If you don't vote you can't complain!

I was inspired to write this post after turning on my TV this morning to be greeted by the image of Ian McMillan (who I had no idea who he was until today) on BBC Breakfast talking about the Newark by-election.  Quite apart from the fact that he also seemed to believe (erroneously) that a single voter could make a difference (even in a closely contested by-election, how often does it come down to a single vote?), he also made the following declaration:

"If you don't vote, don't complain.  If you don't vote it's nowt [sic] to do with you."

This seems to be a ubiquitous sentiment amongst people of various political leanings.  It is also something with which I happen to completely disagree.

Firstly, the fact that a person has (correctly) concluded that their vote has a negligible chance of making any difference whatsoever and therefore (rationally) decided that there are better uses of their time* than reading through flyers, manifestos, propaganda and other policy documents does not in any way make their opinions and preferences carry any less weight than someone who has made the alternative choice to vote.  Every single person is equally entitled to their opinion and equally entitled to complain, campaign, support or protest in whatever (peaceful) way they see fit, this extends to those who either could not or chose not to vote.

Secondly, refraining from voting can itself be a form of protest.  Admittedly, the problem with protesting in this way is it isn't possible from voting turnout figures to distinguish those who didn't vote out of protest from those who were apathetic, lazy or indeed simply had better things to do*.

One could argue that those who don't vote out of principal or in protest actually have more of a right to complain that those of us who do.  If you happen to have voted in favour of the candidate/party/policy which wins an election/referendum you have implicitly given your consent to be governed/represented/constrained by said candidate/party/policy and legitimised the use of certain powers and constraints over you and those you care about.  Even if you vote against the eventual winner, by participating in the election/referendum process you accept that process as legitimate and therefore implicitly accept the outcome of that process.

Say that you voted for the Libertarian Party at the last General Election.  Since the Libertarian Party have no MPs you would feel that your views have little to no representation in Parliament.  Chances are high that your representative in the House of Commons is either a Conservative or Labour party member (possibly a Liberal Democrat).  Whichever of the major parties they represent, you didn't vote for them.  You think that this therefore gives you the right to complain about them, their party and everything they do and stand for.  However, you still participated in the process which saw them elected.  You just don't like the outcome in this particular instance, in other words you don't like the choices that most other people have made.  But, you agreed to participate in the process which resulted in that outcome!

I say free speech to all.  This means it doesn't matter whether you vote or not you still have every right to express your opinions in whatever peaceful ways you see fit.  Let the non-voters complain if they've got something they think is worth complaining about!


* Some examples of better uses of ones time than voting include: spending time with ones family / friends / loved ones, working to provide for oneself and ones family, spending time at a hobby, doing some DIY/redecorating to improve ones home, enjoying a good meal, enjoying a music concert, etc.

Public Health and the Regulatory State

That's the title of a recent post by Eric Crampton over on Offsetting Behaviour and also of the paper he discusses therein, by Pierre Lemieux.

A slice:

 "Contemporary public health cannot be pursued without lifestyle controls, and lifestyle controls cannot be imposed without harming some real individuals."

and:

 "The vast majority of the costs tallied in these studies, when not simply fabrications of double-counting, are costs smokers, or drinkers, or the obese, impose on themselves. But they're presented to the public as "costs to the country" rather than "costs incurred by the obese, smokers, and heavy drinkers.""

(Emphasis added)

If you don't already read Offsetting Behaviour you really should.  I've been following it for several years now and it remains one of my favourite blogs.

Bad Infographic of the Day

Whilst browsing the MoneySavingExpert website over lunch today I came across this good example of a bad infographic:

It appears on the page about cheaper fuel and is intended to illustrate how the cost of a typical litre of unleaded petrol breaks down.

There are two problems with the above graph.  Firstly, most of the percentages shown in brackets are wrong.  For example, a very quick and simple bit of mental arithmetic will tell you that 5p is not 6% of £1.30, but less than 4%.  However, this is not the main problem with the graph.  The main problem is that the areas of the graph are all wrong; it significantly under-represents the portion of the petrol price attributable to fuel duty and to the manufacturer, slightly over-represents VAT and massively over-represents the retailers cut.

I've produced a corrected version of the infographic, which is shown below.  See if you can spot the difference:

MoneySavingExpert claims the data for the infographic comes from PetrolPrices.com; I can't find the infographic there, so I'm guessing that's MoneySavingExpert's own work.  There are a couple of graphics on this page that aren't any better, although they just appear to show the cost breakdown numerically, with the larger numbers written in a larger font to give them more prominence - they aren't quite as potentially misleading.

Liberal = Not Liberal ?

Belinda Luscombe, writing in Time describes George Akerlof as "more liberal than his wife [Janet Yellen]" and then goes on to quote Akerlof as saying "Our lone disagreement is that she is a bit more supportive of free trade than I."

Methinks that would make Yellen more liberal than Akerlof.

How have we come to the point where the less liberal position is described as the more liberal position?  That the word 'liberal' has become so corrupted that it is now used to mean the very opposite of liberal?

Quotation of the Day

From Steve Levitt in the latest Freakonomics Podcast, titled Are We Ready to Legalize Drugs? And Other FREAK-quently Asked Questions (emphasis added):

"And I do have a paper with Roland Fryer and a former student of mine, Paul Heaton, and Kevin Murphy.  And we set out to look at the crack epidemic and the costs of the crack epidemic from a purely practical perspective.  How bad was it?  Do the places that had a lot of crack, did really bad things happen there, and why?  And it was really interesting; it was really one of the most surprising results.  Because almost all of the big costs that we saw had to do not with the consumption of crack itself.  Consumption of crack had some negative effects, but they weren't great.  The really big social costs had to do with the prohibition of the legality of crack.  And so it was the case that the greatest costs we saw were the violence related to the fighting for property rights, and the imprisonment of people.  And it was interesting because it doesn't say that legalization is necessarily a good thing.  That’s a big jump to have.  But it says that in a regime where drugs are highly illegal, hard drugs like cocaine, in the U.S., the real costs that we feel then are the costs of the prohibition, not the costs of the use, because the prohibition is reasonably effective at lowering the use."

Quotation of the Day

From The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek, Routledge Classics Edition, Chapter 15 "The Prospects of International Order" (page 242):

"We shall never prevent the abuse of power if we are not prepared to limit power in a way which occasionally may also prevent its use for desirable purposes."

Happy New Year!

Quotation of the Day

From An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Oxford World Classics Edition, Book 4, Chapter 3 (page 303):

"... though... in the case of a free trade between France and England... the balance would be in favour of France, it would by no means follow that such a trade would be disadvantageous to England...  If the wines of France are better and cheaper than those of Portugal, or its linens than those of Germany, it would be more advantageous for Great Britain to purchase both the wine and the foreign linen which it had occasion for of France, than of Portugal and Germany."

Quotation of the Day

"The economic rationale for government policy requires that it generate benefits to society that are likely greater than the costs it imposes."

From this post about the economics of climate change by Steve Sexton on the Freakonomics blog.  Of course, this quote applies far more generally than this specific instance.

Quotation of the Day

From An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Oxford World Classics Edition, Book 4, Chapter 2 (pages 292-293):

"To give the monopoly of the home market to the produce of domestick industry, in any particular art or manufacture, is in some measure to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, and must, in almost all cases, be either a useless or a hurtful regulation.  If the produce of domestick can be bought there as cheap as that of foreign industry, the regulation is evidently useless.  If it cannot, it must generally be hurtful.  It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy.  The taylor does not attempt to make his own shoes, but buys them of the shoemaker.  The shoemaker does not attempt to make his own cloaths, but employs a taylor.  The farmer attempts to make neither the one nor the other, but employs those different artificers.  All of them find it for their interest to employ their whole industry in a way in which they have some advantage over their neighbours, and to purchase with a part of its produce, or what is the same thing, with the price of a part of it, whatever else they have occasion for.
What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.  If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we have some advantage.  The general industry of the country, being always in proportion to the capital which employs it, will not thereby be diminished, no more than that of the above-mentioned artificers; but only left to find out the way in which it can be employed with the greatest advantage."

Quotation of the Day

From An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Oxford World Classics Edition, Book 4, Chapter 1 (pages 276-277):

"That wealth consists in money, or in gold and silver, is a popular notion which naturally arises from the double function of money, as the instrument of commerce, and as the measure of value.  In consequence of its being the instrument of commerce, when we have money we can more readily obtain whatever else we have occasion for, than by means of any other commodity.  The great affair, we always find, is to get money.  When that is obtained, there is no difficulty in making any subsequent purchase.  In consequence of its being the measure of value, we estimate that of all other commodities by the quantity of money which they will exchange for.  We say of a rich man that he is worth a great deal, and of a poor man that he is worth very little money.  A frugal man, or a man eager to be rich, is said to love money; and a careless, a generous, or a profuse man, is said to be indifferent about it.  To grow rich is to get money; and wealth and money, in short, are, in common language, considered as in every respect synonymous.
A rich country, in the same manner as a rich man, is supposed to be a country abounding in money; and to heap up gold and silver in any country is supposed to be the readiest way to enrich it.  For some time after the discovery of America, the first enquiry of the Spaniards, when they arrived upon any unknown coast, used to be, if there was any gold or silver to be found in the neighbourhood?  By the information which they received, they judged whether it was worth while to make a settlement there, or if a country was worth the conquering.  Plano Carpino, a monk sent ambassador from the king of France to one of the sons of the famous Gengis Khan, says that the Tartars used frequently to ask him, if there was plenty of sheep and oxen in the kingdom of France?  Their enquiry had the same object with that of the Spaniards.  They wanted to know if the country was rich enough to be worth the conquering.  Among the Tartars, as among all other nations of shepherds, who are generally ignorant of the use of money, cattle are the instruments of commerce and the measures of value.  Wealth, therefore, according to them, consisted in cattle, as according to the Spaniards it consisted in gold and silver.  Of the two, the Tartar notion, perhaps, was the nearest to the truth."