Men are not 'over', women are not discriminated against

In what seems to me slightly contradictory, two popular modern memes hold that, firstly, we are experiencing 'the end of men', who are steadily being eclipsed by women in many levels of academia, areas of the economy and so on; and secondly that women are discriminated against in the labour market, which is why they only earn around three quarters as much as men on average per hour. A 2013 paper by Kingsley Browne in the Boston University Law Review challenges both of these claims, arguing that the dominance women enjoy in many areas of society refutes the idea they are discriminated against, but their relative scarcity in other areas shows how men are still not 'over'. He explains this discrepancy between sectors to differences in preferences and characteristics between the sexes, differences he believes are biologically caused.

Common examples of perceived workplace inequality – the “glass ceiling,” the “gender gap” in compensation, and occupational segregation, among others – cannot be well understood if the explanation proffered for their existence is limited exclusively to social causes such as discrimination and sexist socialization.

Males and females have, on average, different sets of talents, tastes, and interests, which cause them to select somewhat different occupations and exhibit somewhat different workplace behaviors. Some of these sex differences have biological roots. Temperamental sex differences are found in competitiveness, dominance seeking, risk taking, and nurturance, with females tending to be more “person oriented” and males more “thing oriented.”

The sexes also differ in a variety of cognitive traits, including various spatial, verbal, mathematical, and mechanical abilities. Although social influences can be important, these social influences operate on (and were in fact created by) sexually dimorphic minds.

As I have written before, even if the very substantial work-related differences between men and women are socially constructed, satisfying their preferences as they are, rather than as an egalitarian might want them to be, makes men and women best off. I have also written how the gender wage gap isn't evidence for firm discrimination between the genders, because it is entirely explained by women's decisions (to take safer, more satisfying jobs, to work lower hours and to take substantial time out of the workforce).

He points out that women have recently come to dominate many high status fields and that most of the gender wage gap is between, not within, professions. Taken together, he argues there is no general 'glass ceiling', although of course there are many individual instances of discrimination.

In many respects, however, women have made breathtaking advances in the past several decades. Professions such as law and medicine are reaching parity among new entrants, and women represent over 60% of newly enrolled pharmacy students and over 75% of new veterinarians.

Even within fields in which men predominate generally, such as science, technology and engineering, there are interesting variations: women are underrepresented in metallurgical and mechanical engineering but much closer to parity in biomedicine and bioengineering.

And he gives strong evidence for differences between men and women in: competitiveness, which are not easily explained by 'stereotype threat' given that they start very early and only appear in specific sorts of high pressure competition; risk-taking (boys and men take more risk); interest in children (girls and women show more of it); spatial reasoning ability (men excel); verbal ability (women excel); and occupational interests.

Whether these are biological or social they massively affect the fields that women want to enter and the ones they can do well in. And this is OK! It makes people happier to do jobs (including work in the home) they want to do and jobs they are good at. It's OK for our labour markets to reflect this—it makes us better off overall.

No, really, markets do sort themselves out

You'll recall the terrified bleating from the usual suspects over the way that the supermarkets were sitting on all that land that could be used? As we recall said bleating the first set of allegations were that they had the land banks to make sure that other supermarket chains couldn't build stores in an area. Our reaction to that was, well, issue more planning chittys then. More recently the story moved on to how the supermarkets were sitting on all that land that should be used for housing instead. To which our reaction was, well, issue more planning chittys then. We're really not short of land to build on in this country, we're only short of land someone is allowed to build upon.

And what is happening now?

Britain’s supermarkets are building on just 6pc of the land they control across the UK, underlining the problem they face with undeveloped sites as the industry battles tumbling sales.

New figures show that the pipeline of new grocery stores in the UK is 46.61m sq ft, the equivalent of more than 1,000 acres. However, just 2.8m sq ft of these new stores are actually under construction.

Building work on stores has fallen by 20pc compared to a year ago as the “big four” supermarket chains – Tesco, Asda, J Sainsbury and Wm Morrison – suffer from tumbling sales and profits.

This means that 43.81m sq ft of land across the country is sitting unutilised by grocery retailers according to property agent CBRE. This land is either subject to a proposal for a new food store, or planning permission has already been granted.

The supermarkets simply do not want to build more stores on that land that they own. That land will, therefore, in the fullness of time (given the time and effort it will take to change said planning chittys, this system is not known for its efficiency) be developed to some other purpose, most likely that housing that was being called for.

And all being done without a politician or a bureaucrat making a plan, without considering social usefulness and entirely cocking a snook at the desires of our betters in the Great and the Good.

We the peasantry have decided that we're not all that interested in more supermarkets. So, therefore, there won't be that many more supermarkets. Markets really do just sort themselves out, we get supplied with what we actually want for that's what we spend our money on, what we want.

Well, markets do sort themselves out if they're allowed to. Who's willing to bet on the campaigns against those now won't be supermarket sites being turned into the housing that people insist we need?

Russia, China, and the perils of economic warfare

Many Russians may believe that Putin’s invasion of Crimea was legitimate and justified, many may also believe that Putin’s domestic and foreign policies are at odds with their national interests. However, we shouldn’t be surprised if, in future, many Russians also remember the nations that refused to lift their economic sanctions whilst they suffered from a crippling crisis and that it was the Chinese government that offered help in those dire straits. Of course, this is limited help and there are a lot of other problems to sort out but the gesture is a strong signal of China’s stance and indicative of the possibility of further assistance in future. Warfare via economic sanctions leads to the division of the world into inefficient trading blocs and provides a natural basis from which governments can form convenient, logical military alliances. The wonder then, is whether economic sanctions are really worth risking any chance at long-term peace and stability we may have? Though sanctions are designed to put pressure on governments, regular citizens suffer immensely from them and, in future, when young Russians remember this crisis, that suffering won’t easily be forgotten.

Iran, like Russia, is also in a vulnerable situation and it is quite easy to see how these sanctions that artificially and inefficiently divide the world could also encourage the proliferation of worrying military alliances between those states that feel ‘cornered’ and this garners a sort of legitimate solidarity against their ‘oppressors’.

In the long-run, with alliance systems that lead to increased military posturing (as we had already witnessed from Russia in the Ukraine and in the EU, we are witnessing from China in the Asia-Pacific and we might conceivably further witness from Iran and North Korea) there will be increased uncertainty and genuine fear amongst peaceful peoples and, in the end, global social welfare and economic growth will be stunted in the name of ‘humanitarian’ intervention.

Of course, the wider problem is that the global system of trade restrictions are essentially sugar coated economic sanctions and, therefore, a form of subtle economic warfare that we are conditioned to ignore. Free trade is necessary in order to ensure that there is no unnecessary, state-induced hatred fostered between peoples. Perhaps we could add to the Geneva conventions by suggesting that economic sanctions be ruled out of the question? In this way, instead of providing fertile ground for fostering the animosity necessary for armed conflict, people who truly want peace would be free to go about their own business. The peaceful sentiment that free trade encourages may also help discourage these governments from acting violently in the first place!

Where should one go to glory in the wonders of the world?

We were rather taken aback by one of those listicles telling us all about which roads we should drive along as part of that bucket list of experiences before we die. Here is it, you know the sort of thing. Pacific Highway in California, Skyline Drive, yadda yadda. And it's fair enough, they are trying to give a list of scenic routes. And there's many such lists and sure, many of the things on such lists are worth looking at: the Amalfi Drive for example. However, the bit that always takes us aback with these things is that they're always about going to look at Nature. And always Nature, not nature. Those bits of the world that could be and almost certainly were viewed and possibly even enjoyed by our Australopithecene ancestors.

And while nature's (or Nature's) often fun and even impressive it's not that at all which we regard as the glorious thing about the world that we inhabit. Rather, it's the cities of the world that are. A wander down Cannon Street past St Paul's and into the beating heart of the world's markets that is The City. A drive down Park Avenue perhaps, or to view the commodities of the world easily available and reasonably priced upon Oxford Street. Or, dare we say it, a visit to the food section of a shopping mall where more calories are available, at trivial cost in effort and time, that one of those Australopithecenes would have seen in an entire short lifetime.

What really is a wonder of the world? The scrapings in the rocks that the glaciers have left behind or the civilisation that we have built in the past 10,000 years on that rubble?

If that latter, what, in the comments, would be your example of that one piece of it, the apotheosis of it, that all should place upon their bucket list?

Johann Hari is back and he's actually saying something sensible

But while Johann Hari is back and he is saying something sensible he's not, as so often, actually saying anything original. He's back with a book about drugs and the War on Drugs. This is not even remotely true:

Hari’s book turns out to be a page-turner, full of astonishing revelations. I had no idea that the war on drugs was single-handedly invented by a racist ex-prohibition agent, who needed to find a new problem big enough to protect his departmental budget. One of the first victims of his ambition was Billie Holiday, whose heroin addiction enraged him to the point where he hounded her to death. After he’d had the singer jailed for drugs, she was stripped of her performing licence, and as she unravelled into destitution and despair, his agents continued to harass her, even summoning a grand jury to indict her as she lay dying under police guard in a hospital bed.

That specific harrying of Billie Holiday might be, we don't know, but that's not the start of the War on Drugs by any means at all. As Chris Snowden has explained at book length the attempts to fight a War on Drugs begin long before Billie Holliday was being harrassed. Back to neat the turn into the Twentieth Century in fact.

However, this is true:

But something didn’t add up. “Every day, all over the world, hospital patients are given medical heroin, diamorphine, very often for long periods. And virtually none of them afterwards goes out and tries to score on the street. Which made me think, the issue here can’t just be the drug.”

Hari went to Vancouver to meet a psychology professor, Bruce Alexander, who had been similarly puzzled, so had replicated the original experiments. This time, instead of experimenting on solitary rats locked in empty cages, he offered the choice of clean or drugged water to rats kept in what he called Rat Park, a kind of rat heaven full of wheels and coloured balls and delicious food, and other rats to play and mate with. When these rats tried heroin, they weren’t very interested.

“They just didn’t like it. None of them overdosed. Even more strikingly, he then took rats that had become addicted in the isolated cages, and put them into Rat Park. And they almost immediately stopped using. What Alexander had found is that we’ve fundamentally misunderstood what addiction is. It isn’t a moral failing. It isn’t a disease. Addiction is an adaptation to your environment. It’s not you; it’s the cage you live in.”

It's not, however, remotely original. Much the same has been pointed out by Stanton Peele for some 40 years now. Most notably in pointing out that the vast majority of those American troops who used heroin in Vietnam came home and simply stopped using it, as various official reports have pointed out.

We'll have to wait for the book itself to see whether he properly attributes his sources, eh?

Lord Save Us from doctors making public policy

There's an old bon mot about preferring to be ruled by the first two thousand people in the Boston telephone book than the combined faculty of Harvard, experts that they are in their subjects. And so it is when we've got doctors trying to tell us what public policy should be rather than their sticking to their knitting and trying to treat the diseases that we become prey to:

Cancer is the best way to die because it gives people the chance to come to terms with their own mortality, the former editor of the British Medical Journal has claimed.

Dr Richard Smith, an honorary professor at the University of Warwick, said that a protracted death allowed time to say goodbye to loved ones, listen to favourite pieces or music or poetry and leave final messages.

He claimed that any pain of dying could be made bearable through ‘love, morphine, and whisky.’

Writing in a blog for the BMJ, Dr Smith admitted that his view was 'romantic', but said charities should stop spending billions trying to find a cure for the disease because it was clearly the best option for an ageing population.

It's entirely possible that going out on a wave of whisky and heroin (not a combination we would recommend if you're not planning on going out just yet and yes, gin is worse than whisky in this regard, off what libertines liberals like us know about) having said goodbye and enjoyed those last days is indeed the "best" way to go.

But we're afraid that it's still an insane thing for anyone to say that we should not try to cure cancer. The mistake is akin to that made by so many of the slower thinkers about market interactions. Sure, if there's only one single market interaction then as game theory tells us the incentive is to rip off the other party. But most market interactions are not one off transactions, they're simply a part of a number of iterations of the same transaction. In which case the incentive is to cooperate to mutual advantage.

Looking to cancer the assumption being made is that OK, once suffered from one should simply fold one's tent and steal away into that long dark night. Which is to entirely ignore the fact that as cancer treatments get better it's possible to have a series of iterations. That first, that skin cancer, say is treated and two decades later the luck of the draw brings on, say, colon cancer which may or may not be treatable. The whisky and heroin option taken at that first iteration would then have robbed one of that 20 years of life.

It's entirely possible that cancer is that "good death" but surviving one or two brushes with it before succumbing would be even better. So no, while we might well take a doctor's advice on how to treat a cancer we shouldn't be taking same on whether to investigate treatments or not. To do so would be to succumb to the views of the experts, something that pulling names randomly from the phone book would avoid.

A Capitalist Carol, Stave 9: The End of It

Splurge was awakened by the sun streaming through the curtains, and the distinctive morning knock of one of his Downing Street staff. “What day is this?” cried Splurge.

“Why, the day of your Party Conference speech, Prime Minister!” came the reply from outside.

“Oh spirits!” exclaimed Splurge. “Thank you! Thank you! I haven’t missed it! I shall make them such a speech!”

His hands were busy with his garments; turning them inside out, putting them on upside down, such a state he was in. As he picked up his wallet to thrust it into his usual pocket, he chanced a look inside and saw the picture of Adam Smith on the back of the £20 note. “It’s all right! It’s all true, it all happened! Ha, ha ha,” he whooped.

He frisked into the study and fumbled excitedly for a pen and paper. “Oh, I am light as a feather, as happy as an angel, as merry as a schoolboy,” he exclaimed, laughing and crying in the same breath.

“What a speech it will be! I will tell them that public spending and regulation always has perverse side effects! I shall tell them that government just keeps on growing unless you restrain it! I will tell them how a free society is tolerant of others and does not try to dictate their how they should live; and how we should be wary of politicians telling us they are limiting our freedom of speech and action for our own good.”

“I will tell them about Public Choice! Yes, indeed! How democracy is not the answer to everything, and is best limited to things we cannot decide by any other means. How elections are not a measure of the public interest but a battle of competing interests – and how the majority has no right to exploit the minority with high taxation. The Rule of Law! Yes! I will tell them about how laws should apply to everyone, without favour, and not framed to give privileges to those in government and their cronies!”

“Oh, they will be so surprised!”

“And the IMF too,” he exclaimed all on a sudden, remembering his recent conversation. “I will tell them how the financial crash was caused by our expansionary policy, built on cheap credit and loose money! And how our inept regulators made it worse! That it wasn’t the bankers at all – that they were just caught up in the spiral like everyone else!”

“I know!” – at this point he danced a little jig of excitement – I will tell them that we will adopt market monetarism so that our currency remains sound and these things never happen again. And that we will pay off the national debt and adopt a zero deficit and balanced budget rule so that governments are never again tempted to spend beyond their means.” Splurge looked into the distance for a moment, thinking. “Oh, and I must write to the European regulators too! So much to do! So much to do!”

And gathering up his sheaf of scribbled notes, he dashed onto the street, dismissed his chauffeur-driven car, and took the bus to the conference centre where the Party were assembled. He had never dreamed that being surrounded by ordinary people, who were not part of the political class, could give him so much happiness. Nor that his mission to save and preserve human freedom could yield him so much pleasure.

Splurge was better than his word. He said it all, and did infinitely more. To freedom, which did NOT die, he became the as good a friend, as good a protector, as the good old Westminster Village knew. Some people laughed at his U-turn, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them. For he was wise enough to know, how healthy it is for a society to be able to laugh at its politicians, and how so few societies allow such jest.

He had no further intercourse with extravagant public spending schemes, nor bureaucracy, nor excessive taxation and regulation; but lived upon the Limited Government principle, ever afterwards. And it was always said of him, that he knew how to preserve liberty well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of all of us!

And so, as Adam Smith observed, “It is the highest impertinence, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people. They are themselves always, and without exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society.” Save all of us from that, every one!

Isn't the Venezuelan economy doing well?

The Venezuelan economy is at the top of the world. For something, at least:

The South American oil giant's economy shrank 2.3pc in the third quarter, after contracting 4.8pc in the first quarter and 4.9pc in the second, the central bank said.

The inflation rate, a figure the government had not released since August, came in at 4.7pc for November and 63.6pc for the year - among the highest in the world.

As we've mentioned around here before there's nothing wrong at all with the idea that you'd like to change an uneven income distribution. It may or may not be desirable, may or may not be practicable, but the basic desire for a little less extremity in the gap between rich and poor is not a dishonourable goal. It's just that there are sensible and non-sensible ways of going about this.

President Nicolas Maduro's leftist government has introduced mandatory price cuts and rent controls in a bid to rein in the increases but has not managed to get the inflationary spiral under control.

Inflation has been aggravated by severe shortages of basic goods.

Well, yes, it would be. Because price fixing is the wrong way to go about doing it. The problem that all too many of the simpler sorts of socialists have is that prices are not just what people must pay for something, they're also information to those producing things. So, if we price fix because we want the poor to have, say, toilet paper, we then find that the information going to those producing toilet paper is corrupted.

If we set prices above the market clearing price then forests will be razed to provide enough paper to overwhelm the very nation. If prices are set below that market clearing price, as they have been, then there will be shortages of this most basic accoutrement of a civilised bathroom experience. As there have been. And if we set prices at the market clearing price (ignoring that we can't actually calculate that without using the market itself to do so) then what the heck are we doing anyway?

Further, deliberately lowering prices by fiat will reduce production. Thus increasing the price of what is produced on that black market that will inevitably develop and this increasing inflation.

Price fixing just isn't the way to do it.

This is a lesson that our own socialists here in the rich world have learnt to some extent. They still get a bit confused over things like electricity, housing and health care, but at least for general consumables and comestibles they've got it. The way to enable the poor to enjoy more of these things is not to try to fix the price low but to simply give the poor some more money so they can buy at that market price. Which is what we do with tax credits and the like.

Whether we should be reducing inequality is a different matter: but if we are to then we should be doing it in a sensible manner. As Venezuela so obviously isn't.

A Capitalist Carol, Stave 8

The story so far: The third spirit to visit the high-spending politician Ed Splurge is showing him the dystopia that will be created by his statist policies…  

What Splurge had seen was bad enough: talk of universal surveillance, the suppression of free action, free speech, even of free thought itself, in this future of his own creation. But as the Ghost of Freedom Yet to Come continued to point Splurge towards the dismal scene, he knew that worse was to come.

The zealots arranged around their computer screens continued their business. “Report from the Minister of Public Safety!” called the figure at the head of the gathering, as another got up to speak.

“I am glad to report, Prime Minister,” said this second figure, “that a complete ban on unhealthy living is now in place. After our total suppression of smoking – “

“Total?” asked another, skeptically. “I understood that the black market in cigarettes was booming since you outlawed tobacco, and that thousands were being smuggled in by organized gangs!”

The Minister of Public Safety hardly missed a beat “– we moved to ban fatty foods and fizzy drinks, with similarly harsh penalties for those who subject their bodies to these vile substances.

“But there is more sugar in orange juice than fizzy pop!” cried Splurge, before realizing that the shadows before him could not hear, and were unaware of his presence.

“Chocolates, bacon, and eating Christmas goose are now all illegal,” continued the Minister. It is a positive contribution to the health and welfare of our citizens.” There was yet more satisfaction expressed by the assembled gathering.

“Oh, spirit! Cried Splurge. “Can they not see that in the name of promoting the welfare of human beings, they have robbed them of their very humanity? They have robbed them of their freedom!”

“Chancellor of the Exchequer!” Another figure rose up to speak at the command: “The new 100% tax on income is working well, Prime Minister,” it reported. “Our procedures to assess how much people actually need to live on are now in place, and most are receiving their allowances within a month at the most.”

“Can we really be taking all people’s income, and then giving them back only what the state deems fit?” howled Splurge, realizing the horror of where his high-spending, high-taxing, high-borrowing policies were actually leading. “Do people in this future really need to ask officials before they dare do anything at all?”

Another figure was called to speak: “The Permission to Act Bill has now completed its passage through Parliament and is now the Permission to Act Act,” it began.

But by this point, Splurge’s head was reeling. As darkness swept over him, he had a strange feeling, that the figure at the head of the discussants was none other than – himself.

“Spirit!” he pleaded. “Are these the shadows of things that must be? Tell me these things might yet be changed!” But there came no reply, only darkness.

Adam Curtis and the shapeshifting lizards

It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance ~ Murray Rothbard

Adam Curtis's segment in Charlie Brooker's look back on 2014 tells us that news is confusing, and hard to paint into black and white. We've withdrawn from Afghanistan, but did we win or lose? Bashar al-Assad is bad, but is ISIS even worse? But nothing, he says, is more confusing than the economy.

The economy is growing, but wages are falling; the deficit is falling, but the national debt is rising. This, he says, keeps the population (whether intentionally or not) in a state of confusion and apathy.

But at the 'dark heart of this shapeshifting world' he says, is quantitative easing (QE), which pumps hundreds of billions of pounds into the economy at the same time as the government is 'taking it out' via its austerity programme.

According to Curtis, the Bank of England has 'admitted' that his has accrued to the richest 5%, a failure of the programme. He calls it 'a ruthless elite, siphoning off billions of pounds of public money'. He even suggests it's roughly analogous to the situation in Russia, comparing British wealthy to oligarchs.

But I wonder if he's looked at any of the research into the programme, asked any economists, or even, perhaps, interviewed some people at the Bank of England?

The reason why some Bank of England research says that the wealth benefited disproportionately in wealth terms is that without the QE programme there would have been a depression, and asset prices would have collapsed. The rich hold assets, the poor don't. But does anyone think the poor would have done better had there been a depression and mass unemployment?

Curtis might find a comparison between what Ambrose Evans-Pritchard calls the 'QE bloc' of the US and UK (and now Japan) and the Eurozone germane. Where have we seen deflation? Where have we seen mass unemployment?

They might look at some of the peer reviewed and robust research telling us whether and how QE has worked.

Much of it is from the Bank of England and Federal Reserve, although I suspect that the credence Brooker & Curtis give to the Bank only extends to stuff that says things they want to hear. Anything else may be dismissed as being exactly what you'd expect the shapeshifting lizards to say.