Caplan & Boudreaux on Nationalism

Bryan Caplan has written an open letter to nationalism, which is posted here.

Don Boudreaux reflects on this at Cafe Hayek.  A slice from Don's post (do read the whole thing, it is full of Don's characteristic wisdom and insight):

"I reject also the superstition that that particular political institution... is a faithful representative of that multitudinous and extraordinarily complex and diverse group of individuals commonly called “the American people.”  Indeed, I go further and reject even the possibility that such a group of people can possibly ever have anything reasonably called “a representative” or an agent or agency that carries out its ‘will.’  (Groups of people have no ‘will.’  It is mistaken anthropomorphism to imagine otherwise.)"

"I feel no, I owe no, and I will never give any allegiance to any nation or any government as such.  My allegiance is to whatever peoples and institutions promote human freedom, flourishing, and peace."

Well said.  It is heartening to know that we share this world with such clear thinkers as Boudreaux and Caplan.

One Man and His Bike

Who is the victim of this alleged "crime"?

"A man caught trying to have sex with his bicycle has been sentenced to three years on probation."

"Mr Stewart was caught in the act with his bicycle by cleaners in his bedroom at the Aberley House Hostel in Ayr."

"They used a master key to unlock the door..."

"The accused was holding the bike and moving his hips back and forth as if to simulate sex.  Both cleaners, who were "extremely shocked", told the hostel manager who called police."

"Stewart had denied the offence, claiming it was caused by a misunderstanding after he had too much to drink."

So, this guy has a bit too much to drink, goes home and decides to get it on with his bicycle* in the privacy of his own room.  A couple of cleaners use their master key to unwittingly enter his room whilst this is going on and rather than everyone simply being extremely embarrassed, the police are called and the guy ends up in court, sentenced to 3 years probation and with even more embarrassment as this story is publicised in the national media.

I utterly fail to see what crime has been committed or who exactly is the victim here?  All sex acts are morally okay so long as they are taking place between consenting adults.  Since no other people were involved, just one man and his bike, there's no crime being committed here, however weird an act it may be.

I cannot understand the mental processes of the cleaners here.  Who, if they were to walk into someone's bedroom and accidentally catch them in the middle of any sort of individual sexual act, would think that calling the police is the best, or even an appropriate, response?  The appropriate response is to quickly apologise to the person whose privacy you have intruded on and promptly leave.

The bizarreness of the act in this case does not change the situation in any substantive way.  However unorthodox, weird, terrifying or disgusting you may find someone else's sexual preferences and habits as long as they are not agressing against another person (or animal) there is nothing morally wrong and we should simply live and let live.

* Quite how the mechanics of this would work I'm not entirely sure.  I refuse to Google it, there are some things which I am happy to remain ignorant of.

Tyler Cowen on Scottish Independence

The ever thoughtful, insightful and wise Tyler Cowen has posted some thoughts on Scottish Independence over on Marginal Revolution.  A slice:

"[The Union of 1707] truly was a cornerstone of the modern world"

"For all its flaws, the UK remains one of the very best and most successful countries the world has seen, ever."

"If a significant segment of the British partnership wishes to leave, and for no really good practical reason, it is a sign that something is deeply wrong with contemporary politics and with our standards for loyalties."

Needless to say I shall be voting no in September.

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."