The free Press keeps democracy ticking. Its failings can be covered by conventional laws.

Not the only one hacked off. Photo: Liberal Democrats (Flickr)

It isn’t often that I wish I wasn’t born in Britain. I am proud (or at least as proud as anyone can be about an accident of birth) of my country: I find its history fascinating, its past leaders inspiring, and the lessons it has provided for the rest of the world powerful reminders of the rule of freedom and the continuation of ‘modern’ values. There’s a reason why Westminster is referred to as the ‘Mother of Parliaments’, after all.

One of the key things keeping democracy ticking is the concept of a free Press. British Press has not faced any state regulation since the Bill of Rights in 1689 agreed freedom of speech and the restriction of royal prerogative; this was supplemented by Parliament not renewing the Licensing Act in 1695. It is therefore ironic that a Royal Charter will be used to implement the proposed regulation of Britain’s media, not an Act of our democratically accountable Parliament. The way that this plan has been created; cobbled together in the dead of night, by a group of wonkish SpAds, shows its qualities resemble a shoddy compromise, but this time not over petty policy, but the fundamental liberties of British citizens.

It is here where the ancient traditions of the United Kingdom begin to unravel in the face of modern technology; and the persistent efforts of a few affronted celebrities. One online petition – of which numbers are impossible to verify – seems to suggest that a lot of people want regulation, and so, to appease the fatal opinion polls, it was quickly, and shamefully, called for.

I can’t think of a less trustworthy bunch than Hacked Off. Their primary support base is made up of sleazy semi-notables who wish to get compensation for being found out; people like the disgraced actor Hugh Grant, who has become a professional windbag and wants to find a way to censor the tabloid newspapers whom he so despises. They didn’t force him to pick up a prostitute, they merely reported on it, but who thinks his vigour to regulate such a vital institution came from anything other than spite?

My patriotic admiration is now sorely lacking. Britain’s leaders are homogenous clones, each coming from cosily secure affluent households. They get away with the gulf between them and the majority of the British people by hiding their vast wealth and always appealing to the unidentified ‘middle class’ (an annoying habit it appears they have picked up from across the Atlantic). I’m not knocking net worth or privilege here at all: as some of our greatest leaders were from less than ‘ordinary’ stock: Churchill, for example, was from a powerful ducal line.

It is the concentration of power in a small microcosm, below genuine aristocrats, but above almost everyone else, which irks me. All of our Prime Ministers from Harold Wilson in 1964, to the end of John Major’s premiership in 1997 were state-school educated. Since then; all of our heads of government have attended fee-paying schools. It is this concentration of power which is causing the elitist attempts to hurt tabloid newspapers above all others, as they publish unfavourable stories about Hacked Off’s millionaire donors.

America got it right with the First Amendment; it stands as a lasting testament to the freedom of individuals in the Great Republic. What is particularly galling, then, is that this rallying call on behalf of free speech and a free Press was based on the aforementioned British Bill of Rights, which is now being cannibalised to suit the tastes of a very wealthy and powerful media lobby, keen to protect their ‘clean’, but misattributed images.

I think it is genuinely deplorable for Max Mosley; whose German-themed spanking parties were uncovered by tabloid journalists, to hide his shadowy support of tight regulation behind innocent victims like the parents of Millie Dowler, a murdered teenager who’s mobile phone was hacked by News of the World journalists before that paper’s closure. They do have a case against some sections of the media, but all of the egregious offences committed against them are covered by conventional laws.

What we have now is the isolated political class desperately trying to regulate the Press; based on nothing more than a heartbreaking tale, and a list of wrongs which could all be punished by extant legislation. This is incubated by the back-scratching culture of supposedly ‘wronged’ love-rats, liars, cheats and frauds.

James Snell. Follow on Twitter @James_P_Snell

High Speed 2: the one-way ticket to prosperity

Photo: Renaud Chodkowski (Flickr)

The lack of depth in debates concerning High Speed 2 has been frustrating. Many of the real advantages of developing this new infrastructure have been ignored, let alone fully explored. Generally, the potential wider economic benefit is mentioned and to counterbalance this, a country gent is interviewed who contradicts the economic expert as well as attempting to make the viewer think that he is the victim in all of this, despite the fact that he will be more than compensated for his troubles, and as we know, the more he kicks and screams the more compensation he and his comrades will make.

In reality there is no debate; there is no alternate option but to deliver HS2; which is why there is cross-party agreement on the matter. How often do all three major parties agree on something as major as an international scale infrastructure project? The reason why they agree is simple, the West Coast Mainline (WCML) is our flagship bit of rail kit, it directly connects five of our biggest cities; London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh. It also can be used indirectly to access Leeds and Liverpool via the Transpennine Express interchange at Manchester, so if you factor those two in, it connects 7 of our economically most important cities.

The trouble with it is that, for some time, it has been operating over-capacity; you will know this if you have ever travelled from London Euston to Birmingham New Street during a peak hour. You could well have paid up to £100 to stand up for 90 minutes, maintaining quite an intimate relationship with the twelve folk in your immediate vicinity, in a Tube-like fashion. To alleviate this capacity problem on the WCML, we are gradually phasing in up-sizing the 56 Pendulino sets we run on it from being 9 carriages to 11, by ordering extra units from Alstom and as soon as the upgraded sets come into service the extra capacity is being eaten up. And, because of complications like platform lengths we can’t really upgrade capacity much more than 11 cars. Just in case you are wondering why frequency isn’t increased instead, it can’t be, we can’t fit a piece of tracing paper in that timetable.

The issue is tat we are not only operating a saturated rail passenger network, but also a saturated rail freight network; with companies like Tesco and Asda now transporting an increasing amount of goods by rail, keen to display how ‘green’ their logistics operations are, demand for rail fright is at a high. If we build HS2, we can free up slots on the West Coast Mainline, resulting in larger freight operations, aiding this economy to move faster.

Whilst critics argue that HS2 will be a resource for the wealthy, it will bring true competition to intercity rail travel; with two operators providing rail travel between the same cities it will mean that whoever is operating the WCML franchise will have to ensure their ticket prices are low enough to entice people away from taking the faster, more exiting and more novel high speed route. If too many passengers opt for the classic line, then HS2 will have to drive its own prices down and this will mean, for the first time, we will actually have real competition on the re-privatised railway network resulting in real consumer choice; the West Coast Mainline could become a real budget option.

Also, it is worthwhile throwing into the equation another transport debate that is already well within the public realm; airport capacity. When HS2 is hooked up with HS1, a whole world of new international opportunities will unfold, especially now the bidding for slots is open to transport providers operating outside of the UK. The Deutsche Bahn will be the first to take advantage, when they begin operating direct services from St Pancreas to Frankfurt in 2015. This sets a precedent; Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham will host their own international rail terminuses and this will relieve pressure on airports, meaning additional runways won’t have to be built, securing more green space for Britain. Heathrow will also benefit if attached to the high speed network, making short-haul aviation less popular, reducing our carbon footprint.

Wherever there is high speed rail in the world there is prosperity, no railway in the UK has ever been developed and since regretted. The development of HS2 will bring an impetus to this wilted economy at a time when it needs one most. It will bring with it the biggest multiplier effect we have seen for some time, and may well, save our bacon.

Matthew Stimpson is a graduate of Transport and Town Planning, currently practising in the private sector. Follow on Twitter @matthhew

Defending Anarcho-Capitalism: A response to the comments of ‘Voice of Treason’

Photo: Isaías Campbell (Flickr)

In this piece, I will attempt to answer some of the points raised by ‘Voice of Treason’ in his rebuttal of Olly Neville’s recent article for The Backbencher: ‘The Idiocy of Minarchy’. The arguments expounded are interesting in that they highlight some common misconceptions regarding anarcho-capitalism and those who ascribe to this political philosophy. ‘Voice of Treason’ begins by stating that:

“Certain goods are public goods. Explain how you build an effective road or railway network only through voluntary transactions between individuals? They require large-scale collective action and everyone benefits from the result – so everyone should pay. More to the point, how does one provide comprehensive care for the disabled, the old or orphaned? It’s not enough just to say “leave it to the kind and generous to make provision”, because that rewards selfishness. Mind you, anarcho-capitalists see no problem with selfishness (or am I being unfair?). As far as I can see, that will result in a society in which a feckless and selfish group leeches off the efforts of a generous and industrious group – i.e. exactly the society we have now.”

There has been plenty of literature outlining various possibilities for efficient and cost effective private road/railway networks. A commendable work in this field is ‘Street Smart: Competition, Entrepreneurship, and the Future of Roads’, edited by Gabriel Roth. Empirical examples of private roads/railways include Britain’s very own Private Roads Services, PRAs in Sweden (which operate two thirds of the country’s road network) and a rather wonderful private highway in Tokyo. Meanwhile, provision of comprehensive care for the disabled, old and orphaned may be accomplished voluntarily in a number of different ways. Human ingenuity has found solutions such as mutual aid societies (a detailed history of which can be found here), charities, community co-operation and indeed for-profit firms: all of which utilise both monetary and psychological incentives to succeed in looking after both those who can pay, and those who can’t.

“The[re] are many intellectual flaws underlying anarcho-capitalism but one is a flaw common to some versions of leftist anarchism: that a pure form of freedom is ever achievable. Every action has potential consequences for the liberty of others. The mere act of ownership is a bar on the liberty of others to use the things you claim as yours, for example. Or you may decide to build a railway from your house to (let’s say) Newcastle, but that might piss off the people whose land lies in between. The resolution to such dilemmas cannot be provided purely by free markets; there must be other forms of collective action to resolve problems.”

I’m not in agreement with this apparent conflation of voluntary interaction and selfishness at all. Whilst some may see no problem with ‘selfishness’ in certain cases, advocating a free society does not presuppose a blatant disregard for your fellow man; indeed, most anarcho-capitalists are strong advocates of co-operation and non-profitable means of achieving certain ends. The assertion that removing coercion “rewards selfishness” is a purely subjective judgement, and in my opinion incorrect. Many people gain far more psychologically from unpaid volunteer work than from working the night-shift in Evil Capitalists Inc., but does this make volunteer work more ‘selfish’? Far from rewarding money-centric egoism, reducing the role of the state would incentivise individuals to co-operate all the more (as I have previously argued), fulfilling the roles of the state more efficiently and of course, of their own volition.

The argument referring to leftist anarchism and the impossibility of ‘pure freedom’ is the same confusion that Isaiah Berlin made between freedom (negative liberty) and power (positive liberty). As Murray Rothbard wrote in The Ethics of Liberty:

“Berlin upheld the concept of “negative liberty” — absence of interference with a person’s sphere of action — as against “positive liberty,” which refers not to liberty at all but to an individual’s effective power or mastery over himself or his environment.”

The ‘railway to Newcastle’ example is also based on a misunderstanding of the anarcho-capitalist position. In order to be able to use the property of the “people whose land lies in between” for any end, one must come to voluntary agreement/contract with them – either by paying them, or convincing them that a railway is a lovely addition to their garden vista. If neither can be achieved, building the railway would be a criminal invasion of property rights and punishable by private courts.

“The same can be said for laws, generally. The very existence of laws implies some collective organisation to enforce them – a de facto state, however small. You might say “to hell with laws” as many leftists do (and I often sympathise), but then how does one enforce the property rights essential to anarcho-capitalism? Or individual rights to life, liberty, safety etc? Pure, unsullied individualism is not even possible, let alone desirable.”

Thankfully, ‘Voice of Treason’ then goes on to discuss legislation. Whilst David Friedman can explain the beauty of private law far more eloquently than I (see this illustrated summary of his “Machinery of Freedom” lecture), it is sufficient for the purposes of this article to remind readers that an organisation enforcing law does not have to be a state. A state is simply an institution that satisfies either (usually both) of these characteristics:

(1) acquires its income by the physical coercion known as “taxation”;
(2) it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the provision of defence service (police and courts) over a given territorial area.

I would certainly dispute anyone who holds the “to hell with laws” sentiment if that law they were lampooning happened to be natural rights-based Rothbardian property rights and its derivatives. I worry that ‘Voice of Treason’ is once again equating moral individualism (Ayn Rand’s misanthropic nonsense) with the just application of property rights, which forms the cornerstone of anarcho-capitalist political philosophy.

“But ultimately, what is a ‘state’, anyway, but a collective, which may be coercive, or not to a greater or lesser degree? How is it different to a corporation (highly coercive bordering on fascistic) or a co-operative (less coercive but still restrictive). Anarchism (of any sort) requires the removal of all coercive hierarchies, but NOT necessarily all hierarchies. I’m not sure if I’m a minarchist, but they do at least recognise that hierarchies are unavoidable and take a pragmatic approach to minimising any element of coercion.”

Historically, states arose out of anarchy when warlords appropriated land and started extorting protection money from the population. This was called ‘rent’ and eventually ‘taxation’ but there is really no difference. Rent is a form of private taxation, every bit as coercive as feudalism. That is the basis of capitalism and it rests on the idea that there are no limits to private property ownership, which is the other really big flaw in anarcho-capitalism. (Incidentally, slavery is also a logical consequence of unrestricted property ownership).”

Legal initiation of physical coercion by any firm in an anarcho-capitalist society is oxymoronic. Perhaps ‘Voice of Treason’ is again referring to fallacious “positive liberty” (maximisation of opportunity). Meanwhile, there is no such thing as private taxation; it is another oxymoron. Feudalism arose due to inadequate delineation of property rights and the consequent arising of unlawful land monopolies. Feudal landowners almost invariably did not own their property in the legal anarcho-capitalist sense, which (according to Lockean original appropriation principles) rightfully belonged to those who first mixed their labour with it (namely, the peasants). Slavery is a logical consequence of unrestricted property ownership, but anarcho-capitalism is not unrestricted property ownership. Again, arguing from the natural-rights perspective, the will of any man is, by definition, inalienable. The impossibility/illegitimacy of slavery in this manner is actually explained best by an antithesis of freedom, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (in The Social Contract):

“To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties. For him who renounces everything no indemnity is possible. Such a renunciation is incompatible with man’s nature; to remove all liberty from his will is to remove all morality from his acts. Finally, it is an empty and contradictory convention that sets up, on the one side, absolute authority, and, on the other, unlimited obedience. Is it not clear that we can be under no obligation to a person from whom we have the right to exact everything? Does not this condition alone, in the absence of equivalence or exchange, in itself involve the nullity of the act? For what right can my slave have against me, when all that he has belongs to me, and, his right being mine, this right of mine against myself is a phrase devoid of meaning?”

‘Voice of Treason’ concludes:

“So, individual freedom without restriction eventually leads to total tyranny with power and land ownership concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite who were selfish enough to take it by force. This is the society we inhabit today. It is not collectivism per se that leads to state oppression then; it is the refusal to place any restrictions on the concentration of power, including ownership. Minarchism seems like a pragmatic and very logical attempt to deal with that problem.”

So, individual freedom (as defined by strict application of Rothbardian property rights) leads to total absence of legitimate aggression, with ownership determined by voluntary transactions between individuals that are incentivised to care for their fellow man. This is not the society we inhabit today. It is indeed not collectivism per se that leads to state oppression then; it is the refusal to apply anarcho-capitalism’s universal ethic and instead allowing one group to parasitically expropriate the production of another. Minarchism never has, and never will be a universal ethic. Pragmatically, it is nothing more than an ideological cop-out for those who abide by false utilitarian arguments.

Daniel Pryor writes on political and economic issues from a libertarian perspective. Follow on Twitter @DanielPryorr

The tyranny of charity wristbands?

Photo: Cory Doctorow (Flickr)

The insidious culture of charity wristbands has moved from being the preserve of a ‘herd of independent minds’ into the centre ground, and now features on a yearly basis for fluffy, state-funded, bean-bathing Comic Relief. It is now very likely that you will, at some point in the next few weeks, (if it has not already happened) be accosted on the high street by some wholesome, brightly coloured space invader, jangling microbe-covered coins in a predatory way; asking if you’d like to join the elite club of band-wearers. This is marketed as one choice which will affect your whole worldview.

While the idea of a state-funded organisation campaigning to tell the very people who unconditionally support its continued existence to part with even more of their money is odd enough, my main problem is the cultish consensus which it all builds; which may not be challenged. Due to the apotheosis of Bob Geldof, it is considered in bad taste to suggest that money raised as part of Live Aid may have gone to slush funds for African dictatorships and may have even financed the forced resettlement which David Rieff suggests may have killed over 100,000 people.

All work of apparent charity is now exempt from criticism, and this is not in keeping with the idea of accountability for powerful organisations; which may have huge sums of money involved, and could have global reaches and a huge effect on the region that they work in.

An example of poor taste in the very well protected charity sector is the inordinately high salaries of executives, managers and high-fliers. That these people treat their jobs as an opportunity to advance their careers is not my main problem; it is the fact that their wages are paid directly by well-wishers who give their, often very generous, sums on the trust that it will be used to do good works: i.e. that which the charity advertises and is named for. For this money to end up in a pay packet is a sad indictment of the docility of the public, and the greed of those who claim to be helping humanity.

I would support Red Nose Day and all of its offshoots a lot more if it was hosted on a commercial network, although those who embody the universal hatred of anything Murdoch-shaped would probably blanch at such a spectacle. What it becomes is a tired, yearly, state-sponsored whip-round, which produces terrible TV, and loves itself even more than the rest of one of the most narcissistic industries around.

This is clearly not about charity, it is more about a desire to show off by wearing something supposedly symbolising your ‘caring’ attitude. It is a status symbol for pretentious pseudo-hippies who clearly see this as some achievement in itself. What it really does is relegate charity, one of the noblest aspects of British culture today, to a grubby financial transaction for a strip of translucent plastic. It is actively debasing the idea of charitable giving by making it yet another way of paying for a good.

But are they even effective? Probably not. They pretend, a lot like redundant internet babble such as KONY 2012, to be ‘raising awareness’, but this is impossible to measure and awareness rarely translates into action. Who among us can truly say that they have been convinced to donate merely because a holier-than-thou cretin has walked past, their arms festooned with polymeric tokens of their undying love for humanity?

It is, after all, just vanity; nothing else. Wearers could have just handed over the money, knowing that it was going to a good and worthy cause. But this is not enough for our image obsessed modern givers. No, only a visible physical manifestation will do.

They are also badly affecting the way we see people, as the example of Lance Armstrong shows. He is able to hide behind his foundation, created more as a marketing gimmick than out of actual conviction, to disguise his disgraceful record on mendacity. He shows that as long as you value style over substance, and pander to the needs of people, some will need that extra bit of yellow to set off their matching Gucci sunglasses and Louis Vuitton handbag. It was (and still is) built on a guilt trip and the clean cut image he has so sullied. Yes, let the bands, for all their worth, remain on sale. But do not allow him to skip the punishment by media he sorely deserves merely because of one lame idea which has less of a place in the history of battling cancer than most cigarette companies.

What we need to do is take back the charity sector, and make it more accountable. That executives can misuse the relative uncompetitiveness of the whole industry to further their own prospects and wage rates is disgusting. If we knew more about these charities; and demanded to know where our money was actually going, then we could have a proper and unbiased debate on the worthiness of the causes we chose to support. As for wristbands, they have become the agent of the happy-clappy neon consensus, where everything is rosy and you can change the world by displaying a single piece of unnecessary accessory on your arm.

James Snell. Follow on Twitter @James_P_Snell