask what they would do if it was their own child up for being fostered.  The answer is, not many politicians would want their children fostered by UKIP members, even fewer by BNP members, and they would run a mile from couples in the 'Take them home and shoot them' party.

So let's have it right - almost nobody believes that political opinions are not important in deciding who makes good foster parents - but almost everyone wants political opinions to be precluded from the screening process.  The reality is, political opinions are relevant and important, because the political views people have are very often consistent with the kind of people they are, just as the prior criminal convictions of a man on trial in court are relevant and important when considering the probability of whether he is innocent or guilty, because past convictions are very often consistent with the kind of criminal character in the dock.**  The fact of the matter is a member of the BNP is more likely to make a bad parent than someone of a centrist view, because (save for the odd few exceptions perhaps) a BNP member must have degrees of impressionability, extremism, stupidity, intolerance, and a lack of worldliness and empathy that make his parenting skills inimical to the ideal. 

Of course, this is only a matter of probability - a Labour or Conservative member may make a bad parent for lots of similar (or different) reasons - but almost everything is a matter of probability somewhere - and the fact is, politicians are far more bothered about political affiliations than they care to admit. 

* For those outside Britain, UKIP is a nationalistic United Kingdom Independence Party

** For that reason alone it is completely absurd that the jury does not have access to this information.  To see what I mean, think of any other field or institution in which results are important but crucial data is withheld from the field or institute members - you won't find one.  Imagine trying to do science that way!!

Leveson, The Media, And The Secret They Don’t Want You To Know.

Here’s something interesting about the world of counterintuitive probability – the more likely it is than an article will appear in a science magazine, political magazine or a newspaper, the less likely it is to be very accurate.  Yes you did read that right – the less likely it is to be accurate.  I’ll tell you why in a moment.  Today, Lord Justice Leveson has published his report on the culture, practices and ethics of the press, following a public inquiry launched in the aftermath of the phone-hacking scandal. This report contains proposals for future media regulation, and an indictment of the press, politicians, and the police.  Everyone now knows that some factions of the media behaved awfully with the phone-hacking incidents.  Most people know (although not all admit it) that there is a toxic co-dependency between the press, the readers and celebrities (slebs) – inasmuch as journalists camp outside nightclubs to get a shot of Lindsay Lohan’s knickers, to feed the appetite of the numerous readers that love seeing Lindsay Lohan’s knickers – and in full circle, it is that kind of exposure that does no harm to the careers of those slebs.  That said, celebrities deserve a degree of privacy, and their not having it is largely due to saleability of the ‘name’, which is due to the voracious appetite of the fans, or the vicarious onlookers, that live through proxy gossip-feeders.

Most of you already knew all that about the media.  Here’s something you perhaps did not know – it is the secret that the media don’t want you to know.  The tree that Lord Justice Leveson is barking up is only a tree related to making the media accountable for reprehensible invasions of privacy and libellous claims.  The thing that is most wrong with the media will not be fixed by Leveson, or by David Cameron, or probably by any future Government.  I’m talking about the rubbish the media writes that is assumed by the majority to be correct.  If you’re the sort of person who values the truth then that’s a far more important issue than reprehensible invasions of privacy – because they are pretty conspicuous acts, whereas the rubbish is buried amongst the truths and half-truths, and it is rather excessive.

This is why it is likely that an article published in a magazine is not going to be true.  In fact, ask yourself this; what percentage of the articles in, say, The Times or The Guardian or The New Scientist are true?  I'll bet you went for a figure much higher than is actually the case.  Here's why newspapers, magazines and websites are likely to have a lot more falsehoods and inaccuracies than you'd expect. It's true that an Oxford biologist's new theory of abiogenesis is more likely to be true than a Liverpudlian roadsweeper's theory.  But if a newspaper, magazine or website publishes a theory, it is very likely to have quite a few falsehoods and inaccuracies - or if it is a socio-political opinion piece, even more so.  The reason is that people like to write things that shock, surprise or stir the attention, because that is what publishers know people like to read. The best way to produce material that people want to read is to write something contentious, or speculative or just plain controversial.  If a theory is contentious, or speculative or controversial, then the chances are it has plenty wrong with it (this is especially true of political opinion pieces).

Even scientific theories published in popular magazines and websites are likely to contain some errors - and science is seen as one of the more reliable disciplines.  You see, long before an article is submitted to the principal editor for publication, the author is compelled by policy to circulate drafts among experts in the particular field under consideration, and then address criticisms and comments – rewriting anything required.  This takes a lot more time than most publishers have to spare between pieces, so naturally corners are cut.  And, remember, I said that what grabs the intention and sells is the contentious, speculative and controversial material - so in terms of probability, in a busy press office, lots of attention-grabbing but questionable material is going to make it into the publication.  I'll bet if you could find a copy of 100 New Scientist articles from the 1950s you'd find most of them had a mixture of contentions that turned out to be right, but also numerous falsehoods or inaccuracies, and quite a few that were almost entirely wrong. 

That's going on within the relatively reliable edifice of science - now imagine the situation for political opinion, which is far more intractable and diverse and complex than the nuts and bolts of science. In political or social commentaries, even when a writer finds out facts, then circulates drafts among fellow so-called experts, and then addresses criticisms and comments, he is always under the rubric of the subjective interpretation of vast and complex data.  Further, he must then augment that data into an attention-grabbing piece with a catchy headline, and an opening gambit that will keep the reader interested.  Add up those probabilities into the melting pot, and it amounts to a lot of falsehoods and inaccuracies that you're reading on a daily basis. 

The logic is fairly straightforward; ‘Pig has man for breakfast’ is more headline grabbing than ‘Man has bacon for breakfast’ because ‘Pig has man for breakfast’ is more unusual.  But being unusual, ‘Pig has man for breakfast’ is more likely to be false, inaccurate or exaggerated, which explains why the more likely it is that an article will appear in a science magazine, political magazine or a newspaper, the less likely it is to be very accurate. 

This is something about the media that is not going to be sorted out any time soon – but it should give you a different perspective when reading material with a large readership.  Then again, given that in the writing of this Blog post I had in mind the goal of grabbing your attention - by my own assessment of probability, at least some of this Blog post should be false or inaccurate. :-)

Why Shops Display Christmas Goods So Early!

For the past few weeks I’ve heard/read several people bemoaning the fact that shops are stocking Christmas goods earlier and earlier.  You only need to see a tree and tinsel in the shop window in late October and there will be a mass moan.  Here’s what the moaners don’t understand – you cannot really blame the shops for opening earlier and earlier, it isn’t really their fault.  If the critics knew about non-linearities and feedback effects they would understand what is happening.

To see why shops are opening earlier, consider this simplified feedback model.  Suppose we have M & S, Debenhams, John Lewis and Jarrold’s in the city centre.  A long time ago all four shops used to stock their Christmas goods from December 1^st.  One day M & S try to obtain the advantage over the other three by stocking their Christmas goods a week earlier (from November 24^th).  Debenhams, John Lewis and Jarrold’s have three choices; they can do nothing, they can emulate M & S, or they can go one better and stock their Christmas goods earlier (say, from November 17^th).  If they do nothing they risk losing a week’s vital Christmas trade from opportunist shoppers to M & S; if they emulate M & S then there’s nothing stopping M & S doing the same again, leaving Debenhams, John Lewis and Jarrold’s on the November 24^th date and stocking their Christmas goods a week earlier (from November 17^th). So, quite naturally in response they pick the best of the three options by stocking their Christmas goods earlier than M & S.  But it doesn’t stop there – what then happens is that each one of their competitors will look to outdo the other by choosing a date earlier than the others.  This continues over the years – and if you obtain the statistics you would find a pattern of increased early Christmas stock to match and/or outdo the competition.

This is what happens when feedback effects occur; the shops are continually under pressure to stock their Christmas goods earlier and earlier to obtain an advantage, which is why you see all these shops beginning their Christmas trading at times that are, to many of you, premature.  Their hand has been forced, lest they lose vital trade time to their competitors.  The shops are subject to "feedback" effects – whereby a particular parameter x changes and via a "feedback" route the change in x causes further change in x (thus x is "feeding" back to itself). Feedback systems, depending on the kind of feedback involved, can produce varying "curves" of change when plotted on graph paper – some of which are quite chaotic.

There is a ‘but’ of course – if it were just down to procuring an advantage by trading earlier then M & S, Debenhams, John Lewis and Jarrold’s would all begin their Christmas trading on January 1^st.  But, of course, it isn’t like that – there is a balance to be struck, because the shelf room they take up with Christmas stock amounts to a loss of shelf space for other more saleable goods if they are displayed too premature for the festive season.  The decorations, wrapping paper, cards, bumper chocolates, etc would be counter-productive stock if they were displayed in August in the hope of obtaining a festive head start on the rival shops – which is why the balance between being too early and too late in the year is of huge importance.

The other benefit to obtaining customers in the festive season is that a proportion of the shoppers will return the following year to do at least some of their Christmas shopping in the same shop.  People like routine and pattern - and if they've had a good experience they are likely to want to repeat it - particularly in a city full of the mad rush of festive shoppers.

Women Bishops: Why The Church of England Has Messed Up Here

The general synod of the Church of England has voted against the appointment of women as bishops. Three things are evident; firstly, it won’t be too much longer before the balance is tipped; secondly this vote doesn’t reflect the views of the majority of Christians in the UK; thirdly, many have asserted that this compounds the view that we live in a patriarchy, which obviously isn't true. I will address all three points. 

Let me start by repudiating the hasty assumption so many people make, that we live in some kind of oppressive patriarchy. People who peddle the patriarchy-narrative are confused about how complex the world is, how multifaceted and diverse human behaviour is, and how to properly analyse an epistemologically intractable social environment. To cherry pick a few isolated examples of where men have the edge in society, and ignore all the contra-indicators and declare 'patriarchy', is a bit like surveying people in their 40s inside a job centre and claiming that most of the people in their 40s in the UK are unemployed. Most people in their 40s in the UK are not unemployed, but if you cherry pick that sample group from only inside a job centre, it's going to look like they are.

 

The UK may look like a patriarchy if you only look at the Catholic and Anglican churches, or if you only look at male CEOs, or if you only sample garage mechanics, or if you fall for the bogus 'unfair gender pay gap' canard (by the way, on this one: men and women earn equal pay for equal work - it's illegal for employers to contravene this - and the statistics you often see that proclaim women earn less than men are based on statistical averages, which does not point to unfair discrimination).

 

But the UK doesn't look very much like a patriarchy if you only sample primary school teachers, or if you look at the number of male suicides compared to females, or if you look at the ratio of men to women who have died fighting in wars or doing risky jobs.

Society as a whole is not accurately represented when seen through cherry-picked data analyses that are sought to corroborate the bogus arguments of people trying to prove a point. Society is much more complex than that, and the reality is, there are many ways in which men have the comparative advantage over women, many ways in which women have the comparative advantage over men, but where in most cases of human living, men and women cooperate together to work, to survive, to love, to have friendships, to pay their taxes, to bring up children, to run a house together, to fight against nature's hardships, and to make each other's lives better (either directly or indirectly).

The church probably is, in several ways, too patriarchal in its ethos - failing to capitalise on the immense benefits and diverse duality of perspective within the two sexes. But to claim the whole of society is an oppressive patriarch is to be guilty of misrepresenting the reality of how men and women really operate in a relationship symbiosis, in mutually beneficial synergies, and in reciprocal encouragement against the vicissitudes of nature's hardships and challenges.

Let me say why I do favour women bishops, and why I think the C of E has got it wrong. I have two reasons; one is to do with a well known principle in moral philosophy, and the other is to do a well known principle in economics. The moral philosophy principle is this; I strongly support women’s rights to be ordained in ministry and leadership – be they vicars, chaplains, or bishops, or any other position, based primarily on a fixed view I have about humans not discriminating against other humans based on race, creed, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or any other congenital component of being human. 

The economic principle is to do with utilisation of skills, and this is an area that both the feminists and the overly-masculine influences in the church have got entirely wrong.  This is not an immutable rule, but for maximum efficiency you are best to optimise the specialised skills people bring to the table.  In a partnership, if two people have similar skills there is less to be gained from sharing them – all you’re doing is reassigning jobs from one equally suitable person to another.  For maximum efficiency, if two people have similar skills concerning task A, then you’re best to separate roles, where one does task A and the other does task B.  But if two partners have very different skills it is best to share both task A and task B because both sets of specialist skills can be brought into both tasks. 

For example, suppose we have a town planning project - I don’t think are many people who would deny that an economist and a building surveyor partnership would be a more efficient partnership than two economists or two building surveyors. Suppose we have a committee assigned to draw up a document that maximises good parenting; I don’t think there are many people who would deny that a group of five men and five women would be more efficient than a group of ten women or ten men.  And I cannot imagine there are many people who would deny that a partnership consisting of a livestock specialist and an agronomy specialist would make a better farming partnership than two livestock specialists or two agronomy specialists.

This is where the feminists and the overly-masculine influences in the church do not understand maximum efficiency.  Feminists, in trying to make women and men as similar as possible, say that task A should be shared equally.  That’s wrong – if they are similar they would achieve maximum efficiency by specialising.  Overly-masculine church men, in trying to make men and women as different as possible, say that women should specialise in task A and men in task B.  That’s also wrong – if they are different they would achieve maximum efficiency by sharing and bringing to bear both sets of specialties and talents.

Now let me make one thing quite clear; there are situations in which this sort of logic would not be maximally beneficial.  For example, in a marriage, there are all sorts of good reasons why housework, driving, entertaining, gardening, etc are better shared (respect, closeness, togetherness, kindness, consideration, relationship equality, to name but five) – but this issue is about women bishops, and hence on grounds of moral philosophy and economic principles the church is making a mistake in not appointing women bishops. 

In both cases, appointing women bishops is the right thing to do.  Given that women are equal in every sense of rights and respect, both women and men should be allowed to be bishops on grounds that sex discrimination is ugly. And conversely, given that women have very different skills to men (as well as many similar skills), both women and men should be allowed to be bishops on grounds that church leadership (be they vicars, chaplains, or bishops) will benefit from both sets of specialised skills being brought to bear on the running of the church.  Whichever way you cut the cloth, the church is throwing away one of its golden pearls by failing to maximise the talents of both men and women.

 

 

 

 
 

Tax Avoidance, And A Clever Way Of Minimising The Debt

The grossly dislikeable Margaret Hodge, who chairs the parliamentary committee for Public Accounts, has condemned the favourable European tax jurisdictions that Google, Amazon and Starbucks use for their UK businesses. Now while I agree that it would be good to get the full quota of tax from these companies, the Government's (and shadow Government's) insistence that those millions would help reduce the UK debt are remiss.  I could make an argument (although it's a bit oversimplified) that says Amazon pays its taxes, it then puts up its prices, meaning the consumer pays more - therefore given the choice between paying £2 less for a book on Amazon, or the Government having that money (to probably spend at least some of it unwisely), one might prefer things as they are.  Certainly at an individual level, I'll bet most people would rather buy a book from Amazon for £8 than pay £10 and be assured that an extra £2 is going to the Government. 

In reality, though, the Government has a contingency plan for this - they simply smuggle in stealth taxes to obtain from the taxpayer the money they are not getting in revenue from tax avoiding companies.  But they should do two things with the money obtained – they should spend it on services that will benefit the country (NHS, Education, Social Services, Planning and Transportation, etc) and they should pay off the debt interest but not the debt itself.  The first is obvious, the second not so obvious, but here’s why.  If the Government sets up a policy whereby they approximate future outlays of debt interest but suspend payments on the debt aggregate itself they can set our tax rates so that those revenues match those outlays on an annual basis and not inhibit the spending on services that will benefit the country. 

Here’s the important distinction between paying off the debt and the interest attached to the debt.  In the future the debt aggregate is going to be a lot more trivial (and a lot less painful) to future generations than it is to us – so if we keep up the interest payments but have a moratorium on the aggregate debt payment, then paying it off for future generations will seem a lot like to charity to them (and we all like charity, don’t we?).  Think of it this way – suppose our UK bankers had run up the equivalent debt (pro rata) in the 1880s, and suppose William Gladstone had had the foresight to set up a policy immediately to pay off the interest every year for 120 years up to our present day – our current Government would be faced with a meagre debt of tens of thousands of pounds.  Much better to pay off that than see our great-great-grandparents’ generation miss out on important Government spending because they were yoked to a crippling debt.

The other important factor in this idea of future benevolence is that it minimises deadweight loss (deadweight loss is the damage done to the economy through raising taxes to combat tax disincentives).  The deadweight loss value is approximately proportional to the square of the tax rate, so paying interest for the foreseeable future but not the debt is the best way to minimise deadweight loss*, because it doesn’t negatively impact present day spending, and it enables future (much richer) generations to pay it off for us at a smidgen of the current aggregate. If the Government is going to waste taxes from big corporations on slicing off the debt aggregate, then you may as well cheer on Amazon’s tax avoidance policy and enjoy cheaper books. 

* Here’s the maths: every £100 in outstanding debt commits the Government to paying it off with a present value of £100, and hence to collecting tax revenues with a current value of £100. In a world in which the interest rate is 3%, the options include the Government collecting (and paying off) £100 immediately, or £50 this year and £51.50 next year, or £11.38 a year for ten years running, or £3 a year for the long term foreseeable future until our progeny can pay it off at a cheaper rate that won’t cripple them. 

The Logic Of Charitable Giving

If you're feeling charitable at any time throughout the year, by all means give charitably. But here's my advice; don't do what your natural instincts tell you is right by giving to many different charities. The best thing you can do is give all you want to give to one charity. In other words, if you were going to give £20 to Oxfam, £20 to Cancer Research UK and £20 to the RSPCC, you should decide which you think is the worthiest charity and give all of the £60 to that one charity (by 'worthiest' I mean the neediest charity for the most important good in the world).  

Don’t be fooled with the argument that says “I don’t know which is the most worthy, so that is why I diversify and give to multiple charities”, because even with imperfect knowledge you have still made the decision to the best of your ability, so the logic still holds. 

The only caveat I would add is this; if everyone in the country came to the same conclusion - for example, that WaterAid is the worthiest charity - then all the other charities would be notably short of donations. But given the diversity of charitable giving across the nation, I don't expect that would happen.  People do currently give to the charity they think is most worthy – it’s just that for some irrational reason they withhold some of the ‘worthiest’ money by giving some to charities they consider less worthy.

Granted, giving all to one charity must feel counterintuitive – but an extreme case will demonstrate the logic of my argument.  After a Tsunami has hit a nation and there are mass appeals, suppose you work out that you can afford to send £500. I doubt very much whether you’d get the sudden urge to only give the Tsunami appeal £250, because you felt compelled to split the other £250 between Break and the RSPCA.  You are giving all to the Tsunami appeal because you have an intensified notion that that is the most worthy recipient of your beneficence at the present time. 

But although the Tsunami appeal is a heightened case, you’re only doing in the extreme what you are otherwise doing in moderation – you are trying to give to the charity you think needs your money most, except that outside of extremes like emergency appeals, you habitually adopt a proclivity to diversify your giving. 

I think I know why people do this; what is being suggested you do in charitable giving is the opposite of what is suggested in most other walks of life. Over consumption of one product, over-activity in one particular hobby, too much work and not enough play, and all that jazz, is bad for us, so we choose moderation as we try to diversify our time and resources. That, I think, is why people naturally look to diversify when giving to charity. 

But here’s the key difference between the charities and the other activities. When you over-consume in other walks of life, it comes at a cost to your other equally important activities. If you were down the snooker hall every night and all weekends you would become a good snooker player, but your wife and kids would be devoid of your other qualities, and you’d miss out on other interests too. If you only read books by Charles Dickens you would miss out on a wealth of literature.

Yet this very rarely happens in charitable giving. If you decide that providing drinking water to people without it is your top priority, you are never going to over-do the giving to the point that no one else needs drinking water. Once you have decided that providing water to dying people is the neediest cause, then splitting £500 between the clean drinking-water charity and the RSPCA is tantamount to taking £250 out of the hands of (what is to you) the most needy cause and giving it to (what is to you) a less needy cause. 

If you want to give because your concern is 100% for the recipients in need, then I think you would rationally arrive at the conclusion that the neediest charity should have all your charity money. However, if you wanted to give because, at a subliminal level, it feels good to think to yourself 'I frequently give to all those charities – pat on the back for me' (and let’s face it, we are all highly susceptible to self-praise and delusions of grandeur), then your motives may be a little less meritorious than you first hoped. 

That’s not to divert from the fact that all charitable giving is noble, and hugely significant for the charities concerned. But if you think one is more worthy than the others – that is the one to which rationality says you should give all your charity money - and logic is against you if you don't follow it through.

Faux Lucky Numbers

I came home from work tonight, sat down with my tuna steak and veg, switched on the TV and watched Deal Or No Deal.  It’s not a terribly good show, but tonight something interesting happened.  First, here’s a description of the game (from Wiki):

The game features a single contestant trying to beat the Banker, as they open twenty-two identical sealed red boxes assigned to potential contestants in an order of their choosing. The boxes contain randomly assigned sums of money inside ranging from 1p to £250,000. The day's contestant is selected at the beginning, bringing their box to the chair. As the boxes are opened over a number of rounds, the Banker makes offers of real money to gain possession of their box. The gameplay is coordinated by Edmonds, who communicates with the unseen banker by telephone. Contestants can either 'deal' to take the money, or play to the end, settling on the amount in their box.

What was special about tonight’s episode was this; the contestant’s godson had drawn a premonitory picture beforehand, depicting box number 22 containing the sum of £20,000.  After 20 of the boxes were opened, the contestant, remarkably, was left with box number 22 (which he brought to the table after a random 1/22 choice) and box number 13. I say ‘remarkably’ – but just how remarkable is it?  Well the boxes are chosen at random – the contestant happened to choose box 22 (as his godson predicted), and there are 22 sums of money – so the exact odds are 1 in 484 (1/22 x 1/22). 

Naturally everyone in the studio was getting excited; here sat a picture of box 22 with £20,000 in it, and here sat our contestant who coincidentally picked 22 at random, and who still had the figure £20,000 left in play (along with £5).  As you’d expect he chose to ‘No Deal’ when offered £6750 by the Banker, and opened his box 22, ready to be met with £20,000.  But, much to the audience’s astonishment, no £20,000 – the box contained the £5.  The premonition wasn’t really a premonition at all – it was just one of those coincidences of which they should have been mindful beforehand (and perhaps were). 

Of course, the explanation is simple – it’s the old ‘law of large numbers’ phenomenon.  Basically, even though the odds of it happening are a slim 1 in 484, there are so many games played that coincidences like this are bound to pop up every now and then. As pattern seekers we humans distort the real picture by editing out all the extraneous information and focusing only on what we see to be radical breaks from normalcy.  The old ‘These things always happen in threes’ fallacy is a good example – when people construct this illusory triune pattern, they do so only by forgetting all the times that things did not happen in threes. 

From watching this show a few times a month, and observing the many times contestants perceive as patterns or lucky legacies what is really only inevitability in the law of large numbers, it’s quite clear that most contestants (and by that I infer most people) do not understand this principle.  I don’t think host Noel Edmonds understands it very well either – you will often hear him say things like “£250,000” came to the table yesterday – what are the chances it will come twice in a row?” as though that somehow lessens its chance of returning the next day as well.  Guess what Noel, the odds are still 1/22, just as they were yesterday.  If you play the games long enough you’ll find all sorts of interesting patterns emerge, and that is the law of large numbers at work - but the odds never change at the level of the particularity. 

A lot of contestants play the game emotionally, by making reference to their ‘lucky numbers’.  There are two kinds of perception of lucky number, and they are related - the ones in prospect and the ones in retrospect.  You only have the former because you have the latter, and both are illusions, but one is much more dangerous than the other.  The ones in retrospect are based on ideas about past patterns; for example, John might say his lucky number is 3, because he was born on 3^rd April, he met his wife on the 3^rd December, he bought 3 scratch cards when he won £10,000, and he has 3 children.  That might make him leave box number 3 until the end – it has always brought him luck, so let’s hope it continues. 

But, of course, the reality is, 3 is no more of a lucky box for him in prospect than any other number – it is only perceived that way through the lens of retrospection.  When it comes to these kinds of pattern, the lens of retrospection is an unreliable predictor of the future.  If for John box number 3 contains a big sum of money it will no doubt perpetuate the illusion of it being his lucky number – but this is a philosophy by which one should not be ensnared.  It’s all very well thinking fondly of a number because it is associated with fortunate dates or events, but runs of events mean nothing with regard to the prospective lucky numbers, just as a run of five reds on a roulette wheel does not mean next time out you’ve got more chance of landing black, and a run of seven heads in a row with a fair coin does not mean that your next coin toss is more likely to be tails. Superstitions and frivolous pattern-seeking both remain ok as a bit of fun – but don’t be fooled by these concepts – they are illusory and can lead you astray if you overlook the law of large numbers.