The World Bank has today announced an increase in its assistance to Pakistan. That would be the country led by a military dictator, General Musharraf, who took office in a coup in 1999 and was recently criticised by the Commonwealth for reneging on his promise to to relinquish the post of Chief of Army Staff as part of the process of restoring democracy in Pakistan.
You may remember that Condeleeza Rice said in June:
For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East — and we achieved neither. Now, we are taking a different course.
Not much sign of change. Strategic alliances and stability before democracy. As ever.
I suppose I was pleased to see Tim Worstall’s article at the Globalisation Institute making the same points as me about the famine in Niger:
I said (on August 2nd):
Food aid may depress local food prices, and thereby cause some harm to food producers and perhaps reduce future production. In these circumstances, it would be better to drop dollar bills out of helicopters than sacks of food.
And on August 12th:
on Sen’s analysis, the conclusion is that rich countries should provide increased resources for Niger, provided in the form of unhypothecated cash grants to the poor (basically, dropping dollar bills out of a helicopter).
Tim said on August 16th:
The solution is to give those people the money to purchase the food. It is known in the trade as "dropping dollars out of helicopters" and while there may be more sophisticated methods of doing it, that is, in essence, what it is.
Bravo, Tim. Good thinking.
Futhermore, writing on the same website today, Alex Singleton has spotted that the textile agreement with China is bad for the world’s poor. Which is what I pointed out here on June 11th, when the deal was first signed.
(Incidentally, I am still looking forward to Tim publishing a prominent correction to his last article on TechCentralStation. I’ve even written a draft to save him the bother.)
Stephen Thomsen at Chatham House has published an interesting paper, "Foreign direct investment in Africa: the private-sector response to improved governance" (pdf) which says that:
- Private capital flows to Africa in the form of foreign direct investment (FDI) are growing. While in the past much of this investment was limited to the raw materials sector, the current wave involves firms from more countries and sectors than ever before.
- Foreign investors, including from within Africa itself, invested almost $50 billion in Africa during 2000–03. While this represents only a small share of global flows, the more relevant comparison iswith the size of the African economy. By this measure sub-Saharan Africa attracts almost as much FDI as Southeast Asia.
- Although Europe remains the principal source of investment, a rising share is coming both from Asia and from within Africa itself.
- Investors have been influenced by improvements in governance, most notably with respect to the business climate, where the desire to attract foreign investors can provide a strong incentive for African governments to reform their policies and practices. Although much remains to be done, some countries have nevertheless made great progress in areas such as political and economic stabilization, privatization and simplification of cumbersome regulations.
- This foreign investment also has implications for patterns of trade and integration. Many African exports are channelled through multinational enterprises, helping to integrate African countries both with one another and with the global economy.
As the paper argues, this is a tribute to the huge improvements in governance across the continent over the last few years. I was also interested to see the conclusion that aid flows and foreign direct investment are complementary:
Not only can public donors encourage private investors and vice versa, but together they can also make a greater contribution to development than either by itself. This can be seen most clearly with respect to infrastructure where neither the large aid-financed projects of the 1950s and 1960s nor the largely private projects of the 1990s have yielded the expected private and social returns in many cases. In this light, any increase in aid to Africa such as through debt relief agreed at the G8 meeting is likely to foster greater flows of foreign investment in the future. When allied with improvements in governance on the continent, the combined impact of increased aid and FDI might well yield positive results on a far greater scale than has previously been seen.
… and I’m increasingly sure that Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek doesn’t either.
We’ve been treated to four posts from Professor Boudreaux about Niger in the last four days which illustrate how his thinking has evolved, and on what basis:
- first, we are told that "Perhaps if the U.N. weren’t in Niger, traders would be selling food directly to starving people"; this is based on a newspaper article which we all agree does not seem to be plausible;
- then this hypothesis hardens up: "the fact remains that in the here and now people starve while local farmers await the free-spending ‘aid’ agencies to buy their produce" (this firmer allegation is apparently not based on any new information, just a hardening of Professor Boudreaux’s resolve on this point)
- third, it turns out that Niger’s problem is "impediments its people suffer in their attempts to pursue those wealth-creating activities";
- and fourth, we find out that "the facts that Tim uncovered are sufficient evidence against the proposition that Nigeriens enjoy a market economy. They don’t. And therein is Niger’s problem". This, at least, is based on some actual information, albeit sketchy and anecdotal, about government regulation in Niger.
So that’s it, then? Because it is expensive to set up a limited liability company in Niger, employment laws are rigid, loans require collateral and the commercial law is time consuming, that is why there is hunger in Niger?
And why, may I ask, was there no famine last year? Was government regulation lighter then?
I have no disagreement with the thought that, if Niger had a better Government, the people there would be more wealthy and less likely to suffer from hunger. But there are many things about the world which, if they were different, might have changed the likelihood of Niger suffering from a famine: if there had been a Green Revolution in Africa, if the French had been better colonialists, if northern countries had opened up their markets to developing countries, or if the rest of the world had decided to use nuclear power instead of fossil fuels, then Niger might have been less poor and there might have been less hunger. To conclude that any one of these is "Niger’s problem" is a statement of ideology, not economic analysis.
(Parenthetically, I should say that I agree with two of the points that Professor Boudreaux makes: we should not assume that Niger should produce all the food that it consumes; and it is not necessarily a good idea for aid agencies to buy food directly for the people of Niger. As I argued in my original post, there is a case instead for giving money to the people who are hungry, and letting them buy the food that they need from whomever can supply appropriate food most cheaply.)
I agree with Professor Boudreaux about The Beatles, though.
Ignore, if you will for a moment, any doubts you have about the civil liberties implications of the UK Government’s proposals to deport foreign nationals. Set aside the question of whether it is consistent with our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights.
Step back and ask: even if we could find a way, consistent with our international obligations, to achieve the Government’s goal of excluding from the UK people who advocate fundamentalist ideas, how much good will that do us?
It is true that some young muslims in the UK have been influenced by radical preachers. But it is difficult to believe that, in a world of global communications and easy travel, that it is really going to make the UK a very much safer place if we remove a couple of dozen (or even a few hundred) people who advocate conflict. They will presumably continue to argue their cause in whichever country they end up; and if they are silenced they will be rapidly replaced by others. The suicide terrorists on 9/11 had not been recruited in the United States. There seem to be plenty of young, disaffected people who can be recruited elsewhere in the world to cause violence in any country. So how is shifting radical leaders abroad going to make us safe?
This feels like an opportunistic policy introduced by a Government to take advantage of the country’s sense of fear and outrage at the bombings in London. Perhaps it is a collective expression of national frustration which we are taking out on people who may be connected with religious fundamentalism. Perhaps it is a diversionary tactic from a Government that feels it should be seen to be doing something.
Unless someone can provide a compelling explanation of how this will help to make us safe, it isn’t something for which we should be considering avoiding our international obligations, sidestepping civil liberties, and tolerating torture.
Over at Stumbling and Mumbling, Chris Dillow sets out a compelling moral case for the people of rich countries to help the world’s poor. He argues that, whether you take a utilitarian, rights-based, or a social contract view, we have a duty to assist.
I agree with this as far as it goes, but it seems to me that there are four categories of reasons why we should help the world’s poor.
- First, we have a moral duty to our fellow human beings
Chris covers this in some detail, and I have little to add. I would, however, particularly endorse the thought that we have just as much responsibility for helping the people of Lusaka as we do the people of Liverpool. Just because they are further away does not reduce our obligations to them. - Second, we bear some responsibility for poverty in developing countries
A part (and only a part) of the reason why there is poverty in developing countries is because of the behaviour of rich countries; and they are part (and only a part) of the reason that we are rich. I suspect this will be controversial, so I’ll set out a number of reasons why I believe this is true (and you don’t have to believe them all to agree with the conclusion.) The obscenity of slavery deprived Africa of generations of its most economically active young men, and traumatised many communities. The colonial powers – especially France – benefited enormously from the products of slave labour, such as sugar and cotton. Through the period of colonialisation we exploited natural resources of developing countries, such as minerals and timber, accumulating capital for the colonisers but leaving nothing for the colonised. At the Berlin Conference 1884-1885, the colonial powers drew political boundaries in Africa which did not reflect linguistic, ethnic, historical or geographical boundaries, burdening Africa with deep complications in the governance of nation states. The European tactics of divide and rule created conflicts in societies that persist today (for example, see Gourevitch’s account of how the Europeans invented a conflict between Tutsi and Hutus, in order to govern the Great Lakes regions; an artificial and recent division which eventually erupted into the Rwanda genocide). Through the colonial era and in to the Cold War, the rich countries installed and supported dictators such as Mobuto, Mengistu, Houphouët-Boigny, Eyadéma, Traoré, and Banda, because we thought it was in our strategic and commerical interests to do so. Our opposition to the evolution of democratic institutions during the colonial period and Cold War has contributed to the lack of democracy, freedom and good governance that is now recognised as a major cause of poverty in Africa. More recently, we continue to provide the money which feeds widespread corruption, for example through oil royalties or mineral extraction rights, while our companies refuse to publish details of the payments they make. (This is not generally true of aid, which is now carefully monitored to ensure that the funds are well spent; but it remains true of the much larger flow of private sector funds.) And through the emmission of greenhouse gases, it seems increasingly likely that we have contributed to global warming which leads to desertification and the destruction of the habitats and livelihoods of people in the developing world. (I have deliberately excluded from this list the many ways in which things we don’t do contribute to poverty – such as allowing poor countries access to our markets). - Third, reducing poverty will reduce the risk of bad things happening to us
We have strong reasons of self interest to fight poverty. We have seen from recent terrorism that our security is threatened as much by weak states as by strong states. Growing international inequality contributes to a sense of injustice among young people – for example, the would-be bombers in London on July 21 2005 were from East Africa. Conflict between and within developing countries is never completely contained, and we sometimes become involved to keep peace or prevent humanitarian disasters. As well as violent unrest and conflict, we are at risk of organised crime, export of drugs, the spread of infectious diseases, and widespread environmental degradation which will reduce the quality of all our lives if we do not tackle it. - Fourth, reducing poverty will increase the economic opportunities available to us
It is in our interests to have economically strong trading partners. Rather than feel threatened by the loss of jobs overseas, we have the opportunity to build large and growing markets which, at least in the case of Africa and Europe, are on the doorstep. If conditions improved in developing countries, there would be opportunities for greater trade, cheaper raw materials, and greater economic diversity.
I suspect that the second reason given above will be the most controversial, and I would emphasise that it is only part of the reason why I think we should help the world’s poor. Each of these four categories would, in my view, be sufficient to make a compelling case. Taken together, I believe the case is unanswerable.
There is also a debate about who exactly should bear this responsibility. Some libertarians would argue that it is for private individuals, not governments, to determine whether and to what extent we should help other people. (See the comments on Chris’s post at Stumbling and Mumbling for some flavour of this argument.) I think the case for leaving this to individual decision is strongest if the justification for helping others is entirely moral: in that case, you might think we should each make an ethical decision for ourselves. But if you believe the second, third and fourth category of reason given above, this creates a stronger case for public involvement in aid. In particular, reducing the risks to us and creating greater economic opportunities are public goods, in the sense that they are non-excludable, and in the absence of government intervention there would be a strong incentive for some people to free ride on the generosity of others, leading to an underprovision of these goods.
An article in Thursday’s Washington Post by Craig Timberg claimed that “the rise of a market mentality” has contributed to the famine in Niger. As you would expect, this has provoked a strong reaction from free market bloggers, such as Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek, Melana Zyla Vickers at TechCentralStation, Craig Newmark at Newmark’s Door, and Anthony Batty at The Globalisation Institute, who claim that the problem has been caused by price controls, excessive government regulation and the unintended consequence of well-meaning donor intervention.
In this polarised debate, both ideological extremes are wrong. This is a reality-based blog, so here is the middle ground.
First, Timberg’s claim that market liberalization has led to this famine is painfully misguided. He says:
“In a country adopting free market policies, the suffering caused by a poor harvest has been dramatically compounded by a surge in food prices and, many people here suspect, profiteering by a burgeoning community of traders, who in recent years have been freed from government price controls and other mechanisms that once balanced market forces.”
This does not make sense. Surely he cannot believe that food production would be higher, and more food would be available in Niger, if food prices were lower, for example as a result of Government price controls. Rising food prices create incentives for higher production, marketing of stockpiled food, reduced exports and increased imports. If Niger has too little food, then an increase in food prices is exactly what is needed to increase the supply.
Timberg offered himself up as a free hit for the right wing commentators, which they duly took. But seeing the world through ideological blinkers, they headed off over the reality horizon in the opposite direction.
Notably, Melana Zyla Vickers misunderstands Amartya Sen’s Poverty and Famines, claiming that Sen finds that “command-controlled, totalitarian and authoritarian regimes have regularly bred famine”. Actually, this wasn’t Sen’s point. His analysis showed that some (but not all) famines are caused not by a lack of food production, but by a failure of entitlement, which occurs when some members of the population lack the resources to buy the food they need. It is true that Sen pointed out that excessive state interference might contribute to the failure of the market to ensure that food reaches people who need it. But his central conclusion, which Ms Vickers conveniently ignores, was that even in free markets with sufficient food production, it is possible that an imbalance in the distribution of economic resources might lead to hunger and famine. Sen pointed out that in these circumstances, the best approach might be for aid donors to make cash grants to those who need food, to enable them to buy it in markets and so feed themselves while increasing incentives for the production and distribution of food. So on Sen’s analysis, the conclusion is that rich countries should provide increased resources for Niger, provided in the form of unhypothecated cash grants to the poor (basically, dropping dollar bills out of a helicopter). But of course Ms Vickers (and the corporate interests that fund TechCentralStation) are ideologically opposed to government assistance, and would prefer any US aid that does sneak under the radar to be tied to US corporate interests such as agribusiness, so this wasn’t the conclusion that Ms Vickers reached. She prefers instead to blame the
“failure of the socialist-style economic players — within Niger and around it — to allow its people feed themselves.”
So to be clear: Timberg is wrong that a move to less regulated markets has reduced food production; but Ms Vickers is wrong that food shortages are the result of excessive government regulation and intervention. (Incidentally, Ms Vickers also makes the bizarre claim that most of the population in sub-Saharan African “lives under command-controlled economic conditions” – which is complete balderdash.)
Café Hayek also has a crack at the donors:
“Perhaps if the U.N. weren’t in Niger, traders would be selling food directly to starving people rather than waiting for well-meaning westerners to buy it.”
It would be right to criticize the UN and other donors to the extent that they are importing surplus food from western countries and dumping it in Africa, so driving Africa’s own food producers out of business. We don’t have the figures yet, but I have no doubt that some of this is going on, and it is a scandal. But using aid funds to buy food locally, which is what Café Hayek criticises, is exactly what the donor should be doing, as it supports local food producers and increases production. Café Hayek’s idea that increasing the demand for locally-produced food is likely to result in a restriction on the production and supply for food in Niger is just as absurd as Timberg’s converse ideological argument that lack of food production is caused by higher prices. (I am not saying that it is logically impossible; just that it is highly unlikely and an allegation made with no evidence whatsoever.)
Craig Newmark (the economist, not the geek who runs Craig’s List) is closer to the truth. He is right to dismss Timberg’s claim. But he too ignores the point that even in free, otherwise well-functioning markets, famines can occur when some people are too poor to buy the food they need.
Overall, this was dismal reporting by Timberg which should never have got through quality control at the Washington Post (why didn’t someone like Sebastian Mallaby spike this before it reached the paper?). But the ideologically-driven outpourings of the right wing bloggers were no closer to reality. The problem here is not market regulation or aid, but poverty, and that is something that we can and should do something about.
BlogPulse.com is a blog search engine that also analyzes and reports on daily activity in the blogosphere. Well worth a look, if you are a blogger or reader of blogs.
Hat tip: Ethan Zuckerman.
My ha’porth on the House of Lords:*
1. Don’t stop here. Just because the hereditary peers are largely gone does not mean we have ended up where we want to be.
2. Elect the upper chamber in rotation – eg a third of the house every 2 years. With fixed election dates.
3. Have non-geographic constituencies. Base them on other characteristics such as occupation (doctors, financial services, retailing) and activities (churches, sports clubs, motorists, geeks) and let members of those interest groups elect people to represent them. We all have interests other than where we live.
4. Cut the crap from both Houses: no more wigs & tights, archaic processions, Black Rod, voting lobbies, "Right Honourable and Learned Friend", late nights. etc.
* Note for American readers: "ha’porth" = "my 2 cents" though the exchange rate was different in those days.
<i><b>Update 21 August: </b>I have added two new posts. One summarises the various blogs on House of Lords reform. The other sets out this proposal (bullet number 3 above) in more detail.</i>
TechCentralStation desribes itself as the place "where free markets meet technology".
It in fact a mouthpiece for right-wing claptrap of various sorts. I particularly enjoyed this defence of Intelligent Design. Not exactly a robust advertisement for putting science first.
For those who don’t know, TCS is published by a Washington lobbying company. According to Washington Monthly:
TCS doesn’t just act like a lobbying shop. It’s actually published by one–the DCI Group, a prominent Washington "public affairs" firm specializing in P.R., lobbying, and so-called "Astroturf" organizing, generally on behalf of corporations, GOP politicians, and the occasional Third-World despot. The two organizations share most of the same owners, some staff, and even the same suite of offices in downtown Washington, a block off K Street. As it happens, many of DCI’s clients are also "sponsors" of the site it houses. TCS not only runs the sponsors’ banner ads; its contributors aggressively defend those firms’ policy positions, on TCS and elsewhere.
Update 11 August: I’ve just seen that Brad De Long has a similar criticsim of TCS, which provides more context and has some interesting comments.
I’m trying not to over-react to Tim Worstall’s naiive article over at Tech Central.
His core premise is right. Supply side reforms are essential for economic growth and prosperity, in developing countries as well as in wealthy countries. Measures to promote improvements in the supply performance of an economy will increase the welfare of its inhabitants and should be encouraged.
But on this sensible proposition, Tim jumps to a set of conclusions which have no basis in reality.
Tim’s conclusions, in a nutshell, are that countries should sort out the "infrastructure of the economy rather than simply pumping money in"; that donors should withhold aid from countries that do not liberalise telecomms; that Africans invest abroad and that the continent would not be short of money if the investment climate were better; that the only donor to understand this is the US; and that Africa needs "less Live 8". (Apologies if this abridged version does not do justice to the orginal – you can read the full article here to see if I have missed anything.)
So what is wrong with these conclusions?
First, donors have been working hard for decades on helping countries to improve the supply side and promote investment. For example, the UK Government’s White Paper on International Development in 2000 set out a detailed set of measures, which were summarised as commitments to:
- Help developing countries build the effective government systems needed to reform their economic management, make markets work for poor people, and meet the challenge of globalisation.
- Work to reduce corruption, and ensure respect for human rights and a greater voice for poor people. [...]
- Work with developing countries to put in place policies that will attract private financial flows and minimise the risk of capital flight.
- Work to strengthen the global financial system to manage the risks associated with the scale, speed and volatility of global financial flows, including through use of ‘road maps’ to guide countries on opening of their capital accounts.
In fact, every UK Government White Paper on International Development since the Treasury White Paper of 1960 has highlighed the central importance of improving the supply side. The central importance of improving the supply side has been recognised by all aid agencies, and pretty much everybody working on development, for the last half a century.
Second, there is no single magic measure to improve the supply side. Over the fifty years since decolonisation, there have been a range of fashionable ideas about how best to improve the supply performance of the economy. At various points, commentators have stressed the absolute priority of investing in physical infrastructure, institution building, improving skills, raising productivity through improved health, economic liberalisation, commercialisation of public enterprises, support for financial markets and microfinance, support for small and medium sized enterprises, trade openness, and macroeconomic stability. The hard truth is that all of these are important components of improving economic performance and that any one of them, on its own, is not enough. (The need for an interrelated set of improvements was a central theme of a book by my colleague Bill Easterly).
Third, supply side improvements are not typically cheap in the short run. Virtually all the measures listed above require considerable investment in the short term. (The economic benefits exceed the cost, but the benefits come after the costs have been borne.) Investment in physical and human capital are obviously expensive. Institutional reforms require transitional costs (for example, to make redundancy payments, to invest in IT or retrain a workforce). And as we know in developed economies, it is politically impossible to liberalise markets without finding some way to compensate those who lose the most from the change. We have the utmost difficulty liberalising markets in very rich economies, in which we have the money to compensate the losers (think of airlines and broadband in the US, or farming in Europe); it is an order of magnitude harder if you are the finance minister in a country with no discretionary funds. (Tim gives a particular example of telecomms liberalisation, which he seems to think is straightforward. In fact, state owned telecomms companies provide a substantial share of domestic revenues in many developing countries, and are often an important source of foreign currency earnings. As a result, liberalising telecomms, which would clearly be economically desirable, is financially unfeasible for many developing countries.)
Fourth, making aid conditional on supply side improvements does not accelerate reform. Much as we might want to believe that our views on how countries should be governed can be imposed by withholding aid from countries that do not make progress, there is absolutely no evidence that aid conditionality is an effective way of accelerating reform. (See Tony Killick’s research for a full discussion of this, including a full discussion of the literature on conditionality.) The leaders of developing countries for the most part understand full well the importance of supply side improvements in the economy; they lack the resources and the institutional and political infrastructure to deliver them. Wagging our fingers at them and threatening to cut off the resources they need does not help them to make progress; understanding the challenges they face and helping them to navigate through them does.
Fifth, just because the supply side matters does not mean that other interventions are not important. While improving the supply performance of the economy is vitally important, so is vaccinating children, promoting access to justice, tackling conflict, fighting corruption, educating the next generation, alleviating the immediate problems of poverty and hunger, reforming political institutions, investing in science and technologies that benefit people in poor countries, and the host of other things that contribute to international development, on which development assistance is spent. There is no basis in logic, and no evidence, to support the conclusion that because supply side improvements are important, that African countries would benefit from receiving less assistance in other ways.
Sixth, Live 8 is a way of achieving higher levels of investment and economic growth, not an alternative to it. Tim’s heading ("Less Live 8, More Self Help") suggests that there is a trade-off between the goals of Live 8 and supply side improvements to promote investment and growth. The goals of Live 8 are more and better aid, broader debt relief and more trade access: and these are all complements to the supply side improvements that are needed. As the Africa Commission Report explained, increasing resources available for infrastructure investment, education and health, economic reforms, technological progress, tackling conflict and promoting priv
ate sector growth, is an essential component of creating a virtuous circle of investment, employment and rising prosperity. The Live 8 agenda of more resources and greater market opportunities are an essential contribution to the supply improvements that are needed.
Conclusion
From an uncontroversial premise that the supply side is important, Tim Worstall has built a set of conclusions and policy prescriptions that have no basis in the real world. The donors and developing countries well understand the importance of improving the supply side. Not only is there no trade-off between this and providing more resources, the resources are used to fund the very reforms and investments that Tim would advocate. The objectives of Live 8 are not an alternative to reform, they make a vital contribution to accelerating it. Withholding aid from countries that do not achieve the reforms does not help, and may well lead to slower progress.
There are many people who spend much of their time working to help governments in developing countries to improve their economic performance; and they have good understanding of the importance of improving the supply side. There is a wealth of experience, evidence and analysis, and we are continuing to learn. It is downright insulting to be lectured by Tim Worstall on the basis of nothing more than his homespun economics and first principles. And we owe it to hundreds of millions of people who are, quite literally, dying from poverty, to base our policies and approach on evidence and experience.
It is fashionable to deride politicians for being ambitious, greedy, incompetent and vain. This is in part perpetuated by right-wing bloggers, perhaps because it is a natural complement to favouring small government. But it also seems to be a widely held view among the public. When J K Galbraith coined the term “conventional wisdom”, he meant it pejoratively, denoting an idea that was widely believed but wrong. Public contempt for politicians seems to me to be a good example of where the conventional wisdom is incorrect.
I have been fortunate in my civil service career to work very closely with politicians from both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, across the political spectrum, from Clare Short to Michael Howard. I have got to know many of them well at a personal level, and I have watched them reach decisions on a range of issues.
In my experience, politicians in Britain are principled, intelligent and decent. They enter politics with a sincere desire to improve their country, typically with deeply held convictions about how they can contribute to the public good. They are hard-working and honest, and I have found them unfailingly courteous. In most cases, they are self-effacing in private, sometimes to the point of lacking self-confidence. (One Government Minister whom I was briefing about a rather technical issue which he was due to explain to the House of Lords once interrupted me,
I’m afraid you’ll have to explain that more slowly – remember, I am a hereditary peer.
I have also met many senior private sector leaders (what used to be called “captains of industry”) from a range of sectors from both the US and the UK. With some notable exceptions – such as Bill Gates and Niall Fitzgerald – these well-paid titans have not impressed me much. In my sample, British politicians have, on average, a level of competence in analysis, judgement and communication that significantly exceeds their private sector counterparts.
Furthermore, it is striking how rarely our politicians are caught doing anything seriously wrong. The “scandals” of the last twenty years have nearly all been trivial issues of little significance – such as borrowing money from a colleague without declaring it or accelerating the processing of a visa application. There have been many more financial scandals involving personal greed and corruption in the private sector than among our political classes. It is quite normal for a senior business leader to stay in the Paris Hilton without paying the bill; but for a politician it is a resigning matter.
It is dangerous to generalise, but if there is one common weakness I have noticed among some British politicians, it is that they convince themselves that their noble goals are best served by building broad public support to enable them to continue to exercise power, even if this means compromising on some of their values in the short term. Thus politicians may find themselves making populist choices (or, more often, avoiding difficult decisions) having convinced themselves that their own political longevity is in the greater public good. For example, Clare Short allowed herself to be convinced that the interests of people in developing countries would be better served if she stayed in Government, even though she disagreed with the Government’s policy on Iraq. As a result, politicians sometimes stay in power too long: perhaps this is why Enoch Powell observed that all political careers ultimately end in failure.
To the extent that governments do not provide us with the quality of decision-making or quality of services that we desire, it seems to me that the problem does not lie with the quality or integrity of those whom we elect to public office, but rather with the institutions and incentives we create for them once we have put them there. In my experience, our politicians simply do not deserve unthinking criticism for their alleged greed and stupidity.
I have written a long, boring article on the impact of sugar.
Here is a different way of making the same point. Sugar Crash is a flash game: you have move around Mr. Sugar to keep a kid happily bouncing on a sugar high. But not too much sugar or the kid will crash.
Driving from the Grand Canyon to Las Vegas, we decided to stop in to Lake Havasu City, Arizona, to visit London Bridge.
London Bridge was designed by John Rennie and completed by his son (of the same name) between 1824 and 1831. It was made of Dartmoor granite, and the offical opening took place on August 1, 1831. King William IV and Queen Adelaide attended a banquet in a pavilion erected on the bridge. It was widened in 1902-1904 in an attempt to combat London’s chronic traffic congestion. Unfortunately, this proved too much for the bridge’s foundations; it was subsequently discovered that the bridge was sinking an inch every eight years. So London put the bridge up for sale in the 1960s.
Ivan Luckin, Chairman of the City of London Police and a London Councillor, had his own advertising company and visited America on business. In 1968, Luckin managed to sell London Bridge to the American entrepreneur Robert P. McCulloch for $2,460,000, who wanted it as the centre-piece of a new resort that he was building.
It is a widely held belief among Londoners that McCulloch mistakenly though that he was buying Tower Bridge, which is an altogether more iconic structure than the rather boring, flat bridge designed by Rennie. Both Luckin and McCulloch denied this.
The bridge was shipped piece by piece to Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where it was reconstructed and dedicated on October 10, 1971. As it happened, not all of the bridge was transported to America; some was kept behind in lieu of taxes and was eventually auctioned in 2003. Today the London Bridge spans a canal that leads from Lake Havasu to Thompson Bay. It forms the centrepiece of an grotesque parody of an English theme park complete with mock-Tudor shopping mall.
Rennie’s London Bridge has become Arizona’s second biggest tourist attraction after the Grand Canyon.
Craig Newmark, founder of Craig’s List and all round good bloke, says in his blog:
SCAM: site faking craigslist
Just to let people know in a hurry, the site
www.pay-craigslist.org
has no relation to us, and we’re escalating dramatically now.
Please get the word out.
Thanks!
You’re welcome, Craig. And thanks to you for a great service.
Bureaucrats have a habit (and I should know, because I am one) of maintaining a list of policies they want to see implemented, and then offering them opportunistically as solutions to whatever the problème du jour happens to be.
We have been offered identity cards as a possible solution to benefit fraud, asylum seekers and now terrorism. (I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Home Office argues at some point that they will also prevent climate change). The trouble is, nobody can explan how identity cards will help the government to combat any of these things (answer: they won’t).
And now we have the absurd religious hatred bill. Neil Addison, a barrister, has written a letter in Muslim News which says:
Part of the problem with this entire debate on the Religious Hatred law is that nobody who supports the Bill has come up yet with an example of behaviour which should be prosecuted but which is not already a criminal offence. If anyone can give me such an example I would be glad to hear it.
The first photo was taken in 1997, in Pretoria; the second in 2005, in San Francisco.
Let’s hope this is temporary, but many of characteristics that made America great seem to be in decline.
- an understanding of science as the key to humanity’s future
instead of which we see the President apparently endorsing Intelligent Design being taught in schools, and banning federal funding for stem cell research - leading the world in technology
the US is now 16th in the world in broadband connectivity, and falling rapidly; it has a mobile phone network that has lower coverage than Ghana. - a society built on justice, liberty and due process
now jettisoned in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and the extraordinarily under-reported (with honourable exceptions) policy of "rendition" - Government by the people, of the people, for the people
… now by corporations, of corporations, for corporations. The passage of the energy bill, and a new law to protect gun manufacturers from being sued for the way their products are just the two latest, most egregious examples. - Commitment to free trade
As the China National Offshore Oil Corporation just found out, the US is no longer interested in investment from abroad from countries that the US does not feel fully comfortable with. It is quite hard to see how they will finance their current account deficit without it, though.
What am I missing?
The coup in Mauritania has had very little attention in the world’s media, but it raises some important questions.
In a nutshell, the Mauritanian army has overthrown the regime of of President Maaouiya Ould Sid Ahmed Taya.
It is hard not to have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, African leaders have resolved to put behind them the days of army coups, and committed themselves to peaceful, democratic change of government. On the other hand, Taya took power in 1984 in an army coup, and rigged subsequent elections, so it is difficult to feel that a legitimate government has been overthrown. The army say that they will hold elections within two years (but then, armies usually say after a coup, and then seem to forget about it).
Perhaps most interesting of all is what this says about the state of Islamic opinion in sub-Saharan Africa. Mauritania is an Islamic republic, but the Taya regime has been moderately pro-Western and anti-fundamentalist, and Mauritania is one of the few Arab countries to have links with Israel. This is why the US and others has continued to prop up an unelected and corrupt Government. (This is, no doubt, the kind of policy that Condi Rice plans to stop now that the US will be putting democracy ahead of security.) It is too early to know what has led to the coup in Mauritania, but it seems likely that the coup was organised by those who feel that Taya was too close to western powers and insufficiently pro-Islam.
If so, this appears to be another case in which the so-called war on terror is hardening divisions between moderate and fundamentalist Islam, and building support for anti-western attitudes among many of Africa’s muslims. Islam is growing fast in sub-Saharan Africa – there are now more muslims in West Africa than there are Arabs in the whole world. At least some of the London bombers appear to have been young East African muslims. If we want to build a peaceful world, we need to pay at least as much attention to the evolution of Islamic thinking and fundamentalism in sub-Saharan Africa as we do to the Middle East. The coup in Mauritania may be the first warning bell. But because hardly anyone in Europe or America knows the difference between Mauritania and Mauritius, it is unlikely to be heard.
From Sleepless in Sudan – a moving and very readable blog recording life in a Sudanese refugee camp:
After two years, living in a state of limbo is taking its toll on families and communities. It’s not just the little things, like trying to decide whether you will stay displaced long enough to justify to cost of building yourself a brick wall or one made of plastic sheeting. It’s the big things that are beginning to fundamentally change traditional institutions and social dynamics.
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