Here it is instructive to look at the statistics for house burglary in England and Wales. 750-800,000 such burglaries were known to the police in 2006; the police found the burglars in about 66,000 cases. (The figures for the number of burglaries are underestimated, while those for the numbers of burglaries solved are overestimated, both for technical reasons not necessary to go into, and that we can for the sake of argument ignore.) In that year, just over 6000 burglars received prison sentences. In other words, even if caught, a burglar in England and Wales is not likely to go to prison; but he is even less likely to be caught in the first place. In this sense, then, criminals do indeed have nothing to lose, and possibly much to gain by criminality.
Theodore Dalrymple, “It’s a riot”, New English Review, 2012-04.
February 1, 2018
QotD: In Britain, crime does pay
January 31, 2018
QotD: “Enhancing the user experience”
Once upon a time, computers weren’t all constantly connected to the intertubes. What we call “air-gapped” these days was the normal state of machines back in the desktop beige box days.
Back then, when you bought a program it came in a cardboard box on physical media. You would install it on your computer and it would work the same way from the day you installed it to the day you stopped using it. Nobody could rearrange the menus on WordPerfect or change the buttons in Secret Weapons of the Lufwaffe … Good times.
Nowadays, half the software you interact with doesn’t even reside on your PC. Further, there are whole departments at, say, Facebook or Blizzard or Google whose entire job is to “enhance the user experience”. If they’re not constantly dicking around, adding and removing features, changing what buttons do, moving things around … then they’re not doing their jobs.
We have incentivized instability.
Tamara Keel, “Tinkering for tinkering’s sake…”, View From The Porch, 2018-01-10.
January 30, 2018
QotD: Worstall’s Law of Organizations
I would, and do, argue that this is, in fact, the inevitable fate of all and any organizations, so much so that we might call it Worstall’s Law of Organizations, perhaps a minor corollary to Parkinson’s Laws. All and any organizations will in the end be run by those who stay awake in committee. A brief survey of the world around us will show that this is a simple and obvious truth.
Tim Worstall, “‘Any Organization Will, In the End, Be Run By Those Who Stay Awake in Committee'”, Ideas in Action, 2005-06-23.
January 29, 2018
QotD: Churchill’s drinking habits
In the not so distant past around the sodden precincts of Westminster you were as likely to spot a yeti as a sober politician. The level of drinking that went on among MPs and their leeches for most of the last century was prodigious and was by and large expected. It was, as Ben Wright describes in his breezy, anecdote-rich and instructive survey of booze and politics, part of a culture which was tolerated and, to a degree, encouraged.
It was not without justification, for instance, that Adolf Hitler, who might have been a nicer fellow had he not been a teetotaller, described Winston Churchill as an “insane drunkard”, a “garrulous drunkard”, and “whisky-happy”.
If Order, Order! has a star it is undoubtedly Churchill who rarely let a day go by able to pass a breathalyser test. On occasion he would have a glass of wine at breakfast followed by a liquid lunch which invariably included Champagne and brandy. At tea-time he would progress to whisky. Then he would wash down dinner with more Champagne and brandy after which he had at least another whisky. According to one loyal aide who may have been sight impaired he was never the worse for wear for this intake and he “never felt the slightest ill-effects in the morning”.
Alan Taylor, “Lush tales of our political classes’ drinking exploits”, The National, 2016-06-20.
January 28, 2018
QotD: Protectionism
All protectionism is rooted in the mistaken presumption not only that existing, domestic producers have a moral right – enforceable by the state – to the patronage of domestic consumers, but also that no future domestic producers have such a right as against current domestic producers. This right, were it real, implies that consumers exist to please existing domestic producers; it implies that continued or expanded production of that which is currently produced domestically is the end, while consumption is only the means of encouraging such production.
Only the widespread, if unthinking, acceptance of this presumption gives credence to the demands of domestic producers that some “unfair” practice by a foreign rival or foreign government justifies the imposition by the home government of punitive taxes on domestic consumers who purchase imports. Only a widely shared, if seldom articulated, belief that current domestic producers have a right to some minimum portion of domestic-consumers’ incomes explains the nodding of the heads of many people of all political persuasions when they hear some politician or pundit or preacher demonize foreign producers for selling wares to domestic citizens.
Don Boudreaux, “Protectionism”, Cafe Hayek, 2016-05-27.
January 27, 2018
QotD: “Hate” laws and other redundant bits of legislation
As a customary principle of politics, whether “electoral” or “appointive,” I think it unwise to adjust legislation, or offer to adjust it, in response to behaviour by the criminally insane. This confers too much power on them. Verily, it is a mark of our present social condition that “reforms” are guided more and more by the hardest and strangest cases. […]
The need, specifically, for new “hate laws” is zero, at most. Murder has never been an expression of affection, to any individual or group; specific hatreds have always been considered in the interpretation of motives. We have enough crimes already, without inventing redundant ones in accord with the latest fashions. The intention behind them is never exemplary of mental and moral hygiene.
Which points again to the deeper “problematic” (one tires of the misuse of this word) in politics as practised today. We not only legislate in response to the transient behaviour of the criminally insane. Worse, our legislators, though arguably sane to start with, get in the habit of indulging insanity, even within themselves.
David Warren, “Orlando”, Essays in Idleness, 2016-06-14.
January 26, 2018
QotD: Britain’s boozy parliamentarians
It is Wright’s contention [in his book Order! Order!] that alcohol has as many benefits as it does drawbacks. Not only does it help loosen ties and tongues it also boosts confidence and dilutes stress. Most prime ministers drank, many to excess. Herbert Asquith went by the nickname “Squiffy Asquith” and regularly appeared in the Commons three sheets to the wind. Margaret Thatcher did her best to promote the whisky industry, the uncapping of a bottle of Bell’s marking the end of the working day. She believed that whisky rather than gin was good for you because “it will give you energy”, which I fear could be a hard fact to prove scientifically.
Tony Blair, whose reign ushered in an era of 24-hour drinking, thought his relatively modest drinking was getting out of control because he calculated it exceeded the government’s weekly recommended limit. This did not impress Dr John Reid, Bellshill’s finest, who once drank like a navvy. “Where I come from,” Reid told GMTV, “a gin and tonic, two glasses of wine, you wouldn’t give that to a budgie.” Blair, of course, did not have to look further than next door to find an explanation why his consumption increased over the years. Gordon Brown, his nemesis, was fond of Champagne – Möet & Chandon no less – which he did not nurse but washed down in a gulp. “He was like the cookie monster,” recalled one aide. “Down in one, whoosh!” Drinking is of course one of those areas in which we Scots have long punched above our weight and Wright’s pages are replete with examples of intoxicated Jocks carousing nights away and causing mayhem. Former Labour leader John Smith was one such. Occasionally I encountered him on the overnight train that carried Scottish MPs home from Westminster on a Thursday night. Known as “the sleeper of death”, it was a mobile pub that never closed until it reached Waverley, whereupon politicians were disgorged red-eyed and pie-eyed among bemused early morning commuters.
Alan Taylor, “Lush tales of our political classes’ drinking exploits”, The National, 2016-06-20.
January 25, 2018
QotD: The New Deal
Of such sorts are the wizards who now run the country. Here is the perfect pattern of a professional world-saver. His whole life has been devoted to the art and science of spending other people’s money. He has saved millions of the down-trodden from starvation, pestilence, cannibalism, and worse – always at someone else’s expense, and usually at the taxpayer’s. He has been going at it over and over again at Washington. And now, with $4,800,000,000 of your money and mine in his hands, he is preparing to save fresh multitudes, that they may be fat and optimistic on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November, 1936, and so mark their ballots in the right box.
H.L Mencken, “The New Deal”, Baltimore Sun, 1935-05-27.
January 24, 2018
QotD: What is a human life worth?
Government itself has this problem too in fact and the method generally used to deal with it is price mechanism. We generally try to work out what is the statistical value of a life by looking around at what people do and how much they charge for the risk. Some people work in more dangerous jobs (trawlerman, lumberjack), so what’s the difference in wages between a more dangerous and less dangerous job (trying, of course, to keep other things like effort, training and so on constant)? People smoke and are willing to pay some sum for a safer car but not an unlimited amount. This process is more of an art than a science, but the U.S. government comes up with numbers in the $4 million to $10 million range for the value of a statistical life.
This is not what a life should be worth. This is what, from observation of what people do, modern Americans think a life actually is worth. Now we can use it to decide on our safety regulations. And it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about corporations eyeing their profits or government aiding the EPA in setting rules about what corporations may do. We still end up with the same economic point.
If the statistical value of a life is $10 million then a rule, a regulation, a new way of doing something, which costs more than $10 million per life saved is a waste of resources. It’s not just something we might have to think about doing: it’s something that we positively should not do. Equally, something that costs less than $10 million per life saved is something we should do. Either way, we are trying to make sure that we expend our limited and scarce resources in order to produce the greatest human value we can. Spending $20 million on saving one life is a waste of those resources: not spending $500,000 on saving one is a waste of that life which we value more.
Tim Worstall, “Sorry, Salon: The Koch Brothers Are Actually Right”, Forbes, 2016-05-17.
January 23, 2018
QotD: Indoctrination
In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think … but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinators.
William F. Buckley Jr., Up From Liberalism, 1959.
January 22, 2018
QotD: Expecting far too much from Economics 101
James Kwak is the latest to take up the point that Economics 101 isn’t all that good as a basis for designing public policy. To which the answer is, well, yes, of course. Why is anyone in the least bit surprised at this? We don’t use people with two semesters of college French as translators either. Introductory college courses are introductory college courses: that they provide an introduction to a subject and not full access to the deeper secrets of the profession is a surprise to whom? Well, obviously, apparently some rather large number of people but why there’s all this pearl clutching over it being true about economics and economics only is the mystery I suppose
[…]
What worries me far more about this discussion is this. Sure, it’s entirely obvious that we shouldn’t be designing public policy on the basis of what econ 101 tells us. But all too many people take that to mean that we should be designing public policy in entire violation of what econ 101 tells us. That the introductory course is not complete, does not contain all of the subtlety of all of the arguments is entirely true. But that doesn’t mean that those basic concepts are wrong, nor that they should be tossed on the bonfire of political wishes either. And that, sadly, is what all too many do. We see it all the time: econ 101 isn’t complete therefore the minimum wage doesn’t cost jobs. Econ 101 isn’t everything so therefore trade is a bad idea. As economists agree econ 101 doesn’t describe everything therefore my pet idea in violation of basic principles is right.
That to me is where the danger is: not that people are incorrect in agreeing that there’s more to it than just that introductory class, but that people incorrectly assume that because that is so they can reject what that first class is telling us about the basic of the subject.
Tim Worstall, “Yes, Of Course Economics 101 Is Useless At Designing Public Policy”, Forbes, 2016-05-14.
January 21, 2018
QotD: When to stop reading an article
I read full-time to edit The Browser, and I abandon a hundred articles for every one that I finish. I generally stop if I hit “eponymous”, or “toxic”, or “trigger warning”, or “make no mistake”. Summary labelling of anything in an article as “complex” means that the writer does not understand or cannot explain the material. I don’t often read beyond headlines that use the words “surprising”, “secret”, “really”, “not” or “… and why it matters”. Any headline ending in a question mark is a bad sign. I know writers don’t usually write their own headlines, but the headline represents a best effort to say what is useful in the article by a sympathetic person who has been paid to read it.
Robert Cottrell, quoted by Tyler Cowen, “When does Robert Cottrell just stop reading? (from the comments)”, Marginal Revolution, 2016-05-19.
January 20, 2018
January 19, 2018
QotD: Political correctness
Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.
Theodore Dalrymple, “Our Culture, What’s Left Of It”, FrontPage Magazine, 2005-08-31.
