Minimum Wage Rise: Why It's A Bad Idea



The minimum wage debate has emerged again today, with current talk of adding 50p (or in some quarters, a £1) onto the current hourly minimum wage of £6.31. The Liberal Democrats are keen (as ever), largely because their economics sucks; and now David Cameron is keen(ish), largely because (I suspect) he wants to gain some popularity with working class voters. Vince Cable (as ever) shows there’s no end to his arithmetical incompetence by hoping that “the increase will be generous”. As I’ve explained comprehensively in previous Blog posts (specifically here, but also here), this is not to be advised, as every generous increase hits employers disproportionately; it hits small businesses even worse, and it is disastrous for the majority of low-skilled workers on whom the minimum wage has a prohibitive effect (an effect that no politician seems to pick up on).

Worst of all in this is the Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, who has conflated two kinds of madness by wanting the 50p added to the minimum wage, but also wanting people on benefits to work for those benefits. The latter idea isn’t entirely without merit at an intrinsic level, but when being endorsed alongside the endorsement of the minimum wage, it is preposterous in its lack of proficiency.

To see why the minimum wage is a bad thing, let's see why people think it's a good thing. In doing this we’ll then see the absurd inconsistency behind Iain Duncan Smith’s thinking. People think the minimum wage is a good thing because they think that making it illegal to work for less than £6.31 an hour helps unskilled workers in the labour market who aren’t, in their opinion, earning enough (I notice though they usually don't mind under 18s working for £3.21 per hour).  I know why governments allow £3.21 per hour for under 18s - it's supposed to encourage employers to take on youths and help youths start in employment. But that suggests that a young man of 18 needs the work more than, say, a man of 24 who can't find work* because his skills are only worth, say, £5.50 per hour in the employment market (bear in mind that an over-supply of unskilled labour reduces its hourly value).

Quite evidently, as even those with a basic grasp of arithmetic and probability could tell you - to make it illegal to work for less than £6.31 an hour doesn't help unskilled workers whose labour value is £5.50 per hour - it makes the situation harder for them and all those like them (people who far outnumber the beneficiaries of the minimum wage, by the way). To show how absurd it is, suppose the government imposed a mandatory car sales law; from now on it is illegal to sell a car for less than £3000. Jack has a car worth no more than £1500. Do you think he'd welcome the mandatory car sales law? The answer is obviously, no. But minimum wage proponents must, I assume, think it would help Jack because he'll get to sell a car for double what it is worth. In reality though, he won't be able to sell it at all - because the government's mandatory £3000 car-sales law won't make Jack's car be worth more than £1500, nor will it increase anyone's value of it. The law would effectively prohibit Jack from selling his car.

Similarly, the minimum wage doesn't make an unskilled worker whose labour value is £5.50 per hour more desirable or valuable to employers, it simply excludes those workers from the labour market. You may say that what it actually does is force employers to pay people more than they are worth, but labour rates of value are not set by governments, they are set by supply and demand - so in reality those being over-paid are costing the country more. Of course, I understand that we desire people to be paid more (I desire it too) but for every one person the minimum wage helps, it hinders tens of others by making it illegal for them to sell their labour in what is a free market that near-perfectly matches cost of labour with supply of labour and demand for that labour. The stark irony is that by imposing a £6.31 per minimum wage the government must think it's better for someone to be on the dole than working for £6.30 per hour. Somehow I don't think that's really helping all the people for whom that desire is realistic.

The minimum wage is sold as a positive thing because it is supposed to guard against slave labour - but ironically, now Iain Duncan Smith is introducing all these 'work for your jobseekers allowance' policies, he is the generator of slave labour. Does he really think that not allowing someone to work in Tesco's for £6.30 an hour and instead forcing them on the dole where he'll get them to work in Tesco's for their jobseekers allowance is better for them than letting them work for £6.30 an hour? If he does (and the above strongly indicts him on this) then he must be a good candidate for Britain’s most incompetent politician.

Moreover, the minimum wage doesn't actually stop people working for less than the value of £6.31 an hour - it only stops them ‘earning’ less than £6.31 per hour.  To see why, consider that I'm not allowed by law to hire a professional (currently) out-of-work painter to paint my fence for £6.30 an hour, but I'm allowed to do it myself, no doubt doing a worse job than the professional, and being worth less than £6.30 per hour for those skills (although ironically costing me more in time if my working salary in my day job is £15 per hour or £20 per hour). My friend makes cards and sells them for £2.00 each. She makes 3 per hour, which is a £6 hourly rate. The government doesn't stop her doing this - but if she wanted to work in her local card shop for £6.00 per hour the government wouldn't let her. This kind of madness must be exposed more ubiquitously.

The minimum wage is arbitrary in its ethical considerations because it only stops a small proportion of work below £6.31 per hour (I can paint, cook, etc - but I'll bet my painting and cooking is not worth £6.31 per hour to anyone else) and it restricts the thing that makes the free market most fruitful - division of labour in accordance with supply and demand. The benefits of a minimum wage are evident and obvious, but the costs are greater, and much less obvious, which is why you only tend to hear people talking about the benefits, and making out that those benefits alone amount to the policy being efficient. That’s like saying that a burglar breaking in your house and stealing your possessions by smashing your back window is good for you because it gets you to buy a new window with better locks.

Apparently George Osborne is reluctant to increase the minimum wage because it could “destabilise the labour market and damage the coalition’s record on job creation”. I hope, on this issue, his colleague David Cameron listens to him, because he is much more right than his somewhat timorous reservation suggests.

* Why this assumption is made is beyond me, as an unemployed person of 24 is probably in more desperate need for work and a career than an 18 year old.

What Made Us Bigger? Maybe You Weren't Expecting This....

After writing about fat tax in my last Blog post, there were a few comments suggesting that we don't have a nation of over-eaters - we, in fact, have a lot of depressed people turning to junk food, and that obesity is a symptom of psychological maladjustments.

I feel satisfied that I argued that that isn't the case by explaining the cost-benefit analysis related to eating bad foods - and, of course, one only need to look at the vastly increasing sales levels of beer, fast food, junk food and ready meals to see that consumption has been volitional. But to take it further I thought I'd consider what has caused this proliferation in appetite and consumption to gradually increase as it has.

When I was a young boy there was only one size of fries in McDonald's, and the same was true of milkshakes. Nowadays you can have 'medium', 'large', 'extra large, 'supersize' and maybe even larger (forgive me, I don't recall all the variations exactly, but you get the point - portions have grown). This leads to the inevitable 'which came first? - what we could call the 'Chicken' Supreme and 'Egg' McMuffin question. Did increased weight and big demand cause increased meal sizes, or did increased meal sizes cause increased weight and big demand? I'm not sure, but the former explanation strikes me as being more likely, as it doesn't seem probable that McDonald's would have just increased their portions on a whim to get us fat - much more likely that they responded to demand (perhaps there was an increase in two portions bought).

That being the case, though, what caused the cause - that is, what caused the increased weight that caused the surge in demand? Here's a plausible answer, which I'm not sure is right, but it might well be, judging by eating habits I've observed and things I've heard people say. My suspicion is that the primary cause of increased obesity is low fat foods. While that sounds counter-intuitive, I think it stands to reason - after all, we know beyond reasonable doubt that increased contraception is a catalyst in increased unwanted pregnancies, and that the introduction of low strength alcoholic drinks is a catalyst in increased binge drinking*, so it stands to reason that the same would apply to junk foods.

What's probably happening is that low fat or low sugar junk foods make it more rational to be overweight than high fat and high sugar foods. Here's why. If you buy a really high-in-fat meal like a lamb moussaka from Tesco's or a doner kebab from your local kebab shop, you've probably added as many grams of fat to your body that several bags of crisps or ready made pizzas would add onto you. Tom might not think it worth putting on those extra grams of fat for the pleasure of just one lamb moussaka or donor kebab, but if for the same amount of weight gain he can eat 3 ready made pizzas and 3 bags of crisps he might well think that those extra grams are worth it for the totality of pleasure that all that junk food brings. Suppose, though, that a lot of people would still rather eat more healthily that follow Tom's thinking - even 3 ready made pizzas and 3 bags of crisps might not tempt them. But then along comes low fat crisps and low fat pizza, along with low-fat desserts, low sugar soft drinks, and so forth. Then things change. Now the deal is; for a few grams of added fat, Tom can have a lot more pleasure, eating loads of low fat crisps, pizzas and desserts - and with this possibility in front of him there would come a point when he thought it worth the weight gain for such a lot of pleasure.

So, although it's rather counter-intuitive, I think, along with rising incomes, less exercise, more leisure time and possibly fewer smokers (these are all lateral factors, I'd say) the most likely explanation for increased obesity might well be an increase in available low-fat and low-sugar foods and drinks - amounting to a tipping point whereby many people have gone on to prefer a sustained weight-inducing indulgence with the pay-off of plenty of eating pleasure, and in the process being prepared to add a bit of weight around the hips, stomach and chin. 

* The reason being: contraception means safer sex, which means more people having sex, which then increases the number of unwanted pregnancies (apply this logic to low strength alcoholic drinks and the same applies)

** Photo courtesy of lifewithgreens.com

Don't Nationalise The Rail Industry!

 

If you're a Brit reading this, it's a pretty safe bet to say you'd hate to see the NHS privatised, wouldn't you? I know what you mean - it's a wonderful thing, isn't it - national insurance contributions making health service free at the point of delivery. Although personally I wouldn't want to see it privatised in one foul swoop just yet, there aren’t many things I want to see remain in the hands of the government.

You see, in net terms even the health service would be more efficient if it were privatised (take Singapore's health service as the nearest case in point) with people able to keep their money instead of paying it in NI contributions. The NHS costs are so high primarily because it is so inefficiently used - and the reason it is so inefficiently used is because it’s free at the point of delivery, so there's no financial incentive to minimise one's health and well-being.

To give you an illustration, imagine the government nationalised all food and asked us all to only eat what we needed - we'd be a nation of severe overeaters (we are already, and that's when we pay for our food). That said, despite the health service ideal, where incentives are locked in place, we just don't have the collective wherewithal to optimise this model, which is why I favour a State-funded NHS.

In just about every other instance in the UK, in just about every decade, privatisation has proved far more efficient for the economy and for the taxpayer than services run by the government, or services too heavily subsidised – and that’s an almost ineluctable law in economics. The reasons are standard textbook stuff.  Privatised companies have a much greater incentive than government-run companies to spend efficiently and reduce profligacy.

Not only are governments wasteful (people generally spend other people's money more carelessly than their own) - they do business in accordance with party politics and political pressures from the electorate, as well as subsiding or bailing out failing industries. Furthermore, investment in the rail industry is more proficient when governments aid private companies rather than running it themselves, as economic management that extends long-term is not always good for point-scoring in general elections.

Shareholders are good agents for profit-inducement, which means you usually get better managers in the private sector. Where there is inefficiency, the best recourse is a takeover or switching to competing forces, not State bailouts which are so often inefficient, party-based and largely ideology-driven.

But most of all, increase in competition is proven to be the greatest catalyst for efficiency and improved services. Competition is hard in the rail industry (even these regional franchises don't entirely guard against monopoly power) - but the government needs to do more to engender competition, not take steps backwards to the old days of nationalisation.

Lastly, profits make for a tiny proportion of the rail industry's investors - for example, staff costs alone are about 25% compared with 3-5% profits. The politicians in favour of nationalisation fail at basic rationality when they allude to a public sector profit in one region as evidence for greater efficiency than the private sector in other regions (that’s as injudicious as saying that all restaurants should be nationalised because city hall’s restaurant makes more profit for local government than privately owned restaurants in the nearby high street).

And they fail at basic arithmetic when they count railway labour costs (always the headline-grabbing ‘jobs’) as part of the benefits rather than part of the costs. Those 25% staff costs are borne by the taxpayer in public sectors and by the company in private sectors - but it doesn’t end there – not only are they costs that are only borne by nationalisation – with government expenditure we have to include pension contributions, sick pay, holiday pay, human resources costs, and so forth that aren't factored into the balance sheet, they are costs that carry on through all employees’ working life and henceforth thereafter – and it is either disingenuous or plain incompetent to omit them from the enquiry.

No, while nationalisation has the occasional success story - this usually occurs when the State has come in to take over from a failing private sector firm (and please note: a bad private firm does not logically necessitate a slightly better public sector agent, it necessitates a much better private firm) – history has continually shown that it is not to be preferred to the much more efficient market of competition, enterprise and diversity.

 

EDIT TO ADD: As is usually the case, the measure of success is in the evidence. Here's evidence that the number of rail passengers has doubled in the times of privatisation, following years of decline under the State: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Great_Britain#mediaviewer/File:GBR_rail_passenegers_by_year.gif

Risky Flights Should Be Your Choice

Having seen all the disruption to air travel that has been caused by the inclement weather over Christmas, I look forward to the day when planes undertake commercial fights without the need for any staff (it will happen, as technology increase becomes swifter and exponentiation sees that the present innovations will be eclipsed by the future). Here's why. I find it unsettling that decisions are made to cancel trips irrespective of the wishes of the passengers - and I anticipate the day when the decision to fly in bad weather or stay at home is made only by the people doing the flying.

There will be many for whom the increased weather threat diminishes their willingness to board a plane, but equally there will be many for whom the increased risk is dwarfed by the pleasures and benefits of taking the trip. Consider Tom who is travelling to New York to be at his daughter's wedding and give her away; Dick who is boarding the plane for that career-changing job interview; and Harry who is crossing the Atlantic for the first time to meet his prospective beloved with whom he's been conversing online for the past six months - those people, and many like them, are being denied the opportunity to take a risk they may well feel is worth taking. 

When announcements are made that flights have been cancelled, all travellers are inconvenienced, but the second, less circumspect, group of people (the Toms, Dicks and Harrys of this world) are inconvenienced more than the first group, because they are the ones who would have still taken the risk had they have been given the choice. It's true that bad weather increases a passenger's chances of not making the trip safely, but for those who consider the risk worth taking, a commercial flight that affords those that want to travel the chance to do so and those that don't the chance to stay at home can only be a good thing.

How Mild Preferences Can Lead To All-Out Segregation

I once wrote a Blog post on how riots actually start. Today I want to turn to someone else who has found the answer to a similar issue: Why do we have major racial/sexual/religious segregation when at an individual micro level the motives and prejudices are much less distinguishable than at the macro level?

Nobel Prize winning economist Thomas Schelling found out why; he showed that even a tiny amount of discrimination can lead to an almost total segregation. Schelling used coins on graph paper (or, if you prefer, pieces on a chess board for simplicity) to exhibit this phenomenon; he placed pennies and nickels in different patterns on the board to represent black people and white people. He showed that if you remove 20 random coins and add 5 random coins back again you have a situation ripe for racial segregation (see figure (a) above).

Suppose that each coin had a rule - it no longer wished to be positioned in a place on the graph in which it was outnumbered by other non-similar coins by more than 2 to 1. Schelling showed that by moving each coin away, consistent with that desired rule, that even from such mild preferences it creates a major segregation (see figure (b) above).

Rather like when Charles Booth's infamous poverty map showed how London's once poor estates are largely the ones that have remained poor, Thomas Schelling put in a lot of mathematical groundwork to show that, just like the coin model, tension-filled segregation does not have to be incubated by, or even gestated by, extreme prejudice and ill-feeling - even mild prejudices do often eventuate in all-out segregation.

Of course, Schelling's model was very much centred on actual neighbourhoods with geographical proximity. But nowadays, with online global connectivity, I suspect those tensions are not confined to the neighbourhood or local estate - they are very much part of a wider dynamical tension that stratifies into tribal groups comprising many people who've never even met each other.

A Fun Game To Show When You're Not In Control

I don't usually feel the need to Blog-share my conversations in philosophy forums, but this one from just before Christmas is worth re-printing because it provides an excellent example of how people are under the illusion that they can control things over which they actually have no control.

Here was my opening question (based on a similar problem by MIT's Richard Stanley):

You meet a billionaire with a well shuffled pack of cards. There are 52 cards in total - 26 have a £ on them and 26 have a zero on them. The billionaire is going to slowly turn the cards face up, one by one. You can raise your hand at any point — either just before he turns over the 1st card, or the 2nd, or the 3rd, etc, - and the moment you raise your hand, you win £1 million pounds if the next card he turns over has a £ on it, and you win nothing if the next card he turns over has a zero on it.

Prior to the game starting, what’s your best strategy for maximising your chances of winning £1 million pounds?

There were quite a few profferings of strategies, such as "wait until 51 cards have been flipped", and "wait until you've had more zeros than £s", and then I gave the answer:

James Knight

The answer is, prior to the game starting, your strategy is inconsequential - you have a 50% chance whatever you decide. You can plan to raise your hand the first time you’ve seen more zeros than £s, or the first time you’ve seen 1, 2, 3, 20 or whatever zeros, but your chance to win will still be 50%.

Some people were not convinced - they insisted that they had control over the probability. Here's how the conversation ensued:

Alex Schamenek

James, if what you say is true then card counting wouldn't work. It does. You are wrong.

James Knight

Alex, I used to be a professional gambler. Card counting does work by increasing the probability, but my OP challenge is not the same as card counting. What you've argued is essentially the same as arguing that because you can't run a car on orange juice you can't enjoy it as a health drink!

Louis le Hutin

James, I am interested in the proof of your statement. It is trivially clear for the first round, but it is not so clear in the next ones.

Johnny Coroama

The best strategy is to -Assign the deck values of +1 or -1 (+1 for each 0, and -1 for each £) - after a running count of +1 or -1 - wait for a statistical disparity -and choose the opposite of the count, if the deck was truly shuffled the higher the deck count is in either direction the greater the chance that the next card will be the opposite, this obviously doesn't work in large models, but its perfect for smaller models of guessing.

James Knight

Louis, the strategy must be decided prior to beginning, which means any strategy you decide prior to starting is not going to increase your chances one jot. After play has begun things change, but they can equally change in your favour or against you, and you won't know which beforehand.

Louis le Hutin

Johnny, I agree... to a degree. It might be a better strategy to wait until the difference is significant (let's say, 60-40),

James Knight

Louis, you can't say 'it might be better to wait' - it's a 50:50 whether it's better to wait, which is why I asked what’s your best strategy for maximising your chances - there is no strategy for maximising your chances.

Johnny Coroama

Your count will give you a good indication, I'd say around +6 or -6, your looking at .60 percent chance the next card is the opposite, if indeed the deck was shuffled

James Knight

Johnny - see my last post.

Johnny Coroama

Picking toward the beginning is bad, picking toward the end is bad

James Knight

It makes no difference Johnny.

Johnny Coroama

If you want a statistical advantage it sure does

Louis le Hutin

James, I agree, if you are talking about the FIRST move. Things change once you get past the first move.

James Knight

Louis, Johnny - there are no advantages because the odds of having an advantage at any one point are the same - 50:50 each game. In other words, you don't have any idea whether the game in which you partake is going to facilitate the run you want or not - it's 50-50.

Johnny Coroama

You are dealing with 52 cards, if the first 26 cards are 0's you don't think you have an advantage guessing what the last 26 are going to be ?

Louis le Hutin

I disagree, James, perhaps because I am a Bayesian. Past information DOES give you an advantage. Come on, if the 26 0 cards have appeared you have a sure bet.

James Knight

Yup guys. And if you choose the winning lottery number, you have a 100% chance of winning the jackpot. Do you want to conclude that you’ll win the jackpot 100% of the time?

You're both confused. J

Johnny Coroama

Exactly, so deduce from the sure bet, statistical disparity, look for the disparity by assigning values, and then act when the disparity increases the odds of your guess

James Knight

Your 26 card point is irrelevant to strategy - it would be a run that bore no correlation to strategy. The odds of the first 26 cards being £ is the same as the odds of the first 26 cards being zero. But in one case after the 26 cards are shown you have a 100% of winning and in the other case after the 26 cards are shown you have a 0% chance of winning. The average of 0 and 100 is 50, so it's still a 50:50, even if you could guarantee that you had a 1/2 shot at your desired run.

James Knight

Johnny >>Exactly, so deduce from the sure bet, statistical disparity,

look for the disparity by assigning values, and then act when the disparity

increases the odds of your guess<<

This won't work for exactly the same reason that planning to go and pick the winning lottery numbers at the weekend won't work.

Johnny Coroama

Lol no James, you are wrong. The number of cards remaining is not 50:50. not in small models - pointless to argue with you any further - its a rather simple concept

James Knight

Johnny you just don't understand - anyone knows that if you reduce the number of zeros then you have a better chance of winning. But everyone also ought to know that there is no strategy for reducing the number of zeros!!

Johnny Coroama

James you are confusing conditional probability / Heads and Tales - with propositional logic

James Knight

I'm not, I'm really not!

Johnny Coroama

Since your scenario deals with the proposition that 52 cards are in a deck, half of which are 0's and the other half £ - statistical disparity gives someone better then 50:50 chance

James Knight

You're wrong. After the hand is raised, you might as well just pull the last card of the deck as these events are statistically identical. I think you'll have no trouble seeing that one cannot get better odds than 50-50 on the last card, so one cannot get better odds with any strategy.

Louis le Hutin

Indeed, if you can stay your hand until you have a good chance of winning, and you have no adverse consequences if you stay your hand, I don't see how not staying your hand until you have good odds is a losing strategy

James Knight

Because, Louis, the odds of your game being favourable or non-favourable are 50:50, so there is no strategy to aid you in this.

There were no further replies to my final post, which hopefully means that Louis and Johnny came to realise the error in their thinking. As it happens, here is an illustration that I wrote but ended up not needing to share in the philosophy forum - one which gives even clearer exhibition to how there is no prior strategy better than the 50:50 probability. 

Suppose we are now going to start one game, with two players - Louis and Johnny - each trying to win £1 million pounds from the billionaire, who will give them £1 million each if they both get a £ result. Louis's strategy is to take the last card (which is the same as taking the first card). The odds of Louis winning are 50/50. Johnny thinks he's cuter - his strategy is to wait for a favourable situation where there are more £ cards left than zero cards. Then he pounces!

Suppose Johnny gets his good run (which is itself a 50:50, as if there were a second game he has 50% chance of not getting a favourable run). When Johnny raises his hand, the probability of the next card being a winner is the same as the last card being a winner, because the deck is shuffled, so it's still the same odds for Louis and Johnny at any stage of the game. Johnny, despite all his plotting, will never be better off than Louis, who agreed from the very beginning to take the last card with 50/50 odds.

Johnny thinks he has an advantage because he thinks that he might get a favourable run of cards that increases his chance of winning above 50%. This is true, but if that were to happen, Louis's chances have increased by the exact same amount too, proving that Johnny's strategy confers no advantage over Louis.  

This shows beyond any doubt that there is no possible prior strategy that you can use to increase your chances of winning.

How to save yourself time and still give everyone a better Christmas card!

Just an idea off the top of my head; it may not be to your preference - but if you are one of the many people who sends loads of Christmas cards and takes the time to compose something worthwhile in each of them, you might like to take a bit of time to write one brilliant message and encourage everyone you know to do the same. That way, you capitalise on economies of scale by producing one excellent card and then copying it for all your friends and colleagues, and you greatly reduce the average resources consumed per card, while still increasing the average quality of card you give to each person. If everyone else signs up too then you greatly increase the quality of cards you receive too because each one given to you will have the best message the sender could come up with.

Yay For Big Cities!



Not exactly big hitters here, but a couple of amusing things caught my eye today - both to do with Green politics. Firstly, this social commentator in Australia causing a stir with his above placard.

This fellow makes no sense in his provocative placard-graph. If the distance from the black line to the red line is supposed to represent tax revenue (the vertical line segment that descends from B), and the longer vertical line segment extending to the red line is supposed to represent financial restitution paid by the government - then all the placard is conveying is that if you pay x in carbon taxes and return x + y from the government you'll be better off.

Well, no kidding Sherlock - this guy's a genius at stating the obvious. What he doesn't state - the thing which actually is supposed to be an argument for higher carbon taxes - is why that makes increased carbon taxes a good thing.  Swap 'carbon taxes' with anything - food, alcohol, cigarettes, petrol, cosmetics - and the same still applies - if you pay x in food, alcohol, cigarettes, petrol or cosmetics taxes and return x + y from the government then that tax is deemed to be good for the consumer.

 

This fails to account for the fact that what's good for the consumer has to be offset by a cost to the provider - but we'll overlook that. The real trouble is, as anyone who has even a basic understanding of GCSE maths can tell you, such a working system requires us to suspend the laws of arithmetic in order to make it fly, because the government cannot create wealth, it can only transfer resources from one place to another.

The other vital thing he overlooks is that carbon is, quite obviously, a source of many benefits (they're called 'positive externalities'). All grounds for sensible taxation are based on negative externalities (which are vastly overstated - as I explain here in this Blog), but since neither positive nor negative externalities appear on his placard, and not the hint of a net cost-benefit analysis, the best I can say about it is that it makes no coherent arguments for increased carbon taxation.

 

It's the kind of graph that would only be a good case for increased carbon taxes if it replaced reality with fantasy and had completely different information mapped onto it. Which is like saying that if you interpret 'Natalie Bennett' to mean 'Clint Eastwood' and 'Russian ballet dancer' to mean 'Hollywood actor' then Natalie Bennett is a Russian ballet dancer.

The other issue today that I've seen is one raised by a couple of MEPs bemoaning big cities, and how they are the main causes of over-pollution. Their focal point is along the lines of "per square mile big cities are the most environmentally damaging areas in the world". That's true, but to use that as a criticism of cities is about as ill-conceived as criticising big hospitals over smaller ones because they have more ill people in them. It is pointless trying to measure environmental efficiency on a square mile bases - it has to be measured on a 'per person' basis.

When this is done you'll find that on a 'per person' basis, big cities are, in fact, much more environmentally efficient than rural areas. Cities like New York, London, Tokyo, and so on are more densely populated; they have more people walking or cycling; more people living closer to work, the shops, and restaurants; more people using public transport, a more environmentally friendly infrastructure, and more compact accommodation (which means on average they own fewer items).

A simple thought experiment will prove the point; count the exact population of London and find the equivalent number of people in rural areas, and see if you can fit all the rural people's property, land and possessions into an area as small as the area in London that houses its inhabitants (you won't be able to). And while you're onto it, compare the average weekly petrol, gas, coal and wood consumption of a family in rural Suffolk with a family who live in Westminster or Manhattan (you know which one will be highest on average).

Far from being the environmentally damaging leviathans that is too often claimed, cities are the most environmentally efficient habitats on earth. And that's to say nothing of the other numerous benefits to cities - benefits that make millions of people want to live in them, and benefits that make the price of property in them skyrocket.

Tests Don't Reveal Half As Much As They Claim

The recent furore about the so-called under-performing UK children at school (the Pisa tests reports) may be an accurate indictment of British children compared with their so-called academically superior Asian counterparts, or it may be a drastically exiguous and ineffectual appraisal of the state of our young. Whichever it is, you won't find it in the report because it omits the most important part of the enquiry.

Now I'm all for our pupils attaining the highest scholastic achievements possible, but what fails this report is the absence of two important questions that those involved either forgot to ask, or deliberately omitted because they knew they couldn't answer.

Here's what they should have asked as the fulcrum of their enquiry:

1) What is the optimum scholastic level for a child in complementarity with other non-scholastic skills and abilities within the context of their country?

2) Are the UK children anomalously under that optimum, or are top-performing Asian pupils anomalously over that optimum?

Factored into the answers to those two questions are the signposts to every other important question about the state of the world's youth - parental love, emotional intelligence, emotional well-being, not being over-pressured to attain high academic achievement, standard of living, freedom of thought, levels of repression, contentment, happiness, perspective, social ability, friendships, creative abilities, enjoyment of youth, ratio of jobs to skills, and ability to develop in the most psychologically fruitful way.

Without asking the two important questions above - there is no prelude to considering the other things that matter. No one is denying the importance of reading, writing and arithmetic - but it's a shame all of these other highly important factors above were missed in an attempt to focus only on test scores.

No One Should Be Entitled To Their Opinions

When I was a young boy my parents tried to instil some wisdom in me by telling me that while I might not agree with everything I hear or read, everyone is still entitled to their opinion. When I got a bit older and found out some of the absurd and preposterous things many people believe - young earth creationism, scientology, homeopathy, astrology, and most religions, to name but a few, I soon saw that my parents were wrong; not everyone is entitled to their opinion - in fact, no one is, and it is actually better for people if they have no sense of entitlement towards any opinions.

Here's why. Regarding our beliefs, there are two kinds of legitimate entitlements, which we'll call 'rights' - and by ‘our beliefs’ I mean propositions related to facts about how the world is, not, of course, personal tastes like food, music and books (of which more in a later Blog).The two kinds of legitimate entitlements are; the right to something binding, and the right to not be restricted to hold beliefs and express them. Naturally there are grey areas in both of those entitlements, but for simplicity's sake; in the case of binding rights, we'd say that if Jack fills up a trolley full of goods in Sainsbury's with the intention of taking them home then Sainsbury's is entitled to receive payment for those goods. And in the case of the right to not be restricted, we'd say that however absurd or untypical Jack's view is, he has the right to not be restricted in being able to hold that view - but that that right comes with the understanding that others have the right to challenge that view.

What underwrites this point is that we do not choose our beliefs, nor do we choose the force behind what those beliefs are. Opinions are based on beliefs, but beliefs come involuntarily from other people, and from personal experience of the world, so our opinions are, to the greatest extent, beyond our control and cannot be changed artificially. If I point a gun to your head and tell you that I will shoot you if you don't believe that Australia borders Mexico, you still would not be able to arrive at the belief that Australia borders Mexico, however hard you tried, because it is not factual, and we can't trick ourselves into holding views we don't honestly hold. You may lie in the hope that you don't get shot, but that's not the same as actually believing it.

When you change your mind or learn something new, it is because you have been given fresh information that, in your view, yields to reason, compelling argument and evidence-based rationale. In other words, all opinions are held because they are thought to be consistent with evidence and facts about the real world. It is precisely for this reason that no one should be entitled to their opinions, because a claim of entitlement to hold an opinion is, in fact, only a claim to retain an opinion and not have it shown to be wrong - which basically means it's an entitlement to retain opinions contrary to reason, compelling argument and evidence-based rationale .

If you really were entitled to your opinion you would be restricting others from improving that opinion by reasoned argument and evidence-based demonstrations - you would be like a man who has decided to imprison himself in his own home, turn off his electricity, and live a life of self-sufficiency, not allowing himself to even 'hear' of the alternatives. By not stepping outside his front door he doesn't just consign himself to eat, drink and wear only what currently resides in his house, he denies others the ability to bring competition to his ideas by offering new potential considerations and alternative perspectives. Of course, everyone is free to reject any idea if it doesn't make sense to them, but by staying at home and being self-sufficient they only deny themselves the opportunity to hear new ideas and opinions.

If you look at the two kinds of rights I mentioned a moment ago, you'll see that neither applies to entitlement to hold an opinion. You have no binding contract with anyone that disallows them from offering arguments against your views, and you have no business claiming a restriction on others by imposing a duty on them to let you retain your views. The idea that a person is entitled to their opinion is a bit like a self-sufficient hermit being entitled to have no competition for better goods. While we wouldn't want to restrict his ability to be a self-sufficient hermit, we'd be foolish to argue that to protect this man from new ideas and fresh options is best thing for him.

Remember, this is not an insistence that he should take advantage of these options offered to him - that would be as bad as restricting him from his choices - it is simply a claim that this man is no better for having closed himself off from the options. In fact, vindication for his self-sufficiency rests on, and is enhanced by, his having knowledge of the things he chose to reject in favour of his preferred choices. Similarly, beliefs, views and opinions are not stronger by being held from behind a wall that seeks to block out intellectual and epistemological expansion, they are made stronger when they have ran the gauntlet of rigour along with all competing beliefs, views and opinions and still come out on top. For those reasons, no one is entitled to a belief, anymore than a monopoly power is entitled to operate without any competition. If beliefs are held with a sense of entitlement they are held that way to put up a wall against competing ideas, just as a monopoly power operates to eliminate the competition, and thus denies people alternative choices.

Those who want to exclaim that everyone is entitled to their opinion don't actually mean that at all - they merely mean everyone is entitled to not be forced to depart from an opinion. Those who declare that they want to be entitled to hold an opinion are pretty much always those who hold opinions that are contrary to reason, compelling argument and evidence-based rationale - hence they are the people asking to be precluded from intellectual and epistemological expansion, which is no human entitlement or right at all. As I said earlier, just like a monopoly power trying to subjugate competition, in retaining the right to not be forced to depart from an opinion, they are claiming the right to protect their opinions from reason, compelling argument and evidence-based rationale, which, for the good of the human race is something we ought to resist. Given the extent to which people with absurd and preposterous views try to pass on those views by manipulation, distortion of facts, and suppression of contra-considerations, I would argue that the right to an open and honest enquiry is much more of a human entitlement than the right to believe nonsensical things that mislead people and cause pockets of human progression to atrophy.

Far from being a vehicle of merit, the notion that everyone is entitled to their own opinions is, to me, quite socially noxious, because it is an incubator for preposterous, repressive and manifestly false beliefs to survive with less of a challenge than is required. What this notion fosters is a pseudo-politeness whereby people believe that in the spirit of good manners it is favourable to build gilded cages into which people can keep their beliefs sacred, and not have those beliefs subjected to proper scrutiny. Just about all false and stultifying beliefs retain their endurance only because of the way their most influential exponents shield off the majority of adherents from an honest and open enquiry - be they cults, marginalised organisations or religio-political groups in developing countries that are able to repress and dominate their people.

Due to this general outward pseudo-politeness this means someone can live in another country for years, even doing a university degree, without having his or her often absurd beliefs challenged (I say 'outward' because inwardly those beliefs are often felt to be ridiculous, which only foments dishonesty). If there were a greater selection pressure on beliefs that are thought to be absurd it wouldn't be an outrage on the people believing ridiculous things - it would be a helpful, sometimes life-enhancing liberation, just as saving a drowning person or rescuing someone trapped in a mine is life-enhancing. The sooner we develop a much more naturally comfortable (and socially acceptable) way of entitlement to question and enquire rather than perpetuating this entitlement to belief we’ll find increased selection pressure on the more preposterous beliefs, views and onions in the world, and the potential liberation of those who adhere to them, and by extension, the human race.

 

* Photo courtesy of teenmentalhealth.org

The Light of Greatness Is Always Refracted Through A Prism Of Flaws, Imperfections and Weaknesses

In response to the positive tributes associated with Nelson Mandela's passing, quite a few people have retorted with "Ah, but don't forget, Mandela wasn't all great, he was a terrorist responsible for quite a few deaths too". Their complaint seems to be along the lines of:

Don’t just focus on the good that people do, consider the bad too, and have a balanced view.

Indeed, having a balanced view of every situation is a wise thing to have. The trouble is, in the above case, what seems like an attempt at balancing is actually a case of toppling over by leaning too far in a direction of misjudgement. What you're seeing when people heap praise on, and confer generous tributes towards, icons like Nelson Mandela is the human propensity to focus on the most arrestive and legacy-inducing parts of public personalities - the things for which they are most famous or infamous.

What we usually see is that the more prominent the arrestive parts, the less attention we see given to the parts that don't fit in with that picture. Few people have read DH Lawrence's The White Peacock, or George Eliot's Romola or Charlotte Bronte's Shirley, but almost everyone has read, or at least knows a bit about, Sons and Lovers, The Mill on the Floss and Jane Eyre respectively. Some people's arrestive moments are in the beginning of their career, some in the latter part, and some are scattered about from start to finish. Everyone remembers Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, Touch Of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons and The Lady From Shanghai, but few people ever mention those awful 1970s movies he made when he was, by his own admission, simply taking any film role in trying to earn a living.

In fact, Orson Welles' career illustrates the point of selectiveness very well. Suppose Welles' pre-1970s work was airbrushed out of history - he'd only be thought of as an overweight, ham actor who hangs around in low-budget, second rate films. Everyone who hadn't seen his great works would be left with a skewed impression. Equally those who only remembered his great works might heap praise on him that was too selective.

Most people with a balanced view tend to realise that actors, musicians, writers, historical figures and political leaders are, just like all humans, a varied blend of qualities and faults. Selectiveness is a tool with which to shape the kind of impression we want to have. In the case of major extremes, like Hitler or Pol Pot or Stalin, their bad legacy is so prominent that most people hardly even attempt to find praiseworthy things. Similarly, in the case of Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela most people (certainly in the last couple of decades) confer only praise and admiration. 

Public figures that are put forward as epoch-making paragons of virtue are a complex consideration, because I don't think pedestals are where men and women belong, and people just can't be expected to live up to being saints or heroes, unless one wishes to be imprudently selective. Look at some of the names aside from King and Mandela that regularly appear on 'Heroes of the 20th Century' lists - Winston Churchill, Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi,  Dalai Lama, Charles De Gaulle, FD Roosevelt - one would have to be pretty ahistorical to miss all the flaws in them.

Nelson Mandela cited Gandhi as being a big influence in his changing from violent politics to peaceful politics. But it is sloppy thinking to simply heap praise on Gandhi as a paragon of peace without understanding what's beneath the surface too. Gandhi's outward endorsements of peaceable solution masked an inward Hindi-secular extremism that facilitated the wedge-driving between Indian Hindus and Indian Muslims.  The insanely hurried separation of India and Pakistan and the outrageously bad timing (for which Churchill must take blame too) led to nigh-on one million deaths in the Hindu and Muslim factions**.

This shows two things; firstly, it shows the calamitous effects in trying to attain an increase in order without factoring in the spectre of disorder that bridges one's aims and ultimate fruition of those aims; and secondly, and most crucially in light of Nelson Mandela's passing, it shows that even the so-called brightest lights in history are flawed, imperfect, inconsiderate, parochial, and prone to mistakes.

My personal view - which is built upon a personal interpretation - is that Nelson Mandela is one of the greatest people in modern history - and I say that in spite of the fact that he was part of one of the more extreme factions of the ANC, and even in spite of the fact that he became embroiled in terrorist activities that brought about the deaths of innocent civilians. I think for our own good, terms like 'greatness' should be conferred sparingly, and it is clear that humans have a tendency to over-inflate people. By that measure, all heroic figures are going to be overrated. But equally, if conferred greatness comes with the expectation that the person has no stains or blemishes then it is pure moonshine.

Greatness to me is having the courage to wrestle yourself out of the often tragic clutches of being human and rise above your circumstances to see the world through a new pair of eyes. In choosing to combat the National Party's oppressive and ultra-violent racial segregation with quid pro quo violence, Nelson Mandela was, I suspect, doing what most of us would do if we'd been brought up with his background and found ourselves under that kind of dehumanising oppression. In finding the courage to forgive his enemies, not seeking revenge, responding to hate with love and grace, and using his post-incarceration Presidential power as a vehicle for good (even that journey was a work in progress), Nelson Mandela took a path that, in my experience, few people have the courage to take.

As the quote on the above photo shows, Nelson Mandela came from a background in which he was taught to hate. It is easy to hate when you've been taught only to hate. It is much harder to love when you've been taught only to hate. Many people who've been taught to love can't even love. To learn to love when you've been taught mostly hate is something I fancy that most of us would (and do) fail at repeatedly.

If anything is the defining factor in 'heroism' or 'greatness', it is, for me, the fact that those who find the courage to forgive enemies, and employ love and grace and kindness, are notable by their scarcity. Nelson Mandela was one of those people - he was flawed, irresponsible, misjudged and reactionary, just like every one of us - but in having the courage and wisdom to supplant one kind of life-ethos for a much better one, and offer that better alternative up as a light for the world to see, he showed that he is a good candidate for being called a 'great' person.

That's why I think those who have responded to the reverence, approbation and encomiums with "Ah, but don't forget, Mandela wasn't all great, he was a terrorist" have misjudged why many of us hold him in such high esteem. I consider him great for his tenacity in wrestling himself out of the often tragic clutches of being human and having the courage to learn from his mistakes and pursue goodness - not due to any human propensity towards faux-lionisation, because we know that really great people are the ones that know they are not worthy of the pedestals onto which overly-tendentious people try to place them.

That's also why those often overly-inflated celebrity figures who've lined up to eulogise with references to their own memories of Mandela, their joining his cause, and the pride they had in calling him their friend, are a mixed bag really. That's not what greatness means to me; it is not a flame from which we can be also made great by its glow - it is more like a mirror into which we cast our gaze and see a repertoire of goodness and badness, and see that the goodness reflects back more prominently because of the mirror's courageous attempt to exhibit it.

* Photo courtesy of quotespick.com

** Many of Gandhi's intentions seemed noble, but at the same time he did seem to think of Indian Muslims as second class citizens, and he was hugely irresponsible to the tune of mass slaughter, because it was obvious what cantonisation would bring about, given how the populations were spread, and the extant violence between communal groups (many provoked by Jinnah).  Gandhi was very committed to the course of non-violence in overturning British Rule, and that rubbed off on Nelson Mandela, as were many of the British Cabinet (for self-serving reasons), but the Indian Independence Act of 1947 led to the carving up of a nation that was so manifestly going to lead to bloodshed, because since at least the end of the 19th century there had been extreme, far-right and sectarian Hindu and Muslim political groups that were hell bent on destroying the opposing groups.

Apocalyptic Chickens Coming Home To Roost

Last weekend I was in a car that could be programmed to park itself - a feat that would have been unimaginable a century ago. Of course, the irony is, 'unimaginable' is precisely the wrong word because by 'unimaginable' I actually mean something like: 'only imaginable because of our ability to conflate science and fiction to create science fiction'. As technology continues to enhance our lives, it's evident that science fiction and empirical science are interesting bedfellows, engaged in an on-off love affair.

Sometimes science fiction becomes scientific reality, as in the case of self-driving cars, which would have been purely fictional in previous decades (other things that spring to mind are robot limbs, invisibility, space-travel, cloning and shape-shifting, to name a few). And sometimes scientific discovery fuels the imagination for science fiction, as in the case of special relativity, quantum physics, electromagnetism, genetic viruses and evolution by natural selection.

Some people, though, take their considerations too far. Influenced by a few blockbuster sci-fi films (Terminator 3 springs to mind, although I'm sure there are others) some people express concern that our robot creations will one day take on a life of their own and develop or evolve a level of sinister malevolence that will engender world domination and bring ultimate doom on mankind.

The people worried about this are confusing fiction with reality. It makes no sense to talk of human-created machines being more sinister than humans, in the same way that it makes no sense to talk of a beaver dam being more proficient than the capabilities of beavers, or a Thomas Hardy novel that's more romantically tragic than the author could produce with his own creative mind.

When it comes to the man-machine matrix, the worst we could create in machine-form is limited to the worst that is in us - there is no possibility of computers doing anything more sinister or destructive than humans could construct themselves. So when people worry about future robot creations precipitating our doom, they are really worried about other humans precipitating our doom - which, if history is anything to go by, isn't an entirely unrealistic fear.

The Moral Limit: Are We Really Capable Of Anything?

In my last Blog I looked at some of the atrocious acts humans commit - violence, rape, murder and paedophilia, to name but a few - and I asked whether we humans are capable of committing those unspeakable crimes for which we vilify others. The answer to the question is, of course we are. Here's how we can know.

The best way to tackle such a question philosophically is start with an extreme case that evinces the point you want to make, and then lessen the extremity until your argument is demonstrated at a more reasonable level.

Let's start with the following extreme situation to show that all humans are potential child-abusers. If you were compelled under duress to choose between A) Abusing a child yourself for 10 minutes or B) Witnessing a million people abuse a million children for 30 minutes then torturing them with red hot pokers and killing them, I'm pretty sure under those conditions that just about everyone would increase their chances of choosing to abuse a child for 10 minutes.

That extreme scenario demonstrates that everyone 'could' be a child-abuser under 'some' conditions. But clearly that situation is not an ordinary circumstance - and mostly we like to consider only what we feel to be in the realms of the norm and the realistic. This is fair enough, except for one potential problem; life is full of vagaries, and there are plenty of potential emotional tipping points dotted about, not just in extreme scenarios, but in everyday life too, making it very hard to say what is realistic in any ‘one size fits all’ model. The problem is, when asking what we humans are capable of, we find the question is the wrong question to ask if it is left in isolation from context-dependent behaviour-altering scenarios. Even the mildest humans can be incited to lose their temper or become violent when pushed too far - like, say, if they felt threatened, or saw harm being done to their family (we've all seen how people change beyond recognition when confronted with a burglar in their house) - and similarly, if any of us found ourselves fighting for our lives in a Middle Eastern civil war or an African genocide, then I don't think it's unreasonable to say that all humans are capable of murder, despite all having different tipping points.

Moral capability leads to circularity

Yet although this paints a clear picture of how life can get its teeth into our varying psychological and emotional states with the slings and arrows of human experience, the importance of the discussion is usually based on the challenge of having it framed in terms of what is realistic, and what is probable for the majority of people under fairly standard day-to-day conditions. The trouble is, that tends to lead us into circular reasoning. Circular reasoning says that A is true because B is true; and B is true because A is true. When trying to assess what is probable for the majority of people, we find that most humans are not realistically capable of unspeakable acts, but what belongs within the realms of the realistic is contingent on the varying duress and psychological pressures that life throws up, which immediately changes what is realistic. In the above consideration we are seeing that John is capable of duress-induced murder only because duress induced him to murder. That is the circularity - most of us are not capable of unspeakable acts so long as we do not find ourselves in conditions that engender the need for unspeakable acts, which doesn’t really tell us much other than that humans are capable of what humans are capable of.

Moreover, even without the above circularity it is hard to pin down moral feelings and moral behaviour to simple considerations, because there are two ways that these things are changing all the time. One is that a perceived immoral act can be committed due to a change in feeling about whether that act is moral or not; and the other is that a perceived immoral act can be committed due to a change in the person committing the act. In early Roman times a young man might not have felt much guilt about wanting to marry and have sex with a 12 year old girl, whereas nowadays he'd be accused of being a sex-fiend. That's a change of perception about the act itself - it was once widely permissible, it no longer is. On the other hand, a young mother (let's call her Jenny) might be a long way from killing her boyfriend in the general day to day sense, but one day if she caught him trying to rape her daughter she might bludgeon him to death with a rolling pin. In this case that's a change in the person's state of psychological duress with regard to her capability of committing murder or manslaughter, not a change of view in the permissibility of murder with a rolling pin. We might have more sympathy with a mother who killed her daughter's attacker with a rolling pin than someone who did it for fun, but that's an issue of mitigation and leniency; it is not a change of view about death-by-rolling pin. 

What we're saying here is that if one day in the distant future humans evolve a culture in which murdering sexual offenders is endorsed then feelings about the wrongness of murdering a would-be rapist with a rolling pin would diminish (that is, change in feeling about whether an act is moral or not). We are also saying that Jenny is a potential murderer, but that potentiality only turns to actuality when she is pushed beyond a limit far in excess of her ordinary day to day life (that is, change in the person committing the act).

John Milton, in his Areopagitica, brilliantly sums up the notion that we are all potential murderers, thieves and violent people waiting to happen, whereby we could all find ourselves in situations that test us or change us beyond what we can imagine. He says:

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for.”

You may be more familiar with this wisdom in its other appearance as the maxim 'Virtue untested is no virtue at all'.  What is being implied by Milton is something quite acutely perceptive – it is fairly easy for most people to behave quite decently when they are under no pressure, or when fear of the law curbs their instincts for misbehaving – but it is much harder, and much more commendable, when a man or woman faces the toughest challenges yet still comes away exhibiting goodness and kindness. I'm with Milton here; without the illusion that we are really quite decent, without the thin 'social contract' fibril keeping us just about united in our aims, and without ever being subjected to external pressures strong enough to significantly change our behaviour for the worst, I think we would be doing many more bad things than we currently do. Moreover, we know from the psychological experiments of Zimbardo and Millgram how reprehensible people can be when put in conditions that allow them freedom to treat others beyond what they would do in normal society. 

And taking it even further, when things are highly extreme they can end up changing history forever. For example, Adolf Hitler, who, by comparison to any decent standard, was stupid in extremity, and highly unmindful of the qualities that knit humanity together, was able to dominate a great intelligent nation like the Germans. The main influence he seemed to wield as a control mechanism was that of absolute certainty (manifested with the likes of Himmler, Goering and Goebbels in things like Lebensborn, National Socialism and the SS temples). Absolutism combined with power brought a sense of pseudo-Wagnerian Germanic certainty that had the power to predominate a generation of people, who, in many cases probably would have been ordinary citizens in another life.

Even Martin Heidegger - one of the best philosophers of the 20th century - was a supporter of Adolf Hitler, which goes to show what the thrall of authority and disconsolation can do even to highly intelligent minds. Heidegger had plenty to say about original freedom with regard to the extreme opposites of chaos and law, and the subjection of chaos to a form to a particular "mastery which enables the primal wilderness of chaos and the primordiality of law to advance under the same yoke" - which, as we now know with hindsight was a very virulent National Socialism under Hitler to which he was attracted for a time. Nazi Germany proved to be, among many things, a nasty national social experiment that produced an animalistic brutality, cruelty, and eradication of human life - a kind of nationwide Millgram test where obedience took primacy over human rights and moral accountability.

Nazi Germany may be an anomalous example, but it shows us the kind of extremes we're talking about when situations take a dramatic turn - be they in war, religious groups or extreme politics. As much as it upsets the sensibilities of those who like the extreme moral propositions of good and evil as polar opposites, and those who view people as off-the-peg typology fodder that sit rigidly on that spectrum, these binary simplicities merely portray a skewed interpretation of what humankind is capable of when she "sallies out and sees her adversary". There were officers in Nazi concentration camps who were good husbands, fathers, and friends - and nobody who knew them under those conditions could have conceived of what they got up to as a result of obedience to authority. Similarly, there have been many seemingly dedicated, kind, committed husbands, wives, boyfriends and girlfriends who have shocked those around them (and themselves) by acting in ways they wouldn’t have thought possible had they not sallied out and seen their adversaries in the shape of temptation and external pressures.

We see occurrences of this character variance in everyday life too. I know a man who, for most of the week, is a placid and inoffensive kind of chap, but who on match day puts on his tribal outfit (otherwise known as a football shirt) and turns into (by his own admission) an abuse-chanting, sanguinary gang member. He tells me that on match day he is "fuelled by hatred and aggression - which feels great, and is a real adrenaline rush".

I notice too how this effect occurs in the difference between being a pedestrian on the street and being a driver in the car. Most drivers know this too. When you accidently step in someone's way in the street or in a shopping mall (or they you), usually you are both apologetic as you try to be as unobtrusive as possible. But when someone cuts you up in a car (which in most cases is accidental, or due to low confidence behind the wheel or poor concentration) our adrenaline levels rise and we become agitated, and, in the case of some, the horn is beeped aggressively.

These are less extreme versions of our application of Milton's quote to murder, etc - but let's not forget, even road rage can lead to murder. I think the commonality between examples like road rage and football tribalism is the impersonal nature of the acts - we are at our worst when dehumanisation occurs, and we can strip people of their individuality and not have to consider them as people with feelings, weaknesses, insecurities and limitations (Nazi Germany is a wider example of this). When someone cuts you up on the road you rarely get to see the psychology of the person behind the wheel; when football fans are chanting vitriolic abuse at a sea of rival supporters they rarely get to engage with the individuals in their normal weekly life - people with whom they'd have much in common, and in terms of human emotions, people with whom they'd have just about everything in common.

So I would say the extent to which we are capable of gross and heinous things depends on a few factors - the psychological duress, the emotional instability, the fear, the vulnerability, the extremities of the situation, the ability to control a desire, the power afforded to us, our perception of what we can get away with, and maybe even the extent to which we are readily able to dehumanise others.

Important: the question in reverse

Here's another thing to consider. We ask whether we are all capable of those heinous crimes for which we love to vilify others - but the question should also be asked in reverse; could those 'despicable' people that we love to vilify actually have been ordinary, morally decent citizens if they'd have been born under different circumstances? I think the answer is yes, they could. I remember seeing a documentary about notorious child killer Myra Hindley's background prior to her meeting fellow killer Ian Brady. The psychologist who looked extensively at her upbringing, and the life choices she made, said (quite rightly in my view) that regarding many other alternative conditions under which she didn't meet Ian Brady she would have led a fairly normal, uncontroversial life. I feel pretty sure that the same can be said for the 20th century monsters often proffered as the epitome of evil - Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot - if they had been taken from the cot when they were babies and given to loving parents in rural Staffordshire they probably would have grown up to be pretty decent fellows, leading fairly ordinary lives. Equally, there are, no doubt, many people living in the UK right now who would have caused a death toll as high as Hitler, Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot had they have had any dictatorial power in a country full of people able to be exploited and dehumanised.

As much as all the above is true, I would suggest that in spite our evolutionary legacy, and the fact that we are all potential unspeakable criminals given the wrong circumstances, I think in all probability we are 'not' all realistically (and I do stress 'realistically') capable of unspeakable crimes, where 'realistic' means having a reasonable probability of avoiding the kind of situations in which these things become conducive. That is to say, most of us do have the ability to resist wickedness and depravity, even though I think it lurks dormantly in us all. The big challenge for those who can resist doing despicable things is, as ever, in facing up to how they react to people who haven't been able to. I suppose given the acknowledgement that any of us could be involved in despicable things in the wrong kind of circumstances, we have seen ample reason to prefer kindness, understanding, mercy, love and grace, and not choose to dehumanise those who are not in the same boat as us.

Internal moral inconsistency

The other thing to consider is that humans are morally inconsistent. I remember hearing about a local traveller in my area who frequently beat his wife and had several affairs too. One day when his son smoked some dope he went mad and accused him of putting a slur on the family name. To most people, the wife-beating and the infidelity constitute worse immoralities than smoking a bit of dope - but clearly not in this man's case. I think we see this frequently in human beings - due to upbringing, mental ability and experiences, we find that just about everyone has a sense of right and good over wrong and bad, but they often differ in the particular values they hold dear or the strength of feeling regarding varying matters. We find people who strike us as generally unkind and uncaring, but who adopt a work ethic we find admirable. There are men who make wholly honest shopkeepers but wholly dishonest husbands. Even bloodthirsty tyrants will scoff at discourtesy or bad manners when in formal capacities, or get sentimental about twee things that would have no effect on us.

Our values and ethics seem to be dependent on upbringing and personal experiences, and given that these things differ from person to person, it is not surprising that values and ethics differ too. Consider too that humans are idiosyncratic, and that history is full of things that were considered morally good at the time that we now consider to be morally bad. There are principally two ways that a human will differ from you in values and ethics - one is that they come from another culture, and the other is that they come from another era. A woman from England in 1066 might be as culturally and ethically different from a present day Englishman as a present day woman from Tanzania or Sri Lanka.

Of all the people who have ever lived, each one has a particular vision of how our world 'ought' to work, and many others both from different cultures and different historical eras find those 'oughts' quite absurd or inconsistent. But here's the real shocker; given the gross acts we've seen in history, it's a perturbing thought that just about everyone is striving for some kind of goodness or template or ideal concerning how they think things would be best. It seems to me that very few people actually do bad for bad's sake - even the twisted visions like Hitler's ideas about Aryan white supremacy and Mao Zedong's 'leap' towards modernisation and industrialisation amount to a deranged goal for their version of a better kind of world, with scant regard to the lives considered expendable. No doubt in cases like Stalin's quasi-Marxist/Leninist ideology and Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist methods for controlling Iraq, their tyranny is more about taking advantage of power and being corrupted by it - but I think if we focus on the general man on the street, I would say most are striving for some kind of goodness, it's just the case that personal circumstances condition the success or failure of that goal. Everyone has an idea about justice - but views differ on what justice is in the cases of the particular.

I think this is the interesting distinction that puts human progression on a knife edge; on the one hand we have a shared desire for progression, but one that contains differences of opinion regarding the particulars. And yet on the other hand people's life circumstances really are unpredictable, which means that we cannot be complacent in forming pictures of people. Are most of us capable of atrocious things? You bet we are - it's just that thankfully most people never find themselves in the kind of situations in which they could do their worst.