On The 'Gay Cake' Ruling

We read this week that a judge has ruled that a Christian-run bakery discriminated against a gay customer by refusing to make a cake with a pro-gay marriage slogan. I’m uncomfortable with this particular legislation. Some people have been claiming that such a ruling is a victory for anti-discrimination proponents. The irony seems lost on them – that there is still discrimination going on – it’s just that in this case the discrimination is against the Christian couple running the cake shop.

The Christian couple’s view on homosexuality isn't one I personally share, but within reason I defend their right to choose to run their business according to their own religious beliefs and values, and in this case the State should do like-wise.

Disapproving customers are free to walk away and shop elsewhere. They are even free to share their disapproval on social media and encourage others to join them in shopping elsewhere. Such responses are powerful in business, because they put pressure on socially undesirable behaviour, and they penalise socially undesirable business owners with lost custom, diminished profits, and in extreme cases, bankruptcy.

Any law that makes it illegal to run a business according to your religious beliefs is a law that infringes on the liberties of the business owners in a way that is, in my view, socially undesirable. Saying that, however, doesn’t mean I think all anti-discrimination laws are undesirable - far from it. They just need to be applied more prudently.

As always, society involves tension between a) accommodating people's right to hold views and beliefs, and b) protecting others from unwanted discrimination. It is socially desirable for a racist café owner who wants to put a 'No Blacks' sign on his door to have black people's rights to not be discriminated against preferred over his right to display his repugnant views. But at the other end of the spectrum it is also socially desirable for another café owner to be allowed to discriminate against under 65s by offering a pensioner discount on Wednesdays and Thursdays. In this case the opposite applies - we prefer the café owner's right to introduce pensioner discounts over any societal claims that under 65s are being discriminated against.

The question the cake shop case elicits is where on that spectrum do religious views sit? Personally I think people's religious views should not be legislated against in business as to do so would be to encroach on their freedoms in ways that people in society ought to repudiate. It's quite clear to me that if the choice is between a) forcing a businessperson to make/sell a good they do not wish to, or b) compelling a dissatisfied customer to use another business, it's a no-brainer that society should prefer the latter.

Perhaps a different case will highlight this with even greater rigor. Imagine a t-shirt printing stall run by a Muslim. Along comes a bunch of EDL louts on a stag party wishing to have this Muslim gentleman print ten t-shirts depicting Mohammed drunk on lager. Would you really want to live in a society that forces the t-shirt printer to make these t-shirts for the stag party? I could spend all day thinking of similar examples, and they would all contain the same wisdom: that a society that forces people to act against their religious beliefs for the good of not offending their customers is a pretty dodgy society, and one in which most of us shouldn't want to live.

A quick comment on protected characteristics

You will see from the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s protected charcteristics page that it is forbidden to discriminate against anyone based on their race, sexuality, religion, sex, gender state, disability, age, marriage or civil partnership, or pregnancy and maternity.

The problem with this protected characteristics page is that it fails to compare like for like. A good protected characteristics list would be one based on criteria beyond the individual’s control. So for example, I can’t control my skin colour, and my skin colour has no bearing on whether I can do a job or not, so it’s understandable that discrimination on grounds of skin colour is both socially undesirable and illegal. For that reason, it would be right and proper to bring before the law a café owner who put up a sign saying “No Blacks”.

Religion, on the other hand, is a different matter. Religious belief is not something beyond our control. We choose our religious views (even if they’ve been thrust upon us from childhood), and therefore what we believe says something about what kind of person we are. If I had to choose between two people to hire, and there was nothing to choose between them apart from one was a scientologist and one wasn’t, I’d happily discriminate against the scientologist, because in my hiring criteria a candidate's failure to see that scientology is a racket could be a black mark against their potential.

For that reason it's easy to favour a law that prohibits discrimination on skin colour but at the same time repudiate a law that disallows religious discrimination. It's also worth pointing out for the record that the Christian couple running the bakery weren't actually refusing to serve someone on the pretext of their being gay - they were simply refusing to make a product that expressed something they found to be contrary to their own beliefs. A law that effectively wants to commandeer their bodies and cake-making facilities is to me far more repugnant than the offence these Christian bakers are supposed to have committed.

All that said, this is only a short blog post in which I couldn't possibly give the subject the full range of considerations it warrants.

One final point - the market does a very good job of weeding out socially undesirable discrimination

Suppose there are two countries - one with a large majority black population and a minority white population, and one with a large majority white population and a minority black population. What would be the effects of discrimination against blacks in each country? Real history will tell us the answer, because those two situations describe two real countries; the first being South Africa and the second being America.

Under South African apartheid the minority whites were prejudiced against the majority blacks, which comes at an economic cost because it restricts your business and your labour. Suppose racist Jim opened up a shop in South Africa in the 1960s but won't serve any of the majority blacks - he obviously shoots himself in the foot because his restricts his trade options to a minority few and excludes the majority of potential customers.

Now suppose racist Tom opened up a shop in America in the 1960s but won't serve any of the minority blacks - his discrimination hurts him, but not as much as it hurts Jim, because Tom is restricting his trade by less than Jim, as whites make up the majority in America in the 1960s.

In short, in a free market it pays not to unfairly discriminate, because whether on large scale or a small one you're going to limit your potential custom. The more socially undesirable your discrimination, or the more people your discrimination negatively impacts, the worse it will be for you. It is no coincidence that the time at which humans started to trade was also the time that we started to become more civilised and improved our methods of co-existence. To be able to trade in any age, and in particular, the modern age, you need to be able to think of others; firstly, by coming up with something (goods, services, entertainment) that others want; and secondly, by being honest, ethical, friendly, and developing a good reputation for your business. Far from being a vortex of selfish, uncaring and unethical behaviour, free markets necessitate qualities that make trade conducive, with your success dependent (in most cases) on your being a reputable person who welcomes all and treats everyone well.

Cameron's Counter-Extremism Plan Is Not A Good One

In the papers today we read about David Cameron's new plans for counter-extremism:

"The Prime minister will announce a counter-terrorism bill including plans to restrict harmful actions of those seeking to radicalise young people. The policies include disruption orders to prevent extremists airing their views in public or radicalising young people, new powers to close premises such as mosques where extremists are seeking to build influence, and extra immigration restrictions for those thought to be preaching extremist views."

No no no, this is a terrible idea. While I'm all for coming down hard on Islamic extremism, this legislation will unleash an unwanted genie from the bottle - not just because it encroaches on people's free speech, but primarily because it involves backward reasoning that will probably make the problem it is trying to solve even worse.

Here's why. Generally speaking, you’re likely to reduce speeding by introducing speed cameras; you’re likely to reduce street crime by introducing CCTV; and you’re likely to reduce the chances of being burgled by getting a burglar alarm. What you are not likely to reduce by legislating against Islamic radicalisation is Islamic radicalisation - you are only likely to take it into even more secretive, private and harder to detect places.

The most dangerous Muslim fundamentalists are obsessed with the total and unchallengeable absoluteness of Islam - they are not going to let something comparably trivial like British legislation curb their ambitions - they will only be more likely to attempt to propagate their dangerous and fanatical influence from the subtle underbelly of society, underneath the radar of the authorities.

It's not that the idea of restricting pernicious radicalisation and dangerous extremism is an unworthy one, it's simply that it will make things worse - it will make many more young Muslims feel averse to the British establishment and increase their chances of being ripe for extremism, and it will remove many fundamentalist activities from where they can be observably checked.

The law is an effective deterrent only by preventing easily preventable activities. Islamic fundamentalism is not an easily preventable activity because its exponents consider it to be more valid than human laws. The best way to reduce the damaging effects of radical Islamic fundamentalism is not to prevent extremists from airing their views in public or repudiate the 'passive tolerance' we've come to enjoy - it is to leave untouched the liberty of free expression, and lock up those who end up committing criminal activities in the name of religious extremism.

Even that doesn't wholly get to the crux of the issue though - which is that words like 'extremism' and 'radicalisation' are nigh-on impossible to legislate against in any sense of hoping for pre-emption, because they are not objectively measurable states - they are subjective and part of a broad spectrum of viewpoint and behaviour. That simple truth gives us another reason why it's much better to afford people the freedom to believe and express whatever they want, and enforce the law when their freedom of belief and expression turns into a criminal activity that harms individuals in the society in which they live.

A Few Post-Election Thoughts

After returning from holiday I was as surprised as everyone else to see the Tories had won a majority against all expectations. Surprised, but very glad, because had Ed Miliband ended up as Prime Minister it would have been the most ill-judged and unjust outcome in recent political memory. Thankfully the public were even less persuaded by the direction he had taken Labour than pretty much every pollster and social commentator had accounted for.

Make no mistake about it, I very much doubt Labour's heavy loss was to do with Miliband's character (outside of the policies he seems like an okay guy), nor his ridiculous 8ft 6in slab of limestone stunt, nor his shameful and pathetic attempt to buy Muslim votes with his 'Islamophobia' promise. No, the party's disastrous result was pretty much entirely based on his abject failure of a social experiment to take the Labour party back to the old Labour of the socialist-economic left which hasn't won an election since 1974, and has long since been thoroughly and comprehensively discredited intellectually. This suggests that even a large section of the politically uninformed demographic are not so credulous as to fall for the kind of guff that Ed Miliband was trying to sell them.

Be reminded that the only time Labour has got anywhere in the general election since the notoriously inept days of the early seventies has been through Tony Blair's rebranded Thatcherite New Labour, from which Ed Miliband had thoroughly departed (in favour of his father's Marxist views) and to which his brother David had fervently gravitated. For reasons I explain here, I doubt this is the end of the Labour party, but it probably will take another rebranded Blair-esque shift before they can ever hope to get close to seeing any power again. It was telling that even in his resignation speech Ed Miliband was still championing the policies while lamenting the public's failure to connect with them. No Ed, it really was the policies that cost your party so much - and that you still can't see it even after such a palpable rejection of them is indicative of the extent of the delusion that underpinned your campaign.

When the results were in, it was good to see that brains were victorious over the metro-left's hideously anachronistic, meretricious, self-righteous envy that abhors success, innovation and wealth creation. Given the ineptitudes of the opposition parties, I'm glad that David Cameron and his Cabinet get to finish off the second half of the job they started, even though they are far from perfect themselves.

Lastly, if David Cameron keeps his promise of an EU referendum it will be a great chance to finally unyoke ourselves from the stuffy, bureaucratic socialist busybodies in Brussels and Strasbourg - an opportunity I'm pretty sure that the British people will, sadly, refuse to take when it is offered to them.

Why It's OK Not To Vote

I'm always bemused when I hear people say "You are morally compelled to vote: people died for your right to vote, and it is outrageous if you choose not to use it". They also say things like "You've no right to moan about the politicians in power if you abstain from voting". They are popular opinions, but like many popular opinions I think they are wrong.

On the first one - even if we ignore the fact that the odds are astronomically stacked against your vote making any difference whatsoever, the majority of people who died for our liberties and freedoms didn't die for our right to vote, they died for our right to the privilege of choice and autonomy, of which both voting and abstention are constituent parts.

And on the second one - not only do your freedom of choice and autonomy give you every right to praise or bemoan to your heart's content, the fundamental truth here is that if you have no political parties you would support then the ability to vote means little when the variety of options on offer fundamentally depart from what you want to be on offer. For the people to whom that applies I see no reason to expect them to be any less vocal - one may even expect them to be the most vociferous critics of all.

Here's an illustration to show what I mean. Suppose a friend of yours has been sentenced to death in a State that allows it, and yet you are against capital punishment. Someone asks you to vote on how your friend is put to death: electric chair, lethal injection, hanging, a bullet to the head, or being starved to death slowly.

Given that I am opposed to the death penalty I want to campaign against my friend being put to death at all. If you tell me I'm morally impelled to vote on how my friend dies, I'd certainly say that the lethal injection option is a less bad option than being starved to death slowly, but my vote is only an adjunct to what I feel is a bigger issue about the inhumanity of capital punishment.

Similarly, in politics my vote for the Conservatives, UKIP, the Lib Dems, Labour, or whoever would only be an adjunct to what I feel is a bigger issue - that I'm a Christian libertarian that isn't being represented by any of the parties for whom I can vote. Thus, my vote would only be a vote for the least bad party - but when you combine that with the fact that that vote is almost certainly going to make no difference to the outcome, then not voting becomes a perfectly rational thing to do.

You're probably very accustomed to how the party political system has manifested itself over the last century or so, and you're so used to the kind of choices you're being asked to make that perhaps you don't know what it's like for those of us for whom the choices in front of us are so many miles away from what we'd support. A fact you may know is that dinosaurs were actually alive on earth for over twice the length of time than the time between their extinction and now. By a similar measure, the ideal party I'd like to see in government is probably about twice as far from the Conservative Party (the most electable party by a country mile) as the Conservative Party is from, say, a far left party like the Green Party. If you can understand where I'm coming from there, you should have no trouble understanding why, as things stand, I just don't see voting in the same way that you do.

Even if you can't swallow all that - and I'd be at a loss to understand why ever not - then at the very least you should respect my right and decision not to vote, just as I respect your right and decision to vote or not vote as you see fit.

Miliband's Islamophobia: A Shameful & Dangerous Act of Political Opportunism

In what is a squalid and somewhat pathetic attempt to win votes off Muslims in this tight election, Ed Miliband's credibility and integrity has sunk to even further depths as he promises to outlaw Islamophobia:

"We are going to make Islamophobia an aggravated crime. We are going to make sure it is marked on people's records with the police to make sure they root out Islamophobia as a hate crime."

Everything….and I mean absolutely everything is wrong with this idea. I'll pick just my top four reasons why.

1) It's a dystopian example of thought crime; the very epitome of an Orwellian nightmare. Phobia literally means a fear of something. If you have claustrophobia you are afraid of confined spaces. If you have arachnophobia you have a fear of spiders. If you have a fear of Islam you have a fear of its growing socio-political influence in society, and of the way people anxiously pander to it, and of the extent to which its extremities stultify minds, and of the spectre of increased radicalisation that leads to hate speech and sometimes murder and terrorism (all very understandable fears, I'm sure we'd all agree). Of course we should be wholly tolerant and kind towards moderate Muslims, but far from wanting to criminalise this anti-extremist phobia, we should actively encourage it, and come down even harder on those Muslim leaders radicalising young people.

2) It's a contemptible infringement of our civil liberties and our freedom of speech. To outlaw the ability to criticise, mock, ridicule, campaign against and intellectually challenge Islam is to rob us of vital tools for enquiry and progression, and will at the same time create an even greater culture of trepidation whereby people are forever afraid to speak openly for fear of being criminalised.

3) It's ambiguous to the point of being useless. How the heck is this ridiculous legislation even going to be properly enforced anyway? The boundary line between what constitutes the Miliband version of Islamophobia is blurry. Am I an Islamophobe if I write a blog saying that I don't think the Qur'an is anything other than an inept man-made creation? Will I be outside the orbit of the Islamophobia law if I demonstrate outside a Mosque known to be radicalising young Muslims, or if I tell the police about a Muslim grooming operating above a local kebab shop (that's hypothetical by the way - I know of no such place in my city)? In terms of the law, Islamophobia is so ambiguous it is nigh-on impossible that it could be enforced with any consistency or in a way that doesn't stifle our free expression and genuine concerns about the darker elements of Islam. This leads me nicely onto point 4 - perhaps the most frightening prospect of them all.

4) It empowers the very people we actually want to disempower. Even aside from the very serious problem of making people reluctant to speak out against radical Islamist preaching in mosques, extremism in schools and hate speech in public places, the law will only help the despicable child-sex gangs that groom, entrap, rape and exploit young British girls. The majority of these offenders are Muslims of Pakistani origin (recall infamous cases in Doncaster, Rotherham, Manchester, Blackpool, Oldham, Derby, Newcastle, Rochdale, Bradford and Oxford as horrible cases in point). The reason so many of these young girls were subjected to the perverted exploits of the organised Muslim gangs for so long is because numerous agencies and authorities (including the police) were cravenly fearful of being labelled racist or prejudiced if they enforced the law against these perpetrators.

The truth is, this proposed law is highly irresponsible and gravely hazardous, as it comes with the danger of creating a greater freedom for already dangerous Muslims and potentially dangerous Muslims, and also the danger of creating a culture of trepidation and spinelessness for most other UK citizens.

When looking up the number of places (mentioned above) in which Muslim gangs have been responsible for child-sex grooming, I also happened to find this interesting piece of information from the Henry Jackson Society - "British Muslims could have the decisive vote in a quarter of constituencies, analysis shows. In 159 of the 632 seats, the number of Muslims is greater than the margin of victory in 2010. And this is true among almost half the 193 marginal seats."

So as well as the highly irresponsible and gravely dangerous nature of the law, this information about how important the Muslim vote could be gives clear exhibition to how Miliband's agenda-driven, Muslim-pandering proposition is a most shameful example of how this aspiring Prime Minister will put his own party political aspirations ahead of what's good for the country (namely some of society's most vulnerable people) by prostrating himself towards Mecca to further his own political gains.

Why We Should Not 'Agree To Disagree' About Facts and Truths

In preparation for seeing why it's irrational to agree to disagree about facts and truths, consider the following scenario. Suppose Jack & Jill have a disagreement. Jack explains his view, so does Jill. They both still disagree. So Jack takes another turn at convincing Jill. Jill retorts and still disagrees. Jack now has to consider something new. Jill has heard Jack's reasons for holding his view, and an argument against her response, yet she still disagrees.  The difference between their initial positions and now is that they have had one round of questioning, so each holds their initial belief, plus the extra strength of that position in withstanding their opponent's objection.

This process goes on and on through several rounds, with each getting more confident about their position, because they know that the view they have has now faced the gamut of multiple counter contentions. After several more rounds of debate, Jack and Jill should each hold onto their view with even greater confidence.

Have you spotted something funny about that scenario? The above scenario I described shouldn't happen at all. If both Jack and Jill are honestly open to changing their mind, consistent with the facts, you should not see two people stubbornly and emotively arguing their position and becoming even more strongly wedded to defending their own position and undermining that of their opponent as each round passes. What you should see as the rounds of analysis progress is that one of them should become less and less confident that they are right, and the other one should become more and more confident that they are right, with the natural end being agreement.

Suppose both Jack and Jill start with a conviction value of 10. Every time there is a round of analysis where one person's view is undermined, the conviction value should increase for one person and decrease for the other. Suppose for simplicity's sake there are 10 rounds of this kind, and suppose that the debate is whether evolution happened, meaning Jill the evolution supporter is right, and Jack the evolution-denier is wrong. Here's what you should see:

Start: Jack 10 - Jill 10

Round 1: Jack 9 - Jill 11
Round 2: Jack 8 - Jill 12
Round 3: Jack 7 - Jill 13
Round 4: Jack 6 - Jill 14
Round 5: Jack 5 - Jill 15
Round 6: Jack 4 - Jill 16
Round 7: Jack 3 - Jill 17
Round 8: Jack 2 - Jill 18
Round 9: Jack 1 - Jill 19
Round 10: Jack 0 - Jill 20

Naturally, this rarely happens, but if both were honest truth-seekers and fact-finders, that outcome is what we should expect. When it comes to facts and truths, then, it is irrational to agree to disagree. The person we have to thank for this is Nobel Prize winning mathematician Robert Aumann.

When it comes to truths and facts (not subjective things, obviously) Aumann's Agreement Theorem shows that it is nigh-on impossible for two honest, rigorous and diligent truth-seekers and fact-finders to agree to disagree (see my blog post on it here). In addition, computer scientist Scott Aaronson's mathematical paper showed that these two honest, rigorous and diligent truth-seekers and fact-finders can be expected to reach an agreement in pretty quick time.

That's all very well, but this doesn't mean people will suddenly start agreeing, does it?

No. Let's be clear, the agreement theorem isn't saying that everyone will agree - it is showing that people can (and should) in principle converge on an agreement as long as they honestly wish to get to the truth.  That is to say, the reason humans disagree so much is not primarily down to lack of availability of data or methods of assimilating that data (although it can be), it is down to factors inhibiting that person's honest, rigorous search for the truth.

But we wouldn't want to stifle diversity and uniqueness of thought, though right?

It depends on what kind of diversity and uniqueness of thought you mean. Hitler was quite diverse and unique, but it's good that his aims were stifled (albeit too late for many people's survival). The upshot is, Aumann's theorem is a beautiful and elegant contribution to humankind that when considered properly has the potential to be very enriching. The diversity and uniqueness of thought that the theorem can encourage people to help discontinue is stuff that's unhelpful to the human race, either by being factually wrong, or immoral, or retarding progress.  

Take the morality one as the most obvious example. Is diversity and uniqueness good in moral situations? Sometimes yes, but often no. Applying Bayesian thinking to issues of ethics, you'd find that if you gathered in a hall the most diverse people in terms of their ethics there would be a lot of views you'd find pretty repugnant. Diversity in one sense is great, but alas not always in all senses. Under the terms of being factually wrong, or immoral, or retarding progress, the human race prospers far more when diverse elements - that is, the elements that are factually wrong, immoral or an impediment to press - are weeded out. That's not to deny, of course, that there are numerous ways that diversity of thinking, culture, imagination, creativity, passions, tastes, experiences and talents enrich the world.

Oh I see, a lot of it is about pre-empting thin end of the wedges?

It's important. There is a lot of deception, manipulation and propaganda out there, which evidently engenders a reservoir of lazy thinking in society, which has the knock on effect of causing lots of unnecessary disagreement, disharmony, resentment and, when left to fester, extremist conflict that can lead to horribly brutality. The Agreement Theorem encourages us to try to cut it out at source.

Is there a danger, though, that this realisation will make us want to be right all the time?

I actually find it incredible how often people are so unenthusiastic about getting things right. I think we are so blessed to have the faculty of language, the multiplicity of words, and the most advanced cognition we know about in the universe (of all the created things, I mean). Besides, just about everyone wants to think they're right - they just differ on the particulars.

For example, meet Jeremy: he works in the lab to improve our understanding of cancer in order to help ameliorate its pernicious effects on people; he believes in driving on the correct side of the road consistent with the highway laws; his view is that people should be faithful to their partner; he is passionate about ending animal cruelty, and he thinks people should be respectful of their neighbourhood and not drop litter anywhere except in a bin.

Upon hearing those things, you don't immediately think it's such a shame that Jeremy thinks he's right about those things, and regrettable that he would like it if more people thought like he did. Presumably most people reading this have no problems with those examples of claiming to be right: it is very important to do all we can to diminish the effects of cancer, and end animal cruelty. Infidelity is hugely damaging; litter makes the streets look messy; and there would be catastrophe if people decided to drive on whichever side of the road they fancied.

The point is, it's easy to support unanimous concurrence on things like cancer treatment and keeping our streets tidy, but it's also fairly easy to support unanimous concurrence when it comes to all matters of fact and truth. Yet one meets people who are less comfortable with this: they do not like it when social commentators express views they think are correct and when they lament because more people don't agree with them. But like cancer treatment and keeping our streets tidy, facts and truths are enriching to human progress - in fact, it's only because of facts and truths that we even know that cancer treatment and keeping our streets tidy are preferable to the alternatives.

So to any charge us social commentators face that "You want everyone to agree with you all the time" - well yes, of course we do, because we value fact-finding and truth-seeking as being hugely beneficial to the human race, so why would we want it any other way? But more to the point - be under no illusion - you are the same as us - you believe that the things you think are objectively true and morally right are things others should believe too - it's just that you think the facts and truths we propound belong in a different category to the ones you propound. In all sorts of ways you value the unanimity of concurrence as much as we do - it's just that we think there are a lot more things about which we should agree if people can only train themselves to override their cognitive biases and emotional skews.

* Note: The issue of what qualifies as a fact and as truth is not unimportant, but we'll save that for another day, as the essential drift remains, and at no cost to the principles this blog post is endorsing.

 

EDIT TO ADD: As a response to the response, it's worth pointing out that some of the issues mentioned, such as what constitutes truth, what qualifies as a fact, what can reasonably be posited as consensual, and how to deal with complex analyses and intractable considerations, are all able to be dealt with by Aumann's theorem.

When dealing with questions about whether something can justifiably be called a fact, or when tackling a complex area of consideration that may or may not have a justifiable consensus, the agreement theorem still does its work, because the process by which we should agree on facts or truths is the same process by which we should agree on the above issues I just mentioned.

For example (as one person mentioned economics), economics does deal with a very dynamic set of data points, but there are plenty of routes by which two people can arrive at an agreement, even if that agreement involves concurrence on degrees of intractability and open-endedness. Here are a few examples. The law of diminishing marginal utility will indicate that when it comes to consumption of a banana, the first unit of consumption (the first banana you eat) yields more utility (is more beneficial and enjoyable) than the tenth banana. It's quite reasonable to agree that by the ninth banana one might be quite sick of them. Extrapolating from the law of diminishing marginal utility, it would be easy to agree that paying a second cleaner to clean your apartment an hour after the first cleaner has cleaned it is a poor use of resources.

Another example, the Laffer curve measures the relationship between how much a government taxes us and the resultant government income. Two people who disagree on the optimum level of taxation for the fifth quintile could easily come much closer to agreement if they both carefully analysed the evidence. Another example, we expect increasing returns to have a positive effect on productivity when there is increased growth in output. Two opposing politicians could argue all day about the best way to achieve this, whereas two economists (without a political agenda) would likely agree quite quickly.

Last example, when there is elasticity in the final product demand, wages will likely increase, which consequently knocks on to affect the quantity and level of the demand. Again, two politicians may argue about this all day, whereas two unbiased economists would have no trouble understanding that this is because under those conditions the wage elasticity of demand for that category of labour will be high.

The upshot is, whatever the area, be it economics, science, faith, psychology, politics or philosophy, Aumann's Agreement Theorem doesn't just bring to bear the routes by which we can agree on facts and truths, it also factors in all of the anomalies (complexity, intractability, human failings, different levels of intelligence, asymmetry of information, etc) that need to be redressed or overridden. So irrespective of anything that can militate against agreement, Aumann's model gives exhibition to the pathways by which people 'can' agree as long as the enquiry is honest and rigorous.

My Articles for The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity

What Price Free Speech? - 22/2/15)

Imagining A Better World - (18/3/15)

Agents Of Love And Grace - (9/4/15)
Lovelocked - (5/6/15)
Real Freedom - (14/8/2015)

 

 

My Articles For The Adam Smith Institute

 

Why Emissions Tests Are So Exhausting - (15/1/15)

Restating The Case For Freedom of Speech - (20/1/15)

A Plain Pack of Lies - (22/1/15)

The Green Spectre - (6/2/15)

Pay As You Protest? - (3/3/15)

The Dark History of The Minimum Wage - (17/3/15)

Miliband's Zero Hours Contracts Catastrophe - (7/4/15)

The Myth Of Owing Future Generations - (14/4/2015

Don't Campaign Against Tax Havens: They Are Good For Us - (21/4/2015)

Discrimination and the free market: hardly a piece of cake - (22/5/2015)

Markets Make Us Greener - (29/9/2015)

 

Protecting Home Industry Is Not A Steel - 21/10/2015)

  

Stephen Hawking & The Electorate's Crazy Cycle

Today we read in The Independent that Stephen Hawking, the so-called finest mind in the universe, is backing Ed Miliband's Labour party in the election. I don't think Hawking is the finest mind in the universe. He is certainly excellent in his specialised field, and I thought A Brief History of Time was superb - but outside of that field I think he frequently shows himself to be pretty mediocre, particularly on the subject of God and philosophy, and, it would appear from today's endorsement, economics and politics too. If I were to take a stab at how the finest mind in the universe (whoever that is) would view the up-coming election it'd be something like this.

Frivolous Fred has a spending problem. He can't stop wasting the household budget on things they don't really need. His spending got so out of control that he went on a borrowing spree so he could be even more profligate. Thankfully his wife Wise Wendy is much more prudent. She decides to impose austerity cuts on Frivolous Fred in order to get their finances back under control.

In real life Frivolous Fred is Labour under Gordon Brown and Wise Wendy is the current Conservatives, who were shrewd enough to realise that the right balance of austerity cuts, along with relying more heavily on the private sector, had a better chance of turning round the economy than Labour's perpetual plan of high taxation, high borrowing and high spending. Why isn't this simple piece of wisdom more widely understood? 

Here's a suggested reason. The crazy thing about voters is that they easily have their attention swayed by political cycles that bring about change, which means it is fairly inevitable that if you've had a left-centre government for a while a right-centre one will be voted in pretty soon, and so on as the cycle goes. After 13 years of New Labour, the Tories got back in again, albeit in coalition with the not always comfortable bedfellows the Liberal Democrats.

The last five years have been quite good in terms of an economic recovery - not great, but not bad, and certainly astronomically better than things would have been with a government like Miliband's Labour that thought increased borrowing and increased spending was the answer.

But after a fairly successful Conservative/Lib Dem period in government, where the response to the financial crisis was to look to the free market and private job creation as the answer, what then happens is that the opposition party seems to be able to pull the wool over much of the electorate's eyes by promising to redistribute much of the wealth that has been created. Stephen Hawking's comment hints at this too when he says "The city needs a Labour government to get the kind of investment we need again"

It's quite easy to see what is happening with this kind of thinking. When standards have improved, employment has risen and inflation has been fairly well managed, instead of voting for a party that is likely to continue with this growth, many people vote for the opposition party that promises to increase taxes, increase spending and have greater inference in the free market (through things like minimum wage increases and rent controls, and a cap on NHS profits).

And that's the crazy pattern of voting cycles: very often an opposition left-centre party that builds its pre-election promises on redistributing the wealth the right-centred party helped create appeals to the average voter more than keeping power in the hands of the right-centre party that helped create the wealth they want to redistribute.

Then, after they get elected and the promises soon turn out to inimical to increased growth, the electorate loses its amnesia and remembers the party that helped the economy grow. Consequently, instead of the kind of steady growth we'd see with the continuation of a party that looks to the free market and private job creation as the answer, we get a staccato rhythm, where periods of growth are punctuated by periods of inertia – otherwise known as Tories in/Labour out, Labour in/Tories out cycle. Now, sadly, it looks to be Labour's turn again.

Hmmm.... Pondering What To Listen To Next

I'm starting a new musical phase in my life. I own approximately 1500 CDs, and they belong roughly in two categories.

Category 1: Those that I know are good because I've played them lots and like them very much.

Category 2: Those that I know are good because I have played them a few times, but nothing like as much as Category 1 CDs.

Every time I go into the office in which I write, I have a choice. I can put on a safe CD from category 1 (bands or artists I know I really like) or I can try something less familiar. Like most of us at times, being susceptible to hyperbolic discounting and periodically allowing the id to get its way over the superego, usually I tend to opt for a category 1 CD, particularly as when I'm reading or writing it's good to have background music that I can enjoy without having to give it my full attention.

 

However, recently I've given more concern to the fact that among those 1500 CDs are lots of potentially good Category 2 albums that I've listened to less frequently, and that was so long ago that I hardly know them at all.

So, with that in mind, I decided to look through them and jot down Category 2 bands or artists to which I'd like to give more listening time, and actually do now plan to do so. Falling into this category are the following:

Allman Bros, Tori Amos, Badly Drawn Boy, Jackson Browne, Jeff Beck, Buffalo Springfield, Ben Folds Five, The Band, Cocteau Twins, Credence Clearwater Revival, Elvis Costello, Cream, Crowded House, The Cure, Divine Comedy, Dave Matthews Band, Depeche Mode, Fairport Convention, Flaming Lips, Garbage, Goldfrapp, PJ Harvey, Jethro Tull, Jefferson Airplane, The Kinks, Kings of Leon, Moody Blues, Mogwai, The Mission, Mercury Rev, Randy Newman, The Pixies, Pulp, Prefab Sprout, Prince, Liz Phair, Iggy and the Stooges, Primal Scream, Roxy Music, Lou Reed, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Rush, Todd Rundgren, Santana, Sisters of Mercy, St Etienne, Spirit, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Sly & The Family Stone, Sonic Youth, Stephen Stills, Paul Simon (solo stuff), Traffic, Teenage Fanclub, Talking Heads, Van Halen, Tom Waits, Wilco, World Party.

If anyone is a particularly passionate fan of any of the above, and feels like championing their case for my listening pleasure, I'll be glad to hear from you. And if you don't wish to, that's perfectly fine too - I still love you lots.

Watch Out: How Supermarkets Are Trying To Dupe You

 

An article in The Guardian this week has highlighted a few of the squalid tactics that some supermarkets are supposedly employing in order get the most money out of customers. And they are not talking about the phenomenon known as Shrinkflation, where the sizes of products are reduced surreptitiously while the prices stay the same or sometimes even increase.

Regarding Shrinkflation, most of us have been startled at the current meagreness of the Twix and the Dairy Milk in comparison to the old days. And I don't even want to mention the tiny tins of Quality Street now on offer - it's too distressing for words.

No, what the Guardian has flagged in terms of squalid tactics are examples like these:

1) Was/now pricing: the use of a higher “was” price when the item has been available for longer at the lower price. Acacia honey and ginger hot cross buns at Waitrose were advertised at £1.50 for just 12 days this year before going on offer at “£1.12 was £1.50” for 26 days.

2) Multi-buys: prices are increased on multi-buy deals so that the saving is less than claimed. Asda increased the price of a Chicago Town Four Cheese Pizza two-pack from £1.50 to £2 last year and then offered a multi-buy deal at two for £3. A single pack went back to £1.50 when the “offer” ended.

3) Larger pack, better value: the price of individual items in the bigger pack are actually higher. Tesco sold four cans of Green Giant sweetcorn for £2 last year, but six cans were proportionately more expensive in its “special value” pack, priced at £3.56.

Then the article writer Rebecca Smithers comes up with the reason why (although you wouldn’t know it from her reluctance to cite it as the cause) – she tells us that:

“New research suggests that more than 1,400 suppliers to Britain’s supermarkets are facing collapse as the cut-throat price war takes its toll on the industry. The number of food and beverage makers in significant financial distress has nearly doubled to 1,414 in the last year, according to insolvency practitioner Begbies Traynor.”

The key word missing from the above is ‘Competition'. It’s competition that is creating value for customers, but it is also competition that is sinking so many food stores and driving these dodgy pricing tactics for the ones staying afloat. It is precisely because the food-shopping industry is so competitive that supermarkets are trying everything they can to squeeze every penny out of their customers.

Shoppers who are price sensitive are the shoppers least likely to be duped, whereas non-price sensitive shoppers are the shoppers who won’t care or notice much (if you’re interested, I wrote a whole Blog post on this issue). 

Many people at one extreme of the spectrum will see no cause for the interference of the Competition and Markets Authority here. Many others will see this as precisely the kind of situation in which they should get involved. I'm not at either extreme on this one, so the advice I would offer to shoppers is this. If you care about what you're spending, think carefully before you buy, and only pay what a product is worth to you. Also, if these issues are important to you, call supermarkets out on any squalid tactics you notice, and see that they are exposed for their dodgy pricing. Over time this will give the advantage to more ethical supermarkets. Now if only those tins of Quality Street were bigger!!  

 

 

It's The Most Ironic Thing - Lib Dems & Tuition Fees

Now that Parliament has dissolved to make way for the general election, we are about to enter a period of time when the Liberal Democrats will lose many of their MPs. One thing I find quite ironic is that the main Lib Dem legacy will be the little matter of reneging on the promised scrapping of tuition fees. I say ironic, because the scrapping of tuition fees was a completely ludicrous idea, and one that in not being delivered is probably the party's best achievement. The problem wasn't actually breaking the promise - it was making such a preposterous, economically untenable promise in the first place. To give you an idea of how catastrophic such a policy would be - it's a policy the Green Party also supports, which is usually indication enough of its economic absurdity.

The current tuition fees system is pretty much the fairest system imaginable: the government loans to those who need the money to obtain a degree, and it only asks for payment when the post-graduate can afford to repay with a small proportion of their earnings. Anyone who thinks that that is unfair has a pretty peculiar idea of unfairness. What you have to realise is that nothing comes for free in education. If tuition fees are scrapped, then the cost of obtaining a degree is then picked up by the taxpayers. Tax that goes on to subsidise higher education amounts to lots of tax paid by low earners to subsidise people better of than themselves. We know this because we know that two thirds of working people do not have a university degree, and we know that on average obtaining a degree boosts one's life earnings by 60%.

Tuition fee subsidies do something else as well - they artificially ramp up demand for places, which has all sorts of negative spillover effects on how people value university education. Given all this, it comes as absolutely no surprise to learn that Ed Miliband wants to artificially interfere with prices by lowering tuition fees to £6000 (everyone knows it's simply a bribe to win student votes). Admittedly the policy isn't as catastrophic as the Lib Dem and Green proposal to scrap tuition fees altogether, but in proposing to artificially lower tuition fees Miliband shows a similar contempt for the notion of pricing education at its value.

The value of higher education is this. University fees should amount to exactly what it costs to obtain a degree, and fees (prices) should match demand, whereby the right number of people are getting degrees. How do we know what the right number is? This is down to a utilitarian efficiency, which is measured in terms of what we might call practical economic utility. What is meant by 'efficient' here is that an efficient transaction occurs when the overall increase in utility is greater than the overall decrease in utility. In other words, when degrees are priced at their true value - a value that measures costs associated with supply and demand - you have the right number of people doing degrees, and you have the right people paying for them, which is, it won't surprise you, the people actually doing the degrees.

 

* For more on this, see my Blog Why Tuition Fees May Be Too *Low* Not Too High

Don't Listen To The Majority Here - Inheritance Tax Is One Of The Very Best Taxes

After reading today about the Conservatives' promise to raise the inheritance tax threshold, we also learned from a YouGov poll that the public regards inheritance tax as the least fair of all taxes. Most libertarians also tend to oppose inheritance tax, largely due to the fact that it's a tax on capital that's already been taxed at the point of being earned. However, given that tax in general sits uneasily in many a libertarian milieu, their general disenchantment for inheritance tax is hardly surprising.

I happen to disagree with libertarians and with the general public on this. I think that in a world in which taxation is a current necessity in our socio-political system, inheritance tax is about the least bad tax we have. I'll explain, but let me first explain what I do think is bad about inheritance tax.

The negative aspect first
If you can get over the double taxation part, the primary problem with inheritance tax is that it encourages excessive/wasteful spending. If Betty has £650,000 that she stands to leave to her children but knows that they will be hit with inheritance tax, it incentivises her to spend it on them or on herself in her lifetime. It may be a good thing for her and her family that she's spending, but spending money just to avoid giving it to the government is probably going to involve quite a bit of expenditure on things she doesn't really need or value hugely. This wisdom soon percolates: "You can't pass it on so you might as well spend it".

Now over to the positive
I think it's good for society if the government takes something from a dead person's estate when it exceeds a high enough threshold, but it's also important that the government endorses passing on money to heirs that's already been taxed once. The real issue with the government taking something from a dead person's estate and pumping it back into public services is that it spends it on people less in need than the people on whom it should be spent - namely the country's neediest people. I'll come back to that in a moment.

Even if you are Anglo-centric in your redistributive desires, what makes inheritance tax a knotty issue is that it's a bit like higher tax for the rich in general - the majority support it because the costs don't affect them. Currently inheritance tax sits at 40% at a threshold of £325,000. If you're about to be the beneficiary of your dad's £500,000 estate you probably don't support the current threshold because it will cost you £70,000. But if you have no substantial inheritance due to come you probably do support it, because somewhere down the line you'll benefit from other people's inheritance tax.

The most desired goal of the taxpayer is to be taxed in a system that is as fair and efficient as possible. Most taxes fall below an ideal because they come with disincentives (income tax comes with a disincentive to work; savings tax comes with a disincentive to save, and so forth). Even if you are one of the people that stands to inherit a fortune and thus doesn't like inheritance tax, it has to be admitted that as far as the whole of society goes, inheritance tax ticks just about every box in terms of fairness and efficiency. Technically, the person paying the tax is the dead person - it is just a posthumous tax taken from assets no longer needed. Even if you happen to be the imminent beneficiary of your dad's £500,000 estate, you stand to gain £430,000 after tax - which, by any reasonable standard, is enough for a house, a car and a small business.

Moreover, be sure of one thing - if the government doesn't get tax from inheritance it will get it from somewhere else. If it ditches inheritance tax or raises the threshold then a few heirs will benefit, with the rest of the country picking up the bill in increased taxes elsewhere.

There is some truth - much truth maybe - in the notion that it is unfair to tax people twice, but that throws up a different can of worms which I talk about here in this blog Thou Shalt Not Inherit. The content of that Blog post could cast a few aspersions over inheritance tax, but I think the real problem with it (to return to my above point) is that it would be much easier to support it if the government spent its money more wisely. Suppose, for example, the government used all the inheritance tax money it gathered to pump finances into the vital areas of the charity sector that have seen too many drastic cuts. That would be a hugely positive use of the money. But while they spend so much money so unwisely it is easy to be down on taxes like the inheritance tax - even though, compared with just about every other tax, it's just about the least bad tax of all in terms of who pays for it, and in terms of incentives against it.

Some Very Interesting Facts Have Emerged About Poverty, Development and Inequality

There aren't many people in the world more informed on development and inequality than Branko Milanovic, the former lead economist in the World Bank's research department. He's just released a very informative article about the most recent findings on poverty, development and inequality. As you'd expect, and as some of us have been going on about for years, the picture shows that the globalised free market is the primary vehicle for improving living standards and lifting people out of poverty. As Milanovic, tells us, "We can actually find out for the first time, from a single and consistent data source, who the real winners and losers of globalization are". Here is perhaps the most significant finding:

"The bottom third, with the exception of the very poorest, became significantly better-off, and many people there escaped absolute poverty."

Yes, that's probably the most important finding. While it's true that, sadly, the bottom 5% haven't crept out of poverty as fast as we'd hoped (they are the ones for whom the free market still hasn't brought about the same benefits as everyone else), the rest of the bottom third saw real incomes rising between 40% to 70%. In fact, look at this data from CarpeDiem, which shows that in 1970 over 25% of the world's population was in poverty. Forty years later that number is as low as 5%.

What the picture doesn't show, of course, is that if we go back to before the Industrial Revolution almost all of the world's population would be in poverty compared with standards of living today. The reason that the bottom third have joined the rest of us and seen their wealth rise so much is because a great many of the poorer workers in emerging countries like China, India, Indonesia and Brazil have crept up into the mid-range as their countries have benefited from globalisation and the ability to trade more freely and openly.

The other thing you may note is that it is, unsurprisingly, the top 1% that have seen their per capita after-tax incomes rise the most. But that is only to be expected, as they are the 1% of the world's population doing most to increase the wealth of those in developing nations. And by the way, this top 1% isn't merely a handful of corporate fat cats piling up the millions - it is a group of about sixty million people earning over $50,000 a year. Given that people don't become wealthy without providing goods and services that people want, and without hiring staff to provide those goods and services, it is not difficult to imagine how much those 1% of people are contributing to the well-being of people in the world and to the rise of living standards across the globe.

You might also like to note this graph below, which shows the more important fuller picture - that as well as the increases of the top 1% and the bottom third, those who sit around the median (those between the 50th and 60th percentile of global income distribution) achieved an 80% real increase in incomes. It may be of interest to you too to note that those that sit between the 75th and 90th percentile of the global income distribution - what in the UK we'd call the working and middle classes - saw no real gains at all.

If, as is happening, the trade associated with the innovations of the richest 1% is helping to increase the scope of the global market and bring the poorest 50% into higher standard of living, we would expect to see those two groups experience income rises, and also the concomitant effect of increase in inequality in the wealthier nations, while at the same time see a decrease in inequality in the poorer nations. This is exactly what we do find.

But although the free market has been the main vehicle that has lifted us out of poverty and improved the vast majority of human beings' standards of living - there is, as mentioned, one group for whom this global success story still hasn't materialised - and that's the poorest 5% of the world's people. It's important that in being glad of all the good things the free market has done we don't forget those that have yet to be beneficiaries - and that we continue to speak out against (and where possible be proactive against) forces that remain a barrier to their progress.

 

A Curious Thing About The Hand Car Wash

I caught a part of what seemed like an interesting discussion on the radio yesterday lunchtime - about the number of Hand Car Wash businesses springing up all over the country. The discussion, hosted by Jeremy Vine, was between two economists - professor Mike Haynes from the University of Wolverhapton, and Duncan Weldon, the BBC's Newsnight economics correspondent - and they both seemed pretty stumped as to why Hand Car Washing services are taking off with such prominence when by now machines should be doing all the work. I don't know why they were so confused - the answer seems to me quite obvious - but before we get onto that, let me briefly explain why such an issue is interpreted as a problem.

On first inspection, generally what's happening with Hand Car Wash businesses is the opposite of what happens everywhere else - as we usually tend to see technological progression instead of retrogression. For example, you wouldn’t see us ditching our washing machines to return to washing our clothes in the sink; you wouldn't see us choosing to cut our grass with shears instead of using the lawnmower; and you wouldn't see us ditching the vacuum cleaner in favour of using a dustpan and brush to get bits off the carpet.

Similarly, with the current technology of car wash machines in garages, technology should have brought about the gradual diminution of the culture of washing cars with a bucket of soapy water and a sponge. Further, although there are a few vehicles for which car wash machines are unsuitable (mine being one), from what I can make out car wash machines use less water and are no more expensive than rates charged by Hand Car Wash businesses.

Consequently, then, drivers ought to have very little need these days for five or six guys washing their car - but yet we find the opposite is happening - Hand Car Wash businesses are thriving, with new ones springing up all the time, giving hundreds of (usually) migrant workers plenty of opportunity to work hard and make a living.

Given the foregoing, in terms of rational behaviour, what's happening shouldn't be happening - and this is because of something in economics called the increase in the capital intensity - which is basically a measure of output, productivity and growth, where machines are more efficient for the economy than the equivalent manual work of low paid workers.  

The economists seemed stumped as to why drivers are choosing men over machines. I have a few suggestions that I think probably explain it - and they are all to do with how hand washes have various advantages over machines:

1) You can sit in your car and not have to bother going into the garage to buy a machine token.

2) Machines do not wash every part of the car body in the way that humans are likely to.

3) Machines probably come with the increased risk of body damage.  

4) Many drivers probably feel that in using hand washers they are supporting low-skilled migrant workers instead of giving money to larger corporations.

Number 4 is flawed, of course, because the people who lose out to the competition are the workers involved in making and maintaining those machines. But numbers 1-3 are pretty sound, and number 4 is also interesting because I would hazard a guess that many drivers would feel they have an incentive to pay migrant workers instead of handing over money to larger firms like Shell, Esso and BP. Here's why. Migrant workers making a living are people that are much less likely to commit crime or claim benefits - and even if it's only at a subconscious level I'll bet that's a factor in people's decision to buy their labour. All in all, then, I don't see the increasing rise of Hand Care Wash services as particularly baffling - they seem like a natural market niche that garage car wash machines don't quite fill to the same extent.