I didn't go to Oxford or Cambridge (I didn't even go to the L.S.E.), however, it wasn't until recently that I actually clocked to how obsessed with these institutions certain parts of the media and the wider world are. Why?
**
I actually attended the University of Warwick and in due course graduated with a 2:1 in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, having learned important life skills such as how to play poker, how to drink borderline fatal quantities of alcohol and how to wash my clothes, cook my dinner and vaguely manage my finances. It should also be said that I picked up a splattering of economics, was exposed to a range of political ideologies, and spent enough time immersed in the grand thoughts of two thousand years of human curiosity that it fundamentally changed how I view the world.
It should also probably be pointed out in the interests of fairness (and to some extent to lay the ground work for some of the comments below) that Warwick, for all the fact that pretty much everyone who goes there is an Oxbridge reject, topped the current university league tables for Economics (as it did in at least 1 of the years I attended), beating out the LSE (2nd), Oxford (3rd) and Cambridge (4th).
Those same university league tables also make for some interesting reading, for example Buckingham has the highest rating for Student Satisfaction and St George's University of London has the highest rating for graduate employability.
Oxford and Cambridge no doubt do well, and come out on the top of the table in a number of high profile subjects (such as Medicine, Law, Business and Mathematics), however this seems at least in part due to the innate bias in the system. Part of the ranking is made up of an assessment of the average academic attainment required to gain entry into an institution. Thanks to Oxbridge's vaunted status they set higher entry standards, thereby boosting their ranking, thereby keeping their elite status. This may have some intrinsic value if it were not for the fact that A-Level results prove little beyond short term memory ability and some basic aptitude in exam technique and dropping in key buzz words.
Are Oxford or Cambridge graduates a superior species then? I have no doubt that the words "Cambridge University" next to your BA (Hons) opens doors, and that a certain sense of entitlement settles on to those who spend enough time in these ancient institutions, an air that translates well into interview confidence and pay-negotiation demands. I was told at least one anecdote of an Oxford graduate who submitted a CV to the graduate scheme of a major bank that read simply "John Smith - Oxford University". More worrying this individual actually got an interview (though not the role).
I have friends who attended these universities, I have met colleagues, acquaintances and randoms who have passed through them, they are, for the most part, intelligent, confident, well-informed individuals. But so are my friends from Warwick, Edinburgh, LSE, UCL, Cardiff, Durham and so on, Oxford and Cambridge do not hold a monopoly on genius, or curiosity or appreciation of beauty.
There are currently around 120 universities in the United Kingdom and a further 180 higher education institutions. They all have their share of the bright and brilliant, and to some extent the mediocre and the drug-addled (students remember). Yet the media, the government (both political and institutional), certain parts of the city, are dominated by Oxford and Cambridge graduates, and a lot of them, subtlety, take part in the social paradigm that sets the Old Universities apart from the rest of the world, above, beyond, the normal "small u" universities that the plebs attend.
I don't really have a definitive point to this, I'm not going to produce statistical tables that show that Oxford/Cambridge graduates do, or don't, on average make less good or bad policy decisions than alumni of other high caliber universities. But I would call attention to the OxCam Entitlement Paradigm. Next time you hear someone, anyone mention, even in passing, that they attended one of these institutions, ask them how that is relevant to the point they're making, or why they think that's a helpful contribution.
Please let me know if you get any meaningful responses,
Ta.
/Z (BSc (Hons) PPE)
Wednesday, 16 October 2013
Tuesday, 1 October 2013
Warning Low Power
There was a time, perhaps, when politicians believed they were in
the business of Government; that is the responsible stewardship of a
nation. Sadly those times are long past, and our current crop are
clearly in the business of power-retention. With that end in mind, it is
increasingly obvious that the preferred model for winning elections is
now to throw money at swing and core voting blocks, with whichever party
offers the greatest bribes buying its way into office. Hence we come to
the latest debacle in a long line of debacles.... Mr Miliband's plans
to revert to cold war communism and begin setting the prices private
companies can charge.
**
As far as I can tell there are three issues which need to be addressed in the energy debate;
1.) Should the provision of electricity be run as a utility or as a private enterprise?
2.) Are energy bills too high? And if so why?
3.) Is it 'acceptable' to make a profit off the provision of a 'basic' requirement like power?
*
1.) Nationalise, Privatise, Re-nationalise...
The question of whether power companies should be utilities is further complicated by the split issue of whether we are talking in ideological or practical terms. On ideological grounds I see no problem with nationalised energy companies - in the modern world electricity and/or gas is as much as requirement of existence as water and shelter. It is what allows us to heat our homes, cook our food, warm the water for our showers and power the lights (not to mention keep the internet-hamsters happy so we can write online blogs). As an a priorii principle I am happy that the government should consider the provision of basic utilities as part of its role in providing the institutions on which society functions. In this version of the world of course nationalised industries are efficient, well run, well funded and receive regular investment from central government to build, develop and maintain infrastructure.
From a practical perspective however, energy companies are now private and that is unlikely to change. The current market capitialisation of the big six energy companies is around £140 billion (share price x number of shares), so even without a take-over premium this is the kind of figure a re-nationlisation would cost. While I acknowledge this is a bit of an off-the-wall comparison, if renationalising meant no shareholder dividends had to be paid, but everything else was kept constant (i.e. no loss / gain in efficiency, no changes in price etc just no profits), then it would take about 125 years for the Government to earn back its £140 billion upfront investment. Together with a potential backlash from investors over any mass appropriation of private companies, and possibly massive job losses as a result of amalgamating six companies back into one national one, it seems unlikely British Gas as a national entity is likely to be making a return anytime soon. Thus, for point 1 it seems safe to say energy is going to remain private.
2.) How much!?
Energy bills are certainly a material component in most people's outgoings. According to the industry body Ofgem the 'average' dual fuel bill is £1,315. This compares to a (bizarrely high in my opinion) average household income of £40,000 for a household with two adults (source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15197860 - and I would be delighted with anyone who can find a more reasonable number, this is one must be skewed by super high earners dragging the average up). Assuming this is made up of 20x2 then your post tax household income is about £32.8k, and energy therefore accounts for around 4%.
I'm not going to dismiss 4% as trivial, but it is worth noting that energy bills are far more of an emotive subject than their actual costs warrant. A survey conducted in 2012 showed only 14% of respondents had a idea of what their energy bill was, or how the appliances in their home contributed. 81% admitted to having no clue whatsoever. This combination of huge ignorance, plus the rather painful experience of getting 6 months (or even annual) bills in one hit suggests its easy for people to get over-excited by energy costs.
Even putting to one side the issue of whether that £1,315 is a high enough percentage to warrant outrage, the question then arises of whether that number is in, and of, itself too high. To answer that let's look at what goes into the average energy bill (all taken from Ofgem):
Electricity Bills:
58% - costs of running the business (billing, sales, costs of having an office and staff etc)
16% - costs of distribution network (pipes and cables)
11% - costs of paying government subsidies for green energy schemes.
5% - VAT
4% - costs of high voltage transmission network (trunk connections)
1% - Rounding errors, misc, etc.
Which leaves a grand total of:
5% profit - or the equivalent of about £65 on your £1315 bill.
It's also worth pointing out the government takes another pop at that in the form of corporation tax at 23% (put another way the government takes 1.2% of your bill in tax, and the company makes 3.8% in profit).
The figures for gas are comparable - with some tweaking (the transmission is cheaper for gas, but the costs of the rest of the business are higher - the profit rate is comparable).
3.8% isn't a massive figure, and is comparable to entities like Tesco's who pay a dividend of around 4%. It seems then that allegations of the energy sector making vast profits off the back of the exploitation of freezing children are somewhat unfounded. The tactical use in the media of the figure of £3.3 billion in profits is designed to be inflammatory, and ignores the fact that that represents 3 years profits on a combined industry investment of £140 billion. While I sympathize (to some extent) with those who struggle to pay their heating bills, I can not, in all honesty, say the figures support a view of a market rampantly exploiting its customers, or its market position.
3.) Lawful Evil Incorporated
Economic arguments aside, I've heard many claims along the lines of 'its immoral to make a profit of providing basic human needs.' This extends to whatever the current target of vilification is - landlords? Shouldn't be allowed to make a profit, supermarkets? How dare you make a profit of people avoiding starvation! Medicine - outrageous that anyone could make a profit of treating disease! And so on..
This seems to me to be a symptom of a media and social paradigm that ignores the role of capital in production.
In the most basic sense production is a functional of f(labour) x f(capital) [i.e some function of labour multiplied by some function of capital]. Capital in this instance means anything that isn't labour, and while traditionally has meant things like tools, factories, tech etc in the modern world it also has the very simple meaning of money.
All the above formula says is that output requires you to have people willing to work, and the infrastructure to enable them to work, and one without the other is pretty useless. It is the accumulation of capital over thousands of years that separates the modern day hedge fund manager from the stone age hunter-gatherer. Education has improved the quality of our labour (supposedly) and the investment and growth of capital has raised the capital stock available to support that labour.
Just like you expect people to earn salaries in exchange for their salaries, so too should investors earn dividends in return for their capital. To expect capital without returns is in the same boat to expecting labour without salary. Its possible (after all slavery is still going strong), but it generally requires a coercive element which isn't compatible with claims of liberal rule-of-law capitalist democracy.
If you truly want people to invest in pharmaceutical companies so fund new medicines, in tech companies to give us new gadgets, in supermarkets to make buying food easy (etc etc) and in energy companies to deliver power to the little sockets in our homes, then you need to let them earn a reasonable return on investment.
The alternative is to centrally fund things (i.e. the Army - we don't have a private military anymore, and so the government pays the salaries, and coughs up the capital spending which would normally be attracted by the prospective dividends), now, as mentioned above, I'm not ideologically opposed to a nationalised energy company, but I very much do not trust the current brand of politicians to fund such an enterprise properly. As any gamer will tell you Logistics Wins Wars (though they may know it as 'macro harder!'), and that translates to fund your infrastructure well, and fund it early. Research technology, upgrade hardware and reinvest the growth generated into faster and further improvements. But there is no political capital in funding energy infrastructure. High levels of capital spending that would keep things ticking along without issue and at a potentially lower cost to the taxpayer carry no benefits (people don't notice things working well), while taking the money away from infrastructure and spending it on headline grabbing policies buys votes, and therefore power. Plus, at the end of day, if an adviser tells you the whole national grid is going to fall over in 10 years unless you spend now - so what? Chances are the other side are going to be in power by then and you can blame the whole mess on them. It therefore seems inevitable that a politically run power-company will invest insufficiently.
On the other hand, companies which generate profits attract capital flows - investors want to get in on a good thing, and so companies doing well can raise new funds to invest and grow further. Energy companies may be struggling to invest in the levels required without government subsidy, but maybe that's because they deliver such uninspiring levels of return. Why invest in Npower, with all the political risks, when you can invest in Tescos (which for the most part bumps along under the radar) and posts similar returns? Or even better invest in a major bank which despite all the recent flak still outperform utilities?
There is however a point which needs to be made in response to this - that of 'super-profits'. Under basic economics companies are able to derive a profit from their activities and still be in equilibrium. In fact equilibrium is achieved when a company can produce at a price which the market will pay, while covering sufficient salaries to attract the required labour, and sufficient dividends to attract the required capital. However, in some circumstances where perfect competition has failed (i.e. a monopoly or oligopoly), companies can make 'super-profits' - i.e. profits above that level required to attract sufficient capital for the business to function. These 'super-profits' are a market failure. In perfect competition the presence of super-profits should prompt new companies to move into the sector, and charge a lower price. Although they make a lower profit they still make sufficient profit to attract capital, and by undercutting the 'super-profit' firm should attract all the business.
If there is evidence of the energy companies generating super-profits than it is potentially an argument in favor of intervention (of one sort or another), but from the figures outlined above this seems hard to support.
4.) Temet Nosce
The energy sector is not without potential improvements, and one key one would be in the realm of customer knowledge. Even as a fairly cynical (and clued up) contract reader, and someone with experience of the labyrinthine terms and conditions of financial products I found my energy bill difficult to decipher. For the average customer its borderline impossible. Clear, straightforward billing, in a standardized measurement, along with up front explanations on things like changing tariffs (i.e. you pay about 5x more per KwH in the winter because of a 'seasonal adjustment') would help boost customer confidence in the sector. The problem is not necessarily what the energy companies are doing, but the complete ignorance most people have of what that is.
The final point I'm going to touch on is the madness of politicians promising/threatening to set prices in advance. First off this wiped £3billion off the share prices of the big six companies instantly. At that rate we could afford Mr Miliband to make about 100 speeches a year for his first term in office, after which he will have talked into oblivion the entirety of the FTSE 100. One thing politicians of all flavors who aspire to government need to learn (and many never do) is that they are not talking to the electorate, they are talking to the incorporeal world composed of all the interlocking confidence tricks that make the modern world work - poke them at your peril.
Second, if this seriously looks like coming into force than all the energy companies will do is raise their prices pre-emptively - potentially bringing forward price rises planned for 2017 to 2014 or sooner, again I struggle to see how this is supposed to help with a 'cost of living' crisis.
Finally, this sends a very clear message that Labour is swinging towards a social model in which wealth creation via investment is outlawed. Profits will be hunted down and banned through price fixing. This means that investment has to come from central government, and how will it be raised? You know it - more taxing, and more borrowing.
Assuming the lights stay on that long,
/Z
**
As far as I can tell there are three issues which need to be addressed in the energy debate;
1.) Should the provision of electricity be run as a utility or as a private enterprise?
2.) Are energy bills too high? And if so why?
3.) Is it 'acceptable' to make a profit off the provision of a 'basic' requirement like power?
*
1.) Nationalise, Privatise, Re-nationalise...
The question of whether power companies should be utilities is further complicated by the split issue of whether we are talking in ideological or practical terms. On ideological grounds I see no problem with nationalised energy companies - in the modern world electricity and/or gas is as much as requirement of existence as water and shelter. It is what allows us to heat our homes, cook our food, warm the water for our showers and power the lights (not to mention keep the internet-hamsters happy so we can write online blogs). As an a priorii principle I am happy that the government should consider the provision of basic utilities as part of its role in providing the institutions on which society functions. In this version of the world of course nationalised industries are efficient, well run, well funded and receive regular investment from central government to build, develop and maintain infrastructure.
From a practical perspective however, energy companies are now private and that is unlikely to change. The current market capitialisation of the big six energy companies is around £140 billion (share price x number of shares), so even without a take-over premium this is the kind of figure a re-nationlisation would cost. While I acknowledge this is a bit of an off-the-wall comparison, if renationalising meant no shareholder dividends had to be paid, but everything else was kept constant (i.e. no loss / gain in efficiency, no changes in price etc just no profits), then it would take about 125 years for the Government to earn back its £140 billion upfront investment. Together with a potential backlash from investors over any mass appropriation of private companies, and possibly massive job losses as a result of amalgamating six companies back into one national one, it seems unlikely British Gas as a national entity is likely to be making a return anytime soon. Thus, for point 1 it seems safe to say energy is going to remain private.
2.) How much!?
Energy bills are certainly a material component in most people's outgoings. According to the industry body Ofgem the 'average' dual fuel bill is £1,315. This compares to a (bizarrely high in my opinion) average household income of £40,000 for a household with two adults (source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15197860 - and I would be delighted with anyone who can find a more reasonable number, this is one must be skewed by super high earners dragging the average up). Assuming this is made up of 20x2 then your post tax household income is about £32.8k, and energy therefore accounts for around 4%.
I'm not going to dismiss 4% as trivial, but it is worth noting that energy bills are far more of an emotive subject than their actual costs warrant. A survey conducted in 2012 showed only 14% of respondents had a idea of what their energy bill was, or how the appliances in their home contributed. 81% admitted to having no clue whatsoever. This combination of huge ignorance, plus the rather painful experience of getting 6 months (or even annual) bills in one hit suggests its easy for people to get over-excited by energy costs.
Even putting to one side the issue of whether that £1,315 is a high enough percentage to warrant outrage, the question then arises of whether that number is in, and of, itself too high. To answer that let's look at what goes into the average energy bill (all taken from Ofgem):
Electricity Bills:
58% - costs of running the business (billing, sales, costs of having an office and staff etc)
16% - costs of distribution network (pipes and cables)
11% - costs of paying government subsidies for green energy schemes.
5% - VAT
4% - costs of high voltage transmission network (trunk connections)
1% - Rounding errors, misc, etc.
Which leaves a grand total of:
5% profit - or the equivalent of about £65 on your £1315 bill.
It's also worth pointing out the government takes another pop at that in the form of corporation tax at 23% (put another way the government takes 1.2% of your bill in tax, and the company makes 3.8% in profit).
The figures for gas are comparable - with some tweaking (the transmission is cheaper for gas, but the costs of the rest of the business are higher - the profit rate is comparable).
3.8% isn't a massive figure, and is comparable to entities like Tesco's who pay a dividend of around 4%. It seems then that allegations of the energy sector making vast profits off the back of the exploitation of freezing children are somewhat unfounded. The tactical use in the media of the figure of £3.3 billion in profits is designed to be inflammatory, and ignores the fact that that represents 3 years profits on a combined industry investment of £140 billion. While I sympathize (to some extent) with those who struggle to pay their heating bills, I can not, in all honesty, say the figures support a view of a market rampantly exploiting its customers, or its market position.
3.) Lawful Evil Incorporated
Economic arguments aside, I've heard many claims along the lines of 'its immoral to make a profit of providing basic human needs.' This extends to whatever the current target of vilification is - landlords? Shouldn't be allowed to make a profit, supermarkets? How dare you make a profit of people avoiding starvation! Medicine - outrageous that anyone could make a profit of treating disease! And so on..
This seems to me to be a symptom of a media and social paradigm that ignores the role of capital in production.
In the most basic sense production is a functional of f(labour) x f(capital) [i.e some function of labour multiplied by some function of capital]. Capital in this instance means anything that isn't labour, and while traditionally has meant things like tools, factories, tech etc in the modern world it also has the very simple meaning of money.
All the above formula says is that output requires you to have people willing to work, and the infrastructure to enable them to work, and one without the other is pretty useless. It is the accumulation of capital over thousands of years that separates the modern day hedge fund manager from the stone age hunter-gatherer. Education has improved the quality of our labour (supposedly) and the investment and growth of capital has raised the capital stock available to support that labour.
Just like you expect people to earn salaries in exchange for their salaries, so too should investors earn dividends in return for their capital. To expect capital without returns is in the same boat to expecting labour without salary. Its possible (after all slavery is still going strong), but it generally requires a coercive element which isn't compatible with claims of liberal rule-of-law capitalist democracy.
If you truly want people to invest in pharmaceutical companies so fund new medicines, in tech companies to give us new gadgets, in supermarkets to make buying food easy (etc etc) and in energy companies to deliver power to the little sockets in our homes, then you need to let them earn a reasonable return on investment.
The alternative is to centrally fund things (i.e. the Army - we don't have a private military anymore, and so the government pays the salaries, and coughs up the capital spending which would normally be attracted by the prospective dividends), now, as mentioned above, I'm not ideologically opposed to a nationalised energy company, but I very much do not trust the current brand of politicians to fund such an enterprise properly. As any gamer will tell you Logistics Wins Wars (though they may know it as 'macro harder!'), and that translates to fund your infrastructure well, and fund it early. Research technology, upgrade hardware and reinvest the growth generated into faster and further improvements. But there is no political capital in funding energy infrastructure. High levels of capital spending that would keep things ticking along without issue and at a potentially lower cost to the taxpayer carry no benefits (people don't notice things working well), while taking the money away from infrastructure and spending it on headline grabbing policies buys votes, and therefore power. Plus, at the end of day, if an adviser tells you the whole national grid is going to fall over in 10 years unless you spend now - so what? Chances are the other side are going to be in power by then and you can blame the whole mess on them. It therefore seems inevitable that a politically run power-company will invest insufficiently.
On the other hand, companies which generate profits attract capital flows - investors want to get in on a good thing, and so companies doing well can raise new funds to invest and grow further. Energy companies may be struggling to invest in the levels required without government subsidy, but maybe that's because they deliver such uninspiring levels of return. Why invest in Npower, with all the political risks, when you can invest in Tescos (which for the most part bumps along under the radar) and posts similar returns? Or even better invest in a major bank which despite all the recent flak still outperform utilities?
There is however a point which needs to be made in response to this - that of 'super-profits'. Under basic economics companies are able to derive a profit from their activities and still be in equilibrium. In fact equilibrium is achieved when a company can produce at a price which the market will pay, while covering sufficient salaries to attract the required labour, and sufficient dividends to attract the required capital. However, in some circumstances where perfect competition has failed (i.e. a monopoly or oligopoly), companies can make 'super-profits' - i.e. profits above that level required to attract sufficient capital for the business to function. These 'super-profits' are a market failure. In perfect competition the presence of super-profits should prompt new companies to move into the sector, and charge a lower price. Although they make a lower profit they still make sufficient profit to attract capital, and by undercutting the 'super-profit' firm should attract all the business.
If there is evidence of the energy companies generating super-profits than it is potentially an argument in favor of intervention (of one sort or another), but from the figures outlined above this seems hard to support.
4.) Temet Nosce
The energy sector is not without potential improvements, and one key one would be in the realm of customer knowledge. Even as a fairly cynical (and clued up) contract reader, and someone with experience of the labyrinthine terms and conditions of financial products I found my energy bill difficult to decipher. For the average customer its borderline impossible. Clear, straightforward billing, in a standardized measurement, along with up front explanations on things like changing tariffs (i.e. you pay about 5x more per KwH in the winter because of a 'seasonal adjustment') would help boost customer confidence in the sector. The problem is not necessarily what the energy companies are doing, but the complete ignorance most people have of what that is.
The final point I'm going to touch on is the madness of politicians promising/threatening to set prices in advance. First off this wiped £3billion off the share prices of the big six companies instantly. At that rate we could afford Mr Miliband to make about 100 speeches a year for his first term in office, after which he will have talked into oblivion the entirety of the FTSE 100. One thing politicians of all flavors who aspire to government need to learn (and many never do) is that they are not talking to the electorate, they are talking to the incorporeal world composed of all the interlocking confidence tricks that make the modern world work - poke them at your peril.
Second, if this seriously looks like coming into force than all the energy companies will do is raise their prices pre-emptively - potentially bringing forward price rises planned for 2017 to 2014 or sooner, again I struggle to see how this is supposed to help with a 'cost of living' crisis.
Finally, this sends a very clear message that Labour is swinging towards a social model in which wealth creation via investment is outlawed. Profits will be hunted down and banned through price fixing. This means that investment has to come from central government, and how will it be raised? You know it - more taxing, and more borrowing.
Assuming the lights stay on that long,
/Z
Saturday, 21 September 2013
A Fleeting Muse
In the fields of Alexandria
She called me, on the day I died,
To walk the Path and see beyond the veil.
Many have gone before me
To tread the path to New Alexandria.
I have walked the deep deserts,
In hues of dusty ochre,
I have danced atop the dunes,
As I followed the paths of those who wander.
I rode the white horse across a field of water,
And heard the song of the witch of autumn,
I swam in the emerald lake beneath a lilac sky,
And ate alone at her table,
But she has gone before me,
To the towers of New Alexandria.
Stone and snow have raised me up, here
At the ceiling of the world, I have looked
For a road to take me to her,
But the sun blinded me, and the moon tricked me,
So the stars fell on me, on an ice cold night,
A thousand perfect points to show me the way,
To guide a journeyman to the gates of New Alexandria.
I walked the cities of man,
And saw all the shades of steel and grey,
I paced the glass valleys, and wept for the tortured skies.
I was caught in a dream of industry,
A nightmare of grinding gears and sleeting numbers.
The labyrinth held me, lost and far from home.
She called me, the day after I died,
Sang me my song of wandering,
I could only hear her, the voice of dusken angel,
Calling me to New Alexandria.
I left behind the jungle of stone, and walked in the
Halls of the green, I listened for her on the wind,
But heard only the breeze through the branches.
I slept in the boughs of the forest, and
Breathed in the scent of the wild.
I sang her song and found the stars in a crystal stream.
The great ocean lay before me, its roar fills my ears,
Its scent fills the air, but my eyes see neither tide nor
surf,
For I see a city, in pale marble and gold.
She called me, the day I died,
Called me away beyond the veil, to the end of the path.
Now, I walk in sunlight, in a garden of green and silver,
Dazzled by a morning sunrise over a pale wall,
I came to here, to New Alexandria,
To find those who had finished their journeys.
-September 2013
Wednesday, 28 August 2013
Post War Welfare
Welfare is big business in the modern world. The British government spends somewhere around £250 billion a year and that figure is only set to rise forever. A rather random documentary (Benefits Britain 1949) I found buried in the 4od archive approaches this issue from a different direction - what was the original welfare state like?
**
I'm not going to regurgitate 3 hours of pseudo-documentary in written format, but the sake of the comparison I do want to draw I'm going to touch on a couple of key points;
1.) The focus on getting people working is overwhelming - pretty much without exception. Even the cash benefits that were provided are focused on working.
2.) The system is probably just as biased as the modern welfare state, but in the opposite direction. Traditional family unit with problems? - lots of support and guidance, single mother? Pretty much discarded. Although the conclusion from the program itself was that the modern system is 'fairer' it doesn't seem objectively any difference to prioritize single mothers over family units or vice versa, there is still a bias in the system.
3.) Pensioners fell through the cracks - this is probably inevitable given that when the welfare state was first introduced life expectancies meant most pensioners could expect to survive a handful of years, paid for by family and savings. In the modern world where you can expect thirty plus years post retirement a different solution is no doubt required.
4.) The terminology and language is different. In today's world we have "benefit" "entitlements" both of these are very inclusive, positive terms. A 'benefit' is, almost by definition a good thing, while an 'entitlement' does not imply any stigma or obligation. Under the 1949 system you made a "claim" on for "assistance". First off it was something you had to ask for (and might not get) and secondly it was a stop gap measure while you got back on your feet.
5.) Not directly related, but since this crops up all over the place it bears reminding - the common misconception that in the modern world you somehow pay for your benefits by paying tax and national insurance. This is flat out wrong. Under the original format National Insurance was exactly that - Insurance. You paid a premium (your contributions) and then when you needed it you could make a claim. Under this system you really could make an argument for "I paid in, so now I want something back." In the modern world all taxes are soaked by paying for current spending, there is no contributory or savings principle. When you worked your taxes paid for the benefits of those claiming at the time. When your claiming benefits you are expecting others to support you.
6.) The 1949 system does have an inbuilt assumption that if you could work then there is work to be had. In the aftermath of the second world war a combination of vast infrastructure projects and a decimated workforce meant there was always a job going. Is this still true today?
Following on from this final point you can do an interesting thought experiment over the cost of providing employment.
Let's say you want to hire someone to work in your business - what are the costs?
(For the sake of this I'm ignoring things like the cost of advertisements, and the theoretical time cost of interviews etc).
Salary - the minimum hourly rate in the UK is £6.31 (over 21s). Assuming you want someone for 35 hours a week that's £11484.20 a year, you would also need to pay employers national insurance (£522). For the sake of convenience this adds up to pretty much £12,000.
Overheads - This is harder to judge since it depends in part on what the role is, and how much equipment it requires. During my stint working in a slot machine arcade my only overheads to the business were a couple of cheap shirts and a tacky waistcoat (£50 tops). On the other hand overheads for a full office set up can easily run for £5-6,000 a year.
Leaning on the pessimistic side here (since the service sector accounts for such a large chunk of the unskilled economy through call centers and 'admin') that gives total of £18,000.
So, if your new employee can generate £18,000 of value for the company everything is good right?
Well no - first off if they earned you can extra £18,000 then you've broken even, plus you have all the hassle of hiring and manager people. If you want a decent return on your investment (say 15%) then that person actually needs to be bringing in £20,700. Unfortunately even that figure is a bit low because your also going to have to pay corporate tax at 20%, which bumps the figure up again to £24,840 (say £25,000 for ease).
Going back to our 1949 example the combination of lower taxes, a bigger 'cash in hand' economy, and lower wages (the example being a labourer may expect to earn, accounting for inflation, £15 a day, compared with a minimum of £50.48 for an 8 hour shift), means that figure is going to be a lot lower. Lower costs to business of taking on new staff means more potential recruitment, while laxer employment laws also make it less of a risk since its easier to get rid of people.
In today's wold though you need to be generating £25,000 of revenue for a business for them to justify a single minimum wage job. How many people can actually do that? What skills and abilities are required to achieve that level?
Unfortunately these are questions somewhat out of the scope of a single blog entry, but it opens the way nicely for a topic I keep trying to discuss and can never find a good way of tackling - productivity. For a long time I've been arguing government spending in Britain is out of control, as is our benefits system. A client state of voters has been created, in a world designed for the benefit of politicians. The equation is brutally simple - tax the minority to provide handouts to the majority, who will then vote you back into office. But if you (theoretically) wanted to escape from this mess what has to happen? Simply put spending has to come down, and income has to go up.
The current attempt at this is the 'growth and stagnation' approach. IF the economy can be poked into growth, while holding spending levels steady in absolute terms, then the combination of increasing revenue, inflation, and static spending should begin to close the deficit gap. The alternative is to actively smash large chunks of government spending, while actively encouraging a more inclusive workforce. The key to this second part is productivity.
Businesses are profit seeking entities, if you cost a business £25,000 and earn them £50,000 then you should be employable. Regardless of the trade, craft or sector this holds true. The unemployable are unemployable because, in the most basic terms, a business doesn't think you earn them more than it costs to hire you (accounting for discounted risk and so forth). 1949 appears to have been successful in getting people into work by keeping the cost side of that equation down; yes you may be unskilled, inexperienced and part time, but it only costs a third of the 21st century price to hire you, so you only have to be a third as productive.
The modern welfare and employment system has created a trap for itself - rising costs of employment in the form of employers national insurance, business taxes, stringent hiring and firing laws, and minimum wages have all combined to make it more expensive for businesses to hire people. At the same time a generous welfare system has made it economically viable to simply not work, this in turn leads to those who do work to demand higher minimum wages (so they are actually earning more than those who don't work), and so the cost of employment goes up, and the whole thing spirals.
Productivity itself is a fleeting beast in economics. Training, skills, experience and ability all play a part, as does social conventions and attitudes. But its unfortunately not something that can be conjured out of thin air by waving money about. Education certainly plays a part, and so that will be my starting point next time.
Happy Trails,
/Z
**
I'm not going to regurgitate 3 hours of pseudo-documentary in written format, but the sake of the comparison I do want to draw I'm going to touch on a couple of key points;
1.) The focus on getting people working is overwhelming - pretty much without exception. Even the cash benefits that were provided are focused on working.
2.) The system is probably just as biased as the modern welfare state, but in the opposite direction. Traditional family unit with problems? - lots of support and guidance, single mother? Pretty much discarded. Although the conclusion from the program itself was that the modern system is 'fairer' it doesn't seem objectively any difference to prioritize single mothers over family units or vice versa, there is still a bias in the system.
3.) Pensioners fell through the cracks - this is probably inevitable given that when the welfare state was first introduced life expectancies meant most pensioners could expect to survive a handful of years, paid for by family and savings. In the modern world where you can expect thirty plus years post retirement a different solution is no doubt required.
4.) The terminology and language is different. In today's world we have "benefit" "entitlements" both of these are very inclusive, positive terms. A 'benefit' is, almost by definition a good thing, while an 'entitlement' does not imply any stigma or obligation. Under the 1949 system you made a "claim" on for "assistance". First off it was something you had to ask for (and might not get) and secondly it was a stop gap measure while you got back on your feet.
5.) Not directly related, but since this crops up all over the place it bears reminding - the common misconception that in the modern world you somehow pay for your benefits by paying tax and national insurance. This is flat out wrong. Under the original format National Insurance was exactly that - Insurance. You paid a premium (your contributions) and then when you needed it you could make a claim. Under this system you really could make an argument for "I paid in, so now I want something back." In the modern world all taxes are soaked by paying for current spending, there is no contributory or savings principle. When you worked your taxes paid for the benefits of those claiming at the time. When your claiming benefits you are expecting others to support you.
6.) The 1949 system does have an inbuilt assumption that if you could work then there is work to be had. In the aftermath of the second world war a combination of vast infrastructure projects and a decimated workforce meant there was always a job going. Is this still true today?
Following on from this final point you can do an interesting thought experiment over the cost of providing employment.
Let's say you want to hire someone to work in your business - what are the costs?
(For the sake of this I'm ignoring things like the cost of advertisements, and the theoretical time cost of interviews etc).
Salary - the minimum hourly rate in the UK is £6.31 (over 21s). Assuming you want someone for 35 hours a week that's £11484.20 a year, you would also need to pay employers national insurance (£522). For the sake of convenience this adds up to pretty much £12,000.
Overheads - This is harder to judge since it depends in part on what the role is, and how much equipment it requires. During my stint working in a slot machine arcade my only overheads to the business were a couple of cheap shirts and a tacky waistcoat (£50 tops). On the other hand overheads for a full office set up can easily run for £5-6,000 a year.
Leaning on the pessimistic side here (since the service sector accounts for such a large chunk of the unskilled economy through call centers and 'admin') that gives total of £18,000.
So, if your new employee can generate £18,000 of value for the company everything is good right?
Well no - first off if they earned you can extra £18,000 then you've broken even, plus you have all the hassle of hiring and manager people. If you want a decent return on your investment (say 15%) then that person actually needs to be bringing in £20,700. Unfortunately even that figure is a bit low because your also going to have to pay corporate tax at 20%, which bumps the figure up again to £24,840 (say £25,000 for ease).
Going back to our 1949 example the combination of lower taxes, a bigger 'cash in hand' economy, and lower wages (the example being a labourer may expect to earn, accounting for inflation, £15 a day, compared with a minimum of £50.48 for an 8 hour shift), means that figure is going to be a lot lower. Lower costs to business of taking on new staff means more potential recruitment, while laxer employment laws also make it less of a risk since its easier to get rid of people.
In today's wold though you need to be generating £25,000 of revenue for a business for them to justify a single minimum wage job. How many people can actually do that? What skills and abilities are required to achieve that level?
Unfortunately these are questions somewhat out of the scope of a single blog entry, but it opens the way nicely for a topic I keep trying to discuss and can never find a good way of tackling - productivity. For a long time I've been arguing government spending in Britain is out of control, as is our benefits system. A client state of voters has been created, in a world designed for the benefit of politicians. The equation is brutally simple - tax the minority to provide handouts to the majority, who will then vote you back into office. But if you (theoretically) wanted to escape from this mess what has to happen? Simply put spending has to come down, and income has to go up.
The current attempt at this is the 'growth and stagnation' approach. IF the economy can be poked into growth, while holding spending levels steady in absolute terms, then the combination of increasing revenue, inflation, and static spending should begin to close the deficit gap. The alternative is to actively smash large chunks of government spending, while actively encouraging a more inclusive workforce. The key to this second part is productivity.
Businesses are profit seeking entities, if you cost a business £25,000 and earn them £50,000 then you should be employable. Regardless of the trade, craft or sector this holds true. The unemployable are unemployable because, in the most basic terms, a business doesn't think you earn them more than it costs to hire you (accounting for discounted risk and so forth). 1949 appears to have been successful in getting people into work by keeping the cost side of that equation down; yes you may be unskilled, inexperienced and part time, but it only costs a third of the 21st century price to hire you, so you only have to be a third as productive.
The modern welfare and employment system has created a trap for itself - rising costs of employment in the form of employers national insurance, business taxes, stringent hiring and firing laws, and minimum wages have all combined to make it more expensive for businesses to hire people. At the same time a generous welfare system has made it economically viable to simply not work, this in turn leads to those who do work to demand higher minimum wages (so they are actually earning more than those who don't work), and so the cost of employment goes up, and the whole thing spirals.
Productivity itself is a fleeting beast in economics. Training, skills, experience and ability all play a part, as does social conventions and attitudes. But its unfortunately not something that can be conjured out of thin air by waving money about. Education certainly plays a part, and so that will be my starting point next time.
Happy Trails,
/Z
Wednesday, 14 August 2013
Unnecessary Violence
Torture seems to be the in-thing in media these days. Whether its film, TV or literature everything now has a 'torture' scene. It maybe says a lot about the 21st century that sex scenes are now considered boring and have pretty much been replaced with an obligatory ten minute scene involves electrodes, bolt croppers, scalpels or the common yo-yo. Increasingly the question is becoming "why?".
...
The precipitating factor for this piece is the 4od 'drama' Utopia.
To spare the wrath of the Fire God, Knife Missile and Angel of Vengeance Upon Those Who Spoil I will at this point insert:
** SPOILER ALERT**
Episode I of Utopia has, as expected, a torture scene. Without going into the details it is: a.) somewhat nauseating to watch, b.) no doubt effective, and c.) arguably has what will now become a cult threat: "Wilson.. Wilson I've got... the spoon now.." .
My problem with torture scenes is pretty much the same objection I have to torture in real life - its largely pointless. As any number of police forces through the ages have proven people will agree to anything and implicate anyone in anything once you start bolt croppering parts of their anatomy off. But, as military intelligence has also found over the years, the quality of the intelligence you gain by this method is only marginally better than the intelligence provided by psychics, astrology and random guesswork.
In practice for torture to be an effective information extraction tool you need know, in advance:
1.) That the victim really does know what you want to know,
2.) Have some way of checking whether what they've told you is true before you let them go.
3.) There not to be some kind of 'duress' code that renders the whole activity pointless.
Utopia fails resoundingly on this; torturing people who don't know what your on about will just result in a.) meaningless garbage (she's dead, the address is in my computer), or worse yet intelligible garbage (Easy enough to see how the scene in Inglorious Bastards just ends up with the German soldier in the ditch picking a random spot on the map). Why then do supposedly super-skilled, Illuminati-esque intelligence agents persist in these ridiculous scenes??
The answer of course is depressingly obvious - its a cheap way to introduce tension and ""drama"" for a production without the writing, directing or acting to produce genuine suspense. This is where the threat of torture is far more intellectually satisfy and often leads to far better scenes. One can quite believe that when confronted with Michael from the first Godfather film calmly, quietly, explaining to you what will happen if you do not immediately tell him what he wants to know that people buckle. But to pull that off the writer has to have created a character who is fearsome and awe inspiring, the actors need to pull off both dread and ruthless confidence, and the director needs to make the whole thing work. Alternatively you get a B-list actor with a tub of chillies...
(A note here about the episode of Sherlock in which Mycroft is attempting to persuade Irene Adler to give up her phone. As Sherlock rather directly points out torturing Adler is pointless because of point 3 above, and once the phone is fried any further expenditure of effort is futile).
To add to the stupidity of the whole torture theme, the only scenes where the hero does get tortured and does know something they never tell it anyway - Scarface, Lethal Weapon, various Bond films, at least one of the Under Siege franchise, Stargate (film and TV series) etc etc etc.
Its time for film and TV to move past the obligatory torture scene, and maybe time for some fairly serious introspection if, as a society, we now see people getting their eyes cut out with a spoon as a selling point of a series.
/Z
...
The precipitating factor for this piece is the 4od 'drama' Utopia.
To spare the wrath of the Fire God, Knife Missile and Angel of Vengeance Upon Those Who Spoil I will at this point insert:
** SPOILER ALERT**
Episode I of Utopia has, as expected, a torture scene. Without going into the details it is: a.) somewhat nauseating to watch, b.) no doubt effective, and c.) arguably has what will now become a cult threat: "Wilson.. Wilson I've got... the spoon now.." .
My problem with torture scenes is pretty much the same objection I have to torture in real life - its largely pointless. As any number of police forces through the ages have proven people will agree to anything and implicate anyone in anything once you start bolt croppering parts of their anatomy off. But, as military intelligence has also found over the years, the quality of the intelligence you gain by this method is only marginally better than the intelligence provided by psychics, astrology and random guesswork.
In practice for torture to be an effective information extraction tool you need know, in advance:
1.) That the victim really does know what you want to know,
2.) Have some way of checking whether what they've told you is true before you let them go.
3.) There not to be some kind of 'duress' code that renders the whole activity pointless.
Utopia fails resoundingly on this; torturing people who don't know what your on about will just result in a.) meaningless garbage (she's dead, the address is in my computer), or worse yet intelligible garbage (Easy enough to see how the scene in Inglorious Bastards just ends up with the German soldier in the ditch picking a random spot on the map). Why then do supposedly super-skilled, Illuminati-esque intelligence agents persist in these ridiculous scenes??
The answer of course is depressingly obvious - its a cheap way to introduce tension and ""drama"" for a production without the writing, directing or acting to produce genuine suspense. This is where the threat of torture is far more intellectually satisfy and often leads to far better scenes. One can quite believe that when confronted with Michael from the first Godfather film calmly, quietly, explaining to you what will happen if you do not immediately tell him what he wants to know that people buckle. But to pull that off the writer has to have created a character who is fearsome and awe inspiring, the actors need to pull off both dread and ruthless confidence, and the director needs to make the whole thing work. Alternatively you get a B-list actor with a tub of chillies...
(A note here about the episode of Sherlock in which Mycroft is attempting to persuade Irene Adler to give up her phone. As Sherlock rather directly points out torturing Adler is pointless because of point 3 above, and once the phone is fried any further expenditure of effort is futile).
To add to the stupidity of the whole torture theme, the only scenes where the hero does get tortured and does know something they never tell it anyway - Scarface, Lethal Weapon, various Bond films, at least one of the Under Siege franchise, Stargate (film and TV series) etc etc etc.
Its time for film and TV to move past the obligatory torture scene, and maybe time for some fairly serious introspection if, as a society, we now see people getting their eyes cut out with a spoon as a selling point of a series.
/Z
Sunday, 11 August 2013
Judgmental Hypocrisy
It virtually always annoys me when my counterpart in a conversation, discussion or debate wheels out a conversational device which is guaranteed to end any further meaningful exchange. This linguistic H-bomb is nothing more than the apparently innocuous phrase "Everyone is entitled to their opinion," or something similar. I've finally worked out what it is that annoys me so much about this approach...
..
To prevent myself falling into the very faux-pas I've just described (and I am going to skirt very close to it at times), I'm going to get some key points out first;
1.) I have a set of values, principles and ethics, and I judge others on their actions and motivations, based at least in part on my own sense of morality. This is my right (in the sense of an innate ability) as a sentient, free-willed individual.
2.) I'm willing to listen to people's justifications for their actions, and even where those actions don't coincide with my own morality, I may still agree with them if they follow on from others' own first principles.
3.) If you are presented with an action which stems logically or naturally from a first principle you either agree with, or can not disagree with (not the same thing), you can not reasonably then condemn the action.
4.) Once you've established someone holds irrational (defined below) opinions and isn't willing to change them once the logical fallacy is pointed out, then any further discussion is pointless, and their judgement on the related subject is valueless. An "irrational" opinion in this sense is one which is logically impossible given the same person's stated, un-waivable first principles. As an example using current events -
Q1. "Do you think that it should be up to the inhabitants of a region/area to decide their sovereign affliations?"
A. "Yes,"
Q2. "Do you agree that the people of the Falklands/Gibraltar voted overwhelming to remain a British Overseas Territory?"
A. "Yes"
Q3. "So what do you think should happen with Gibraltar,"
A. "It should become part of Spain."
(I've actually had a version of this conversation three times over the last couple of weeks.)
Note: importantly the final answer here isn't the result of some unspoken additional principle I've omitted, it's a function of the opinion (Q3) being formed before considering the principles (Q1 and Q2), and then people being disinterested in changing their opinion in the face of evidence or constructed arguments.
5.) I don't believe in objective morals.
(Objective in this sense means independent of the people making the actions and judgements. If an action is objectively 'wrong' than it would be condemned by people from all cultures and backgrounds, aliens, dolphins, and so on. The main basis for objectively morality is some form of deity. If you accept the existence of a religious God, and said God has stated idolatry is wrong, then that's that, its not up to humans to argue the point).
..
Given all this then, allow me to present what I'm going to term "Judgmental Hypocrisy."
The situation isn't that unusual, something has come up in conversation which is part of the social institution to which getting smashed and screaming at the top of your voice, football hooliganism, Ibiza and glossy magazines are all part of. The response (usually from me) is to query why people choose to do this kind of thing; its inelegant, uncivilized, expensive and going off the number of people who subsequently end up sick, unconscious, or regretful also doesn't seem to have much to recommend it.
What I want at this point is for someone who has done this kind of thing (the latest example being 18-30s holidays), to explain and defend the motivations behind doing whatever it is I'm condemning. Maybe it's about inclusion into a social group, maybe its a right of passage, maybe it's to distract people from the humdrum of their normal lives by consuming so much alcohol they lose the ability to think, maybe its about easy sex or escapism. All of these are things I can at least appreciate, even if I don't agree with them.
The response I get instead is usually "Well everyone's entitled to do what they think is fun - they probably don't think reading a book or watching cricket is fun."
On the face of it this seems like an unassailable position, a short extension of the right to action or speech that everyone has by the fact of their existence, and, from some people (genuine traditional Liberals of the camp who agreed you shouldn't tell someone they were about to accidently kill themselves since that would be intruding on their freedom of action) I might even accept it. Unfortunately however this position is also shipped with a dripping of condescending sarcasm which adds the unspoken additional line "and since what you enjoying doing isn't really fun then your just wrong."
And herein comes the Judgmental part; what the people making the "yes but not everyone agrees with you," approach are actually saying is "You can't disagree with us because everyone has their own opinion, but your opinion is wrong," and it's this that really infuriates me. As soon as you want to criticize my position, you have to accept my criticism of your position, and this brings me back to the points above.
In the example under point 4.) I explained that in these type of cases the thought process has gone: This is what I do (i.e. talk about celeb magazines) > Someone doesn't think this is a great use of time (opposing opinion) > Everyone has their own opinion, and I'm right (Judgmental Hypocrisy (JH)) > End of conversation.
This loop is both unbreakable and can not be broken down or analysised. There is no basis for the opinions or actions being discussed, and there is no continuation possible after the JH moment. Therefore any attempt at return criticism is impossible because there isn't an argument or logic chain to criticize. One of my precepts has always been that actions and motivations should be founded on well thought out first principles. This doesn't have to be massively technical, but someone asks you "Why?" you should be able to answer, and that answer should be coherent. The approach adopted by the JH-es is the exact opposite- you don't need a reason or an explanation, because no one is entitled to question your opinion.
I doubt this is ever going to change, but at least next time someone tells you "Everyone's entitled to their opinion," you can think to yourself, "Ah, what you mean is you don't know why your doing what your doing, and you don't care."
If that makes you depressed, haughty or resigned I leave up to you!
/Happy Trails
Z
..
To prevent myself falling into the very faux-pas I've just described (and I am going to skirt very close to it at times), I'm going to get some key points out first;
1.) I have a set of values, principles and ethics, and I judge others on their actions and motivations, based at least in part on my own sense of morality. This is my right (in the sense of an innate ability) as a sentient, free-willed individual.
2.) I'm willing to listen to people's justifications for their actions, and even where those actions don't coincide with my own morality, I may still agree with them if they follow on from others' own first principles.
3.) If you are presented with an action which stems logically or naturally from a first principle you either agree with, or can not disagree with (not the same thing), you can not reasonably then condemn the action.
4.) Once you've established someone holds irrational (defined below) opinions and isn't willing to change them once the logical fallacy is pointed out, then any further discussion is pointless, and their judgement on the related subject is valueless. An "irrational" opinion in this sense is one which is logically impossible given the same person's stated, un-waivable first principles. As an example using current events -
Q1. "Do you think that it should be up to the inhabitants of a region/area to decide their sovereign affliations?"
A. "Yes,"
Q2. "Do you agree that the people of the Falklands/Gibraltar voted overwhelming to remain a British Overseas Territory?"
A. "Yes"
Q3. "So what do you think should happen with Gibraltar,"
A. "It should become part of Spain."
(I've actually had a version of this conversation three times over the last couple of weeks.)
Note: importantly the final answer here isn't the result of some unspoken additional principle I've omitted, it's a function of the opinion (Q3) being formed before considering the principles (Q1 and Q2), and then people being disinterested in changing their opinion in the face of evidence or constructed arguments.
5.) I don't believe in objective morals.
(Objective in this sense means independent of the people making the actions and judgements. If an action is objectively 'wrong' than it would be condemned by people from all cultures and backgrounds, aliens, dolphins, and so on. The main basis for objectively morality is some form of deity. If you accept the existence of a religious God, and said God has stated idolatry is wrong, then that's that, its not up to humans to argue the point).
..
Given all this then, allow me to present what I'm going to term "Judgmental Hypocrisy."
The situation isn't that unusual, something has come up in conversation which is part of the social institution to which getting smashed and screaming at the top of your voice, football hooliganism, Ibiza and glossy magazines are all part of. The response (usually from me) is to query why people choose to do this kind of thing; its inelegant, uncivilized, expensive and going off the number of people who subsequently end up sick, unconscious, or regretful also doesn't seem to have much to recommend it.
What I want at this point is for someone who has done this kind of thing (the latest example being 18-30s holidays), to explain and defend the motivations behind doing whatever it is I'm condemning. Maybe it's about inclusion into a social group, maybe its a right of passage, maybe it's to distract people from the humdrum of their normal lives by consuming so much alcohol they lose the ability to think, maybe its about easy sex or escapism. All of these are things I can at least appreciate, even if I don't agree with them.
The response I get instead is usually "Well everyone's entitled to do what they think is fun - they probably don't think reading a book or watching cricket is fun."
On the face of it this seems like an unassailable position, a short extension of the right to action or speech that everyone has by the fact of their existence, and, from some people (genuine traditional Liberals of the camp who agreed you shouldn't tell someone they were about to accidently kill themselves since that would be intruding on their freedom of action) I might even accept it. Unfortunately however this position is also shipped with a dripping of condescending sarcasm which adds the unspoken additional line "and since what you enjoying doing isn't really fun then your just wrong."
And herein comes the Judgmental part; what the people making the "yes but not everyone agrees with you," approach are actually saying is "You can't disagree with us because everyone has their own opinion, but your opinion is wrong," and it's this that really infuriates me. As soon as you want to criticize my position, you have to accept my criticism of your position, and this brings me back to the points above.
In the example under point 4.) I explained that in these type of cases the thought process has gone: This is what I do (i.e. talk about celeb magazines) > Someone doesn't think this is a great use of time (opposing opinion) > Everyone has their own opinion, and I'm right (Judgmental Hypocrisy (JH)) > End of conversation.
This loop is both unbreakable and can not be broken down or analysised. There is no basis for the opinions or actions being discussed, and there is no continuation possible after the JH moment. Therefore any attempt at return criticism is impossible because there isn't an argument or logic chain to criticize. One of my precepts has always been that actions and motivations should be founded on well thought out first principles. This doesn't have to be massively technical, but someone asks you "Why?" you should be able to answer, and that answer should be coherent. The approach adopted by the JH-es is the exact opposite- you don't need a reason or an explanation, because no one is entitled to question your opinion.
I doubt this is ever going to change, but at least next time someone tells you "Everyone's entitled to their opinion," you can think to yourself, "Ah, what you mean is you don't know why your doing what your doing, and you don't care."
If that makes you depressed, haughty or resigned I leave up to you!
/Happy Trails
Z
Sunday, 4 August 2013
Vive l'Empereur
The French President has just said "non" to a re-negotiation of Britain's settlement with Europe. Queue surprise and anguish from the media. Are we really surprised by this? As was mentioned many years ago in an (as ever) accurate episode of the original Yes Minister series the French are our 'mistrusted allies' and international organizations are 'games played for national benefit.' What then should we be looking for from our ancient faux-friends in Gaul?
**
First off I need to get an important misconception out of the way - the pro, anti and unsure lobbies with regard to EU membership are actually talking about different things, and then therefore all conversation at present is meaningless.
The pro-EU argument is almost always couched in terms of economic impacts. Jobs lost, lack of access to the single market, lack of investment from areas outside Europe and so on. In the more serious articles there is then an attempt to show how these benefits outweigh the £10-12 billion a year cost of actually being in the EU in the first place.
The anti-EU argument is political and ethical - we are a sovereign nation and will remain so. I'm not sure whether it was intended as an insult but in a previous post I was described as a 'romantic nationalist' - a term I have since self-applied with gusto. While I can appreciate the economic impacts of European membership (or exit) these are ultimately a sliding scale which is not fully understood. That our courts are de facto no longer sovereign (despite the de jure claims), and that an entity other than our own elected Parliament can tax us is a situation which is not to be tolerated.
Unhelpfully however, this is not to argument you can factually resolve - just as the utilitarians struggle with the question of how many tubes of toothpaste is a naturally perky demeanor worth, a comparison of job creation vs sovereignty is not one that can be resolved by math alone.
Personally I'm all for common markets - in fact Britain had a larger network of free trade deals before it joined the Union than it has now. (We had to give up all our own trading rights to join the EU). The current deal between the US and EU that is being held up as a shining example of EU benefits only gets us more or less back to where the UK was before it joined the EU in the first place.
The economic objections raised by the likes of the TUC and, recently, Tokyo, would be mitigated by membership of a revamped EEA, and to the nay-sayers who worry that the cost of single market access is comparable to the full on cost of EU membership I say "fine." I'm happy to pay for the economic benefits, I'm not happy to pay for the ECHR to uphold the rights of rapists and murderers to have their living costs indirectly paid by me.
Britain's place in Europe has always been a bit odd. Religious, cultural and eventually historical loathing have lead us into war and conflict with just about every nation in Europe against just about every other nation in Europe. Our current attitude was almost certainly formed during the Long nineteenth century when Britain's global political and economic dominance allowed us to look to the rest of the world for our allies and trading partners, while keeping one boot firmly on the necks of any rising European powers (though admittedly one Frenchman proved to have a fairly boot-resistant neck). The cultural legacy of the world wars no doubt cemented that view, Britain does its own thing and regularly has to trot into Europe to sort things out. It's perhaps a pity our power and wealth stopped keeping up with our self-aggrandizement about a century ago.
This should be contrasted with the French and German views on the EU. Mr Hollande is directly quoted as saying he won't support anything that's not in the French national interest, while Germany has flourished with an artificially low exchange rate, and, increasingly, come to rule the EU nest thanks to its vast wealth and imperturbable constitutional courts (British equivalents take note). Britain needs to get over the view that we are doing everyone else a favor by playing along with the EU - we should be ruthlessly pursuing own our agenda, regardless of what that means to French farmers or Greek wine-merchants. If that means using the ultimatum of withdrawal to get what we want then fine.
While it doesn't really follow on cleanly, I'm just going to throw in a quick bit of maths (as ever). The costs to the UK last year of EU membership was £12billion (what we put in minus what we get back). According to Tokyo's recent lobbying we stand to lose "ten's of thousands" of jobs from a EU-exit. So... 99,999 jobs for £12 billion equals £120,001 per person. How about we just leave the EU and spend the money retraining anyone who lost their job?
And back to cricket...
Happy Trails,
/Z
**
First off I need to get an important misconception out of the way - the pro, anti and unsure lobbies with regard to EU membership are actually talking about different things, and then therefore all conversation at present is meaningless.
The pro-EU argument is almost always couched in terms of economic impacts. Jobs lost, lack of access to the single market, lack of investment from areas outside Europe and so on. In the more serious articles there is then an attempt to show how these benefits outweigh the £10-12 billion a year cost of actually being in the EU in the first place.
The anti-EU argument is political and ethical - we are a sovereign nation and will remain so. I'm not sure whether it was intended as an insult but in a previous post I was described as a 'romantic nationalist' - a term I have since self-applied with gusto. While I can appreciate the economic impacts of European membership (or exit) these are ultimately a sliding scale which is not fully understood. That our courts are de facto no longer sovereign (despite the de jure claims), and that an entity other than our own elected Parliament can tax us is a situation which is not to be tolerated.
Unhelpfully however, this is not to argument you can factually resolve - just as the utilitarians struggle with the question of how many tubes of toothpaste is a naturally perky demeanor worth, a comparison of job creation vs sovereignty is not one that can be resolved by math alone.
Personally I'm all for common markets - in fact Britain had a larger network of free trade deals before it joined the Union than it has now. (We had to give up all our own trading rights to join the EU). The current deal between the US and EU that is being held up as a shining example of EU benefits only gets us more or less back to where the UK was before it joined the EU in the first place.
The economic objections raised by the likes of the TUC and, recently, Tokyo, would be mitigated by membership of a revamped EEA, and to the nay-sayers who worry that the cost of single market access is comparable to the full on cost of EU membership I say "fine." I'm happy to pay for the economic benefits, I'm not happy to pay for the ECHR to uphold the rights of rapists and murderers to have their living costs indirectly paid by me.
Britain's place in Europe has always been a bit odd. Religious, cultural and eventually historical loathing have lead us into war and conflict with just about every nation in Europe against just about every other nation in Europe. Our current attitude was almost certainly formed during the Long nineteenth century when Britain's global political and economic dominance allowed us to look to the rest of the world for our allies and trading partners, while keeping one boot firmly on the necks of any rising European powers (though admittedly one Frenchman proved to have a fairly boot-resistant neck). The cultural legacy of the world wars no doubt cemented that view, Britain does its own thing and regularly has to trot into Europe to sort things out. It's perhaps a pity our power and wealth stopped keeping up with our self-aggrandizement about a century ago.
This should be contrasted with the French and German views on the EU. Mr Hollande is directly quoted as saying he won't support anything that's not in the French national interest, while Germany has flourished with an artificially low exchange rate, and, increasingly, come to rule the EU nest thanks to its vast wealth and imperturbable constitutional courts (British equivalents take note). Britain needs to get over the view that we are doing everyone else a favor by playing along with the EU - we should be ruthlessly pursuing own our agenda, regardless of what that means to French farmers or Greek wine-merchants. If that means using the ultimatum of withdrawal to get what we want then fine.
While it doesn't really follow on cleanly, I'm just going to throw in a quick bit of maths (as ever). The costs to the UK last year of EU membership was £12billion (what we put in minus what we get back). According to Tokyo's recent lobbying we stand to lose "ten's of thousands" of jobs from a EU-exit. So... 99,999 jobs for £12 billion equals £120,001 per person. How about we just leave the EU and spend the money retraining anyone who lost their job?
And back to cricket...
Happy Trails,
/Z
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