Protectionism: Product standards

Most countries want to keep out products that are potentially unsafe (such as. electrical goods, medicines, recycling waste or GM crops) or unethically sourced (such as products made by slave labour).

That seems a perfectly legitimate policy — though if we find that a country imposes stricter product standards on importers than it imposes on its own producers, that is a sure sign of safety masquerading as protectionism. 

So how do we know what safety and ethics objections are legitimate and not merely an excuse for protectionism? Are the concerns about America’s use of hormones in cattle, chlorination of chicken, or exports of genetically modified cereals legitimate health fears or just an excuse to block US agricultural products? And is America justified in refusing meat products from countries with much lower animal welfare standards, or manufactures from those with poor human rights records?

There are no easy answers. Safety concerns can be exaggerated, and standards twisted in order to keep out specific competitors. That is why product standards are one of the biggest sources of WTO trade disputes. 

Given the opportunities for abuse, our general aim should be to stop individual countries imposing their own standards on other people’s products. International agreements might be a better way to achieve the stated aim.

It's possible to wonder about some people

The auctioning off of seabed rights to build wind farms is raising some money:

Two windfarm sites within the Irish Sea have reportedly attracted the most frenzied bidding, with energy firms offering to pay as much as £200m for each – a total revenue of £400m a year. Awards for another three areas have yet to be decided. The licences are for 10 years, meaning the auction will raise at least £4bn over a decade.

Which is nice. As with other resource rents the correct home for this revenue is the state. We do need to have government, we do need to have revenue to pay for it. Given that no one created the seabed by taxing the value of it we dissuade no one from producing seabed. That is, as with all other land value taxation, we have no associated deadweight costs and thus this is the most efficient source of that necessary revenue. Henry George was right.

The vast sums involved have prompted calls for the revenues from Britain’s renewable resources to be kept by the public in a “green sovereign wealth fund” that could be used to invest in tackling the climate crisis.

“Rather than being squirrelled away in Treasury coffers, how much better would it be to use this renewable windfall as initial capital for a sovereign wealth fund that could then be invested for future generations, similar to what we’ve seen the likes of Alaska and Norway do in the past with their oil wealth,” said the Green party co-leader, Jonathan Bartley.

Which is where we do have to start to wonder about some people. £400 million a year is not a vast sum, not in governance. It will keep government running for perhaps 5 hours, maybe the NHS for 26 hours. This isn’t the sort of sum that’s going to make a useful start to a wealth fund.

But worse than that is the inability to see that this is the product of investing for future generations already. The entire argument in favour of wind farms is that we are spending now in order to reduce climate change in the future - an investment in, or at least for, those future generations. The very fact that we have this revenue is proof that we’re already doing the investment.

Clarity of logic is a useful aid in determining public policy.

This could indeed be true, why don't we test it?

A supposition from Jeremy Warner in The Telegraph:

Covid, it would seem, may end up performing much the same role as the Second World War in ushering in a new era of interventionism and deliberately pursued self sufficiency. When the pendulum swings, as it plainly is at the moment, it is hard to resist.

A less efficient economy where duplication and protectionism become the norm may be a price Western electorates are prepared to pay for a greater sense of national resilience.

We think it’s unlikely that this is true. We think what is likely is that politicians will enjoy chuntering along as the Big I Am and deciding what should be duplicated and protected in the name of that resilience - what’s the point of going into politics if it isn’t to exercise power?

What is needed therefore is a test to see whether the initial contention is true. Will people accept a reduction in their immediate standard of living in return for that greater resilience over time? Or, perhaps, given that at some extremes that’s obviously true, how much will they be willing to trade the one for the other? And, clearly, how much is it just the enjoyment of our political servants enjoying their pulling of the levers of power?

Fortunately we have a method of testing this. As we know expressed preferences are not a good guide to human desires, it is revealed ones that are. So, only if everyone is left with that free and open choice can we determine the answer. Only if all are free to purchase the cheapest from wherever, also free to buy domestic in the name of resilience, can we test the contention.

That is, unilateral free trade is not just a good idea in itself - so we say of course - it’s also the way we find out whether everyone else agrees that unilateral free trade is a good idea. If people choose to buy foreign on price grounds then they don’t think that the resilience is worth it.

What doesn’t work, logically, is an insistence that all will sacrifice for that resilience and yet also insist they must be prevented - or dissuaded, or taxed out of it - from expressing their desire on the matter. For to do that is to be insisting that they do not prefer the resilience which is why they must be forced into it.

If people prefer domestic production then leave them free to express that preference. If people don’t then leave them free to express that. The very contention that the local supply chain is preferred is all that is necessary for it to exist.

Government not only need to nothing about it it shouldn’t - the very call that government must is the insistence that the original contention is wrong.

Protectionism: The anti-dumping argument

Dumping is the idea that foreign businesses may export products cheaply — or even below cost — into your country, in the hope of squeezing out local producers. Having captured the market, they can then put prices up again.

This predatory dumping may be rarer than imagined. In order to capture a country’s market and then raise prices a company would have to see off all other sellers. That is unlikely to happen — so why bother trying>

But there are many reasons why exporters might sell their products cheaply or below cost. They might have produced goods that have failed to sell or might have a temporary overstock to clear. So it makes sense to sell them for whatever they can raise. That is a boon for consumers, but it is not likely to cause much harm to producers.

The real problem, though, is when governments get involved in business. Predatory governments subsidise their industries or maintain a cheap currency in order to undercut other nations. They might even use exploited or slave labour to produce export goods at very low cost. China, for example, has been accused of all those things.

If the World Trade Organisation cannot stop such practices, it is neither surprising nor altogether wrong that the victims might respond with trade barriers against it.

The CAA can go boil its head

To leap free from an overweening bureaucracy is a benefit but we do then have to be careful about the home grown equivalents:

Ryanair's spat with the Civil Aviation Authority escalated on Wednesday night as plans emerged to axe all domestic routes and all services from Britain to non-EU countries.

The budget carrier will only operate out of London Stansted airport and will cull 13 routes to Morocco, Ukraine, Montenegro, and Norway.

We do sort of assume that consumers like being able to fly on Ryanair - we’re not quite sure why, we’ve done it and enjoyment perhaps is not le mot juste - from non-Stanstead airports. After all, the airline gained customers by doing so and so those customers must have thought the bus in the sky approach worth it.

So too about flights to non-EU countries from the UK. People took the deal on offer, it was an increase in consumer utility therefore.

So, why the spat, why the action?

A row erupted in December between Ryanair and the CAA over pre-Brexit rule changes. At the centre of the dispute is Ryanair’s use of so-called “wet-leasing”, where airlines hire aircraft and crew to operate services on their behalf.

Ryanair only has one UK-registered aircraft. The CAA wanted less than half of Ryanair’s UK services to be run by “wet leased” aircraft.

No one is claiming that wet leased aircraft are less safe. If that were so then the CAA shouldn’t allow them at all of course. But there is still this insistence:

The CAA’s Paul Smith said at the time: “A UK airline with a significant presence in the UK, should not rely heavily on using wet-leased, foreign-registered aircraft.”

Umm, why? We find it difficult to believe that the CAA is so hungry for the £146 registration fee that they’re willing to cause the severing of such international links.

It is true that other countries - the EU itself - have weird rules about who may fly and where on what sort of registered aircraft. But that’s exactly the sort of thing we’ve been trying to leap free of. As Joan Robinson said about trade itself, just because someone throws rocks in their own harbours no reason to chuck ‘em in our own.

At a deeper level this is akin to the shareholder primacy argument. That has the merit of there being the one single objective of a company. The same should be true of regulatory bodies - the one, single, simple, objective of the organisation. This being the consumer interest. That’s what they’re there for, to enable the maximisation of consumer utility and nothing else.

The CAA is, perhaps simply as a result of amour propre, reducing the choices of consumers and thus acting against their, our, interests.

The government should tell the CAA to go boil its head. After all, the entire point of the system is that they all work for us, in our interests. Something the CAA quite obviously isn’t at present.

Reasons for optimism - artificial intelligence

There are very few areas of human activity that will not be affected in major ways by artificial intelligence. AI was originally defined as anything done by a machine that would previously have needed human intelligence, but modern definitions include the notion of machines that can learn, adapt, improvise, and apply their knowledge to new situations.

The key factor is the speed with which they can work, coupled with the range of knowledge they can draw upon to interpret new scenarios. Machines are good at automating routine, repetitive work. Even though many such tasks are performed by relatively unskilled labour, AI could even take over more skilled tasks such as the work done by solicitors in accessing the legal history of previous cases.

Among the benefits AI will bring is the use of speech and language recognition to aid in translation and transcription. Their developing capabilities at facial recognition and surveillance are already used in crime fighting and prevention. Some supermarkets use facial recognition to identify repeat offender shoplifters, while law enforcement now uses AI that can predict from a person’s movements on camera whether they are likely to be planning to carry out a terrorist attack. There are obvious privacy and ethical issues to be addressed here, to ensure that a balance is struck between protecting people and invading their privacy.

AI will have a major role to play in healthcare, spotting and correlating symptoms to identify potential problems that a more fallible human observer might miss. Eye examination, for example, can pick up the small changes that have in past cases been precursors of serious conditions. AI will similarly play an increasing role in the early detection of cancers by picking up a combination of symptoms and anomalies whose significance might be missed by human observers.

In transport AI will enable the autonomous cars, trucks, ships and planes that will carry people and freight more rapidly and more safely than human drivers could. It will enable people to converse and interact advantageously with machines. They will, in effect, become personal assistants.

The 2020 success of AlphaFold 2 in solving the decades-old problem of determining the 3D structure of proteins indicates the role that AI can play at the frontiers of scientific research, and its finding has huge significance for tracking human diseases.

Two questions are raised concerning AI. Does it threaten humanity by making us outdated and inferior? And does it threaten huge numbers of jobs? The answer to the first is no. It will be introduced as a partner, rather than as a competitor. The second answer is a partial yes, it will take over large numbers of jobs. In doing so it will make operations and operators more productive, and will generate the wealth that will lead to other jobs being created. It may be, however, that AI will lead to the necessities of life such as food and transport being handled by machines, leaving humans free to engage in activities they regard as more rewarding.

Humanity could be headed for something like the slave economies of the ancient world, but in this case the slaves will not suffer.

Increasing productivity in the NHS

It’s a standard assumption within British politics that the NHS budget must rise in real terms each year. Polly Toynbee is fond of pointing out that it needs 4% more each year - something that means that in some distant future the entire economy of the UK is only and just the NHS.

There’s a certain truth to this from the Baumol Effect. Services do become more expensive relative to manufactures as incomes and productivity in general rise - because increasing productivity in services is more difficult than in manufactures. But it is not impossible to increase services productivity, just more difficult.

So, we desire a system that increases that NHS productivity to offset that Baumol Effect. The method is to mechanise what were previously services. An example is that aspirin replaces the comely maiden gently cooling fevered brows. Another:

It takes around five or six people and a considerable amount of effort to turn an intubated patient in a hospital bed. For patients in an artificial coma, this procedure is performed at least twice a day in order to improve patients' breathing and prevent bedsores. And now that intensive care units are filling up as a result of the pandemic, the problem is getting worse. A team comprising scientific assistants and a student, headed by Prof. Charles Baur at EPFL's Instant-Lab in Neuchâtel, have developed a simple system that allows just three people to turn a patient with little effort. It was tested by doctors and nurses at the La Source Clinic simulated hospital in Lausanne and the Geneva University Hospital (HUG) intensive care unit, and everyone involved was enthusiastic about the new device. It has been patented and is now ready for large-scale production.

Effectively - and too simplistically - a set of clips that allow the use of the sheets and the already extant patient lift to do the turning rather than the heft and grunt of humans. We have just automated, mechanised, a previously purely human labour task. We’ve improved the productivity of the use of labour that is.

Our desire is that we have more of this sort of thing. At which point we’ve got to note what sort of system increases the amount of this sort of thing. Centrally planned economies don;t do it well - it’s a standard observation that the Soviet Union managed no increase in total factor productivity in its entire 70 year lifespan. It’s also a standard observation that markets and competition increase the amount of such productivity increases.

No, we cannot plan our way out of this as this example shows. This wasn’t the result of some central decision by a beneficient state or management. It was a bottom up observation and experimentation from the shop floor.

Thus the introduction of markets and competition into the NHS even as government remains the financier. So that we have that system that increases productivity over time.

Fifth time the charm for Scottish Labour?

The Scottish Labour Leadership election this February will mark the party’s 5th leader since the Independence Referendum in 2014. 

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: to lose one leader might be considered unfortunate, to lose two looks like carelessness, but five looks like a descent into insanity. 

Once you start changing your leader as often as you do your clothes, voters stop noticing. Partly because they can’t keep up, and partly because they think that if you can’t make your mind up about the measure of a leader then why should they? 

The latest leader is a prime example. Richard Leonard is not a household name, and his recent resignation follows a long line of ineffective leaders more competent at dividing their party than uniting it. Their struggle to retain control of their party is only matched by their party’s struggle to retain any influence in Scotland. The former powerhouse that was Scottish Labour has greatly diminished since the 2010’s and if the party wishes to regain any of its former influence within Scottish politics, they will first need a strong and dynamic leader. 

So who are the hopeful prospects? 

In the red corner, we have Anas “frontrunner” Sarwar : MSP for the Glasgow Region since 2016 and Scottish Labour spokesperson for the Constitution. This will be his second leadership attempt since narrowly losing to Richard Leonard in 2017 . Unlike in 2017, however, this time Sarwar is the favourite to win, having secured 26 of the 47 nominating CLPs, 90 of the 126 nominating councillors, 9 of 16 nominating unions and affiliates, and 16 of the 21 nominating MSPs. 

His popularity is well deserved: he is an experienced and high profile politician in both Holyrood and Westminster (MP for Glasgow Central 2011-2015). He has also previously held leadership positions within his party as deputy leader of Scottish Labour (2011-2014) and even acting leader for a brief few months. 

He is, perhaps, best known for his efforts to tackle Islamophobia within Glasgow and his dedication to improving the NHS. As a former NHS dentist, he is truly passionate about health and led the successful parliamentary campaign to end the NHS pay cap. Indeed, health is so important to him that he cited winning the public inquiry into the failings at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (Scotland’s largest hospital), as the biggest single achievement in his political career. 

Sarwar is a centrist and a strong Unionist hoping to block Independence for at least the next five years. As he says, “It would be a big mistake to go from the trauma of Covid straight into a divisive independence referendum campaign. I don’t think that’s in the national interest – it might be in the nationalist interest, but it’s not in the national interest.”

Instead he hopes that a post-pandemic Scotland will focus on “how we protect and create new jobs, how we need to fight against the climate emergency, how we have an education system that is a global beacon once again, and how we build an NHS that never again has to choose between treating a virus or treating cancer. “                            

It may seem like classic political rhetoric but at least it is forward facing and acutely focused on the issues at hand which is more than can be said for certain SNP politicians. It is not surprising that politics runs through his blood. In 1997, his father Mohammed Sarwar became Britain's first Muslim MP; if Anas Sarwar is elected he will be making history himself as both the first Muslim and BAME leader of a major British political party. 

In the other red corner we have Monica “underdog” Lennon: MSP for the Central Scotland Area since 2016 and Scottish Labour’s Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport. She joined the contest late in the game and has only been backed by four other MSPs as well as herself, 21 nominating CLPs, 36 nominating councillors and seven affiliated organisations.

Although her political CV may not be quite as lengthy as Sarwar’s, she should certainly not be underestimated as a contender in this match. Indeed, she was named by Vogue as one of the top 12 women leaders who changed the world in 2020, after her “Period Poverty Campaign” led to Scotland becoming the first country in the world (under the “Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act”) to subsidise fully and give universal access to menstrual hygiene products. Labour has lost huge numbers of female voters in the past decade, while the SNP outbid and outspent them on various issues, so her issue winning out is a sign she’d take that on. 

Unlike her fellow competitor, Lennon is not adamantly opposed to a second referendum and even defied her party whip by abstaining against the vote on the Government’s Referendum Bill in 2019. She believes if the people support a referendum, the Labour Party should not block this process. It is important to note she is not an Independence supporter herself, rather she states "I don't think the only option in town is between independence led by the SNP and the status quo led by the Tories. I believe in devolution and think we need more powers in Scotland and to do better using the powers we have." 

Thankfully, an alternative devomax or even Indyref2 are not her top priorities whilst the pandemic continues. Instead she states that “getting Scotland vaccinated is our immediate priority. We need to eliminate the virus and recover from the devastation caused by the pandemic''. After that, like Sarwar she is unsurprisingly focused on addressing the inequalities made apparent from the pandemic with a particular focus on child poverty, something she believes can be eradicated within the next 10 years. 

It’s worth remembering that Health is the issue of the moment and likely to stay that way. It is refreshing to see two potential leaders in Scottish Politics who are fully aware and committed to this fact.  

It may be a tough fight between the two, but it appears it will not be a bloody one. Both candidates have been running positive campaigns, calling for party unity over further division. This unity will be essential if Scottish Labour hope to regain support and crucially seats. Ultimately, it is far less important who wins on the 27th of February and far more important what they can actually accomplish once they do. The Scottish elections will be held in May and one cannot be a leader of a party if there is no party in parliament to lead. 

Whoever wins will have the unenviable task of rebuilding Scottish labour from its foundations up and transforming it’s image in the public’s eyes … in just 4 months. If they are successful in this task then they must ensure that they scrutinise the SNP and hold them accountable for their actions.  With Joanna Cherry’s dismissal another crack in the already fracturing SNP unity, the Party is providing the Tories and Labour plenty of opportunity for effective opposition. They must use it.  In our post-pandemic society, we cannot afford further uncertainty, Scottish Labour must work to prevent decisions that will only negatively impact and divide Scots for generations to come. 

Scotland was once a place where “if you pinned a Labour rosette on a donkey it would have a reasonable chance of being elected as an MP”. This is no longer the case. The last decade saw Scottish Labour’s fall from power and this decade will see its struggle to return as a key player.

Personally, my money is on Anas Sarwar for this match but I will wait a few more months before placing my bet on the larger fight ahead ; the fight for Scottish Labour’s survival.

The White Paper could crash the National Grid

Driving down a motorway while looking only through the rear window is generally considered risky. The December energy White Paper considers the provision of electricity as a whole but gives no consideration to the key problem of the volatility of renewables which amplifies as the reliance on renewables grows. Since hydrogen is a user, not a source, of electricity, the main other zero carbon source is nuclear, backward to the traditional large pressured water reactors (PWRs).  That is using old technology to solve new problems.  The two new PWRs at Hinkley Point and Sizewell apart, the White Paper is talk rather than the commissioning action we need now. Of our eight large PWRs, seven need to be decommissioned, and their contribution replaced, within this decade.    

Before returning to nuclear supply, we should consider the renewables volatility problem.  This is currently addressed by the “Capacity Market”, described in the White Paper as “our primary policy mechanism for delivering security of electricity supply. It provides generators and flexibility providers with a payment for firm (reliable) capacity to ensure they deliver electricity generation or demand reduction, when required.” (p.148) It operates in parallel with the main “Energy Market”, the combination being the “Balancing Services Market.”

With renewables (wind and solar) contributing about 23% of our needs on a typical winter day and fluctuating between 15% and 31%, the Capacity Market manages, although there are times, as Energy and Climate noted in January, when it only just copes: “So far this winter, National Grid has issued more notices that power margins are tight than for any year since 2008”.                   

The risk with the Capacity Market, not addressed in the White Paper, is scale. It is one thing to have a patchwork of imports and fossil fuel, biomass and waste generators standing by to meet the current relatively small volatility in renewables supply.  It is quite another matter to have unused generators standing by to cover the vast majority of the total UK demand. BEIS forecasts that, by 2050, the electricity market will be far higher as other energy sources are shut down, and 85.4% of it could be coming from renewables (figure 11). 

When most of the supply suddenly stops, what do you do?  It is quite likely the clouds extend beyond Calais and batteries are prohibitively expensive at the scale required: back up for 100GW of wind capacity for a shortish period of time would need over 3,000GWh of battery capacity costing £1,190 billion. Perhaps there could be enough natural gas supply, with carbon capture and storage (CCS) still around ,but the White Paper does not refer to that in the context of the Capacity Market. The National Grid would probably crash in the middle of winter. 

The talk but no action on commissioning new nuclear plants has a long history. The House of Lords considered all this back in 2011, and concluded that the government had little idea whether nuclear would continue to contribute its then current 12 GW or rise to, perhaps, 48 GW or what. The Secretary of State “said that the Government were adopting a "portfolio approach" to meeting the UK's future energy needs. He also confirmed that nuclear energy would continue to play an important part in this portfolio.” The main further unknown was the extent to which continuing with natural gas, or shale gas (with CCS), was practicable. Nine years on, we are not much wiser. 

BEIS will not even start to consider introducing new nuclear, starting with the Rolls Royce small PWRs, before the 2030s. A decade later they might start to consider the small advanced modular reactors (AMRs) such as molten salt and even the wholly unproven fusion.  On this time-scale, the UK will only have significant non-PWR nuclear generation after 2050.  

PWRs are essentially base load generators; in practice, they have to produce steadily all the time. They cannot be turned up or down. Rolls Royce see their new small PWRs, however, as off-line generators, perhaps contributing to the Capacity Market and perhaps via storage. Whilst they cannot be immediately adjusted, being small, individual reactors can be phased in and out. 

Whilst we should have a bureaucracy devoted to commissioning new electricity generation, instead we have a brilliant system for preventing it. New nuclear plants have to go through two types of approval: plant safety (design) and site acceptability. The former is regulated by the independent Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) whose 70 page guidelines make no international reference.  The design could have been approved as safe in every other country in the world but the ONR has to ignore that and follow the 1965 Act, suitable for that era but not for an age where AMRs and small PWRs are manufactured in factories and transported to sites.  

One can argue that we should be proud that the ONR enforces the strictest approach to nuclear safety in the world but countries such as Canada can hardly be described as cavalier. Alternative, streamlined, approaches should at least be considered. The UK did well with approving Covid vaccines. The involvement of the Environment Agency, mostly known for its failure to prevent flooding, provides little reassurance. 

Site approval involves all levels, and many departments, of government. And then, of course, HM Treasury wades in.  What is approved, reluctantly at first, is likely to be disapproved as delays and re-budgeting set in. Clearances when finally given, e.g. Wylfa and Oldbury, are withdrawn. The whole system is geared to large PWRs with no account being taken of the new small PWRs or AMRs. Oklo, a 1MW district nuclear power plant, is going through US regulatory approvals relevant for smaller plants 8 and USNC will probably obtain Canadian approval in 2022 for its initial small plant.  

In short: back in 1990, government rightly decided it did not have the skills to manage the generation and supply of UK electricity. They privatised it. Then, unable to resist the desire to interfere, government over-loaded the market with regulations and interventions.  

In his 2017 Cost of Energy Review, commissioned by BEIS, Professor Sir Dieter Helm laid out the obstacles government had by then created to the operation of a free market. “The scale of the multiple interventions in the electricity market is now so great that few if any could even list them all, and their interactions are poorly understood. Complexity is itself a major cause of rising costs, and tinkering with policies and regulations is unlikely to reduce costs. Indeed, each successive intervention layers on new costs and unintended consequences. It should be a central aim of government to radically simplify the interventions, and to get government back out of many of its current detailed roles.” (p.viii)

His recommendations were largely ignored. 

Then the government announced Carbon Zero 2050, pretty much terminating the main sources of electricity, namely coal and gas, without intelligent analysis of how to replace them, solar and wind. apart 

A free market would fill the gap with AMRs capable of meeting renewable shortfalls but the government has blocked any new nuclear consideration until it will be too late.   

So fossil fuel generation only with CCS, a belief that hydrogen magically makes itself without the use of electricity or gas, and a reliance on a Capacity Market that looks unlikely to be man enough for that job without the availability of AMRs. That is how to crash the National Grid.  

On loose and tight societies

An observation that some societies are “loose” in that they’re more tolerant of rule breaking - or as we can also put it, deviation from the norm - than “tight” societies. This matters in a pandemic when strict rules about what may be done unto others through personal behaviours do actually make a difference.

It turns out Covid’s deadliness depends on something simpler and more profound: cultural differences in our willingness to follow rules.

All cultures have social norms, or unwritten rules for social behaviour. We adhere to standards of dress, discipline our kids, and don’t elbow our way through crowded subways not because these are legislative codes but because they help our society function. Psychologists have shown that some cultures abide by social norms quite strictly; they’re tight. Others are loose – with a more relaxed attitude toward rule-breakers.

As is observed this is not one sided:

The virus has been especially effective at turning some societies’ propensity for rule breaking against them. Americans exemplify this spirit. It’s why the United States boasts a great deal of creativity and innovation. It’s also a major liability during times of threat. Such maverick behaviour is supposed to subside in emergencies. Yet countless US citizens continue holding parties, shopping maskless and generally scoffing at the virus. When the fear reflex is triggered, it’s often in a perverse way: fearing lockdowns and mask mandates more than the virus itself.

Given that the majority of the time we are not in an extraordinary crisis - that “extra-” there being the proof that we’re not in ordinary times - we can go on to point out that the extra creativity and innovation derived from the greater cultural freedoms are worth it.

At least, worth it from the point of view of us inhabitants of a looser culture which values that liberty toward rule breaking which fosters that innovation and creativity.

But by far the most interesting part of this we think is the insistence that this is a cultural phenomenon. Another way of putting this is that it is a bottom up attitude, not one imposed from the top down. Which does rather lead to the supposition that attempting to organise a loose society by the strict measures doesn’t work. On the grounds that even if they exist, those measures, few will stand by them.

Just to pluck an example from the current headlines ruling methods from the mentioned China, or Austria (and we’d include Germany and France there), aren’t going to work when applied to looser societies such as the UK or Italy. Which does rather pose a problem for that unified European state idea if the method and standard of governance just won’t work across different cultures.

Or perhaps Polly Toynbee’s perennial “We must be more like Sweden!” But if we’re not Swedes and don’t have Swedish culture then it’s not going to work, is it?

This is not to go all Flanders and Swann on the point but if inbuilt culture determines what form of governance works then forms of governance are not - not entirely so - replicable across cultures, are they?