Reform the ONS

4043

reform-the-ons

Having spent the last week trying to come up with accurate statistics on the public sector, I can confidently state that the online information available from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) is a mess.

Information is hidden in tables that cannot be easily found and when it is finally dug up it is not in a logical format and incomplete without explanation of why this is so. It should not take hours to get access to the number of people employed in the public sector. Upon my inability to find some bssic statistics on public sector pay I sent them an email; despite the prompt reply it was to a page that did not work. I have put in another request and have yet to hear back from them; even if they do get back to me, I don’t expect much help from them.

This failure to provide information in a digestible form is a long way from the model of open government that politicians are so keen to promote. The lack of maneuverability on the website is indicative of all government despite its obsession and waste on new technology. We do not need the policy analysis present in the ONS publications, just the statistics with background information on their collection. Outsiders can do the policy analysis.

Apart from the core functions – measuring the National Accounts, the census, Consumer Prices index (CPI) and the Retail Prices Index (RPI) – most of the statistics are not useful. The ONS needs fundamental reform in order to meet the informational demands of the 21st century. We deserve value for the £1.2 billion we are spending from 2007 to 2012.

The statistics need to be available in easily searchable and comparable formats. The US are doing slightly better with www.usaspending.gov, but it is perversely obsessed with graphics and performance metrics and is remarkably costly. Instead we just need clear and consistent facts.

Perhaps though this is all too much to ask. After all, an understanding of public choice theory suggests that it is not in the government’s interest: “crafty governments use artful marketing to create fiscal illusion--a false picture--to hide from taxpayers how much they pay, where the money goes and what the true long-term costs will be."

What is freedom?

4041

what-is-freedom

He is free who lives as he wishes to live; who is neither subject to compulsion nor to hindrance, nor to force; whose movements to action are not impeded, whose desires attain their purpose, and who does not fall into that which he would avoid.

– Epictetus (ca 55-135 A.D.), Discourses, ca 100 A.D.

Incentives matter

4048

incentives-matter

Famine stalks Ethiopia once again:

The spectre of famine has returned to the Horn of Africa nearly a quarter of a century after the world's pop stars gathered to banish it at Live Aid, raising £150m for relief efforts in 1985. Millions of impoverished Ethiopians face the threat of malnutrition and possibly starvation this winter in what is shaping up to be the country's worst food crisis for decades.

Yes, of course we should buy food and feed it to the starving. It's difficult to think of any system of morals worthy of being called such that would deny them that or us that duty. However, while we go looking down the back of the couch for that spare change which will keep our fellow human beings alive, it's still worth pondering why this keeps on happening.

Land ownership is another important election issue. The opposition believes the best way to fight poverty is ending the state's ownership of all land, and argues farmers must be free to buy and sell property and develop wealth. The government insists the state must own land, arguing it gives more security to farmers.

Yes, all land is State owned. There is no incentive for a farmer to invest in improving the productivity of his land for it simply ain't his land. In more detail, Meles Zenawi, the Ethiopian Prime Minister:

Now we have, as I am sure all of you know, rejected the concept of changing land into a commodity in Ethiopia. We feel that this choice in our context is not economically rational. That is why we don’t accept it. Why do we think it is not economically rational? By fully privatizing land ownership, one starts the process of differentiation. The creative, vigorous peasant farmer gets to own larger pieces of land and the less effective get to be left to live in doubt.

He then goes on to reject this and insist that as they have lots of peasants thus they should have lots of peasant farms. Oh, and, while the land is held by the peasant "in perpetuity" the government still reserves the right to reallocate at any time. So it's not actually in perpetuity and of course as it cannot be owned privately it cannot be used as security for a loan to improve its productivity.

Until those incentives are sorted out Ethiopia is condemned to have repetetive famines, sadly.

Just for a little further illumination, Zenawi, after a couple of years medical studies, joined the "Marxist Leninist League of Tigray" where he presumably got his education in economics. The MLLT were Hoxaist. That is, the people who thought that Joe Stalin had actually got it right on agriculture.

Which, if you want to starve the peasantry, is probably correct.

When two sides go to war

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when-two-sides-go-to-war

On Tuesday evening of this past week two groups of males decided that, at that moment in the celestial calendar, it was the most pertinent time to attempt to beat the other into submission. When two tribes go to war! And that's where the problem lies, if there is no tribe then there is struggle to come up with a reason to be violent, there is no attachment to a cause. In this case the groups concerned decided a re-enactment of the heady days of the 1970s would be in order and they adorned themselves in the colours of two football clubs: West Ham and Millwall.

Both inside the ground during the game, and outside, before and after, there were clashes between the two groups as well as with the police. As a libertarian if two groups of people wish to do battle to discover who is the better, as long as no innocent bystanders come to harm then there is no problem with consensual violence. It is when thousands of innocent people who wish to watch a football match or indeed go about their daily business in the environs of a football stadium get caught up in it it becomes a problem.

There has long been an association between football and violence, not just in England but across the world, for most who watch it (and play it) it is theIR way of releasing tension, for some though this manifests itself in violence. These people aren't football fans. They hold more empathy to the violence than they do to the football. These people should be allowed to set up their own alternative sport, something that revolves around groups who can meet up in a field and belt seven shades of leather out of each other. Basically hooliganism needs to become a sport in its own right as long as they all have private health insurance.

In case you wondering: West Ham won the football. As to which group of knuckle dragging cavemen came out on top in the fighting: it was a no- score draw for intelligence.

Not OK computer

4040

not-ok-computer

As with Al Gore wasting more energy than a small village lighting his house, news that the Met Office climate change supercomputer is polluting the planet should be met with an ironic smile. If indeed there is a problem with carbon output, these fraudsters are not going to be the ones to save the planet.

Evolution and creationism

4047

evolution-and-creationism

James Murdoch comes up with an apposite analogy in his recent speech:

The number who reject Darwin and cling to the concept of creationism is substantial. And it crops up in some surprising places. For example, right here in the broadcasting sector in the UK. The consensus appears to be that creationism - the belief in a managed process with an omniscient authority - is the only way to achieve successful outcomes. There is general agreement that the natural operation of the market is inadequate, and that a better outcome can be achieved through the wisdom and activity of governments and regulators.

As in so many things the confusion over beliefs is more extreme in the US than the UK but it still exists here. Creationism itself is more associated with sects on the right, even while such loudly abhor government planning of the economy. But those who are most strident in their insistence that the natural world is simply a result of random chance filtered through survival of the fittest also seem to be those who insist that the economy is not such.

All of which is really rather puzzling. It would seem logical that believing that one huge, chaotic and extraordinarily complex system has arisen without planning would lead on to the acceptance that if it can happen once it can happen twice. If humans are simply the result of competition in spreading gametes for 4 billion years, then it should be easier to accept that an economy is a result of similar if subtly different competition.

Yet, as above, it just doesn't quite seem to work out that way. Perhaps it is just that the human brain is uncomfortable with quite so much randomness: if we are planned to be here than we can accept the random nature of the world, while if we are randomly here then there must be planned order in the world?

Or perhaps it's that those who accept both Darwin (correctly) and planning (incorrectly) are not quite so free of religious desires as they think themselves to be. There still needs to be a caste to protect them from the vagaries of the universe, to intercede against randomness, but they'll term them planners instead of priests?

Quantum mechanics

4045

quantum-mechanics

Finally, a way of undoing all the mistakes society has made: climate change, the recession, and that Ms. Katona’s fifteen minutes of fame have been indefinitely extended. Perhaps the potentials of this idea need some further investigation...

Legislation fiasco

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legislation-fiasco

The never ending blame game that is politics has turned now to DVD ratings. Lady Thatcher, David Cameron and the current government have all come in for criticism over the fact that legislation was not passed on properly to our masters on the continent.For most anti-censorship types the ratings system is better off on the ctting room floor and for good reasons too. Ignoring the efficacy of banning stuff in the age of the interent, its arbitrary nature has been shown to be questionable. Caligula was banned while torture porn like Hostel (I,II) and the Saw series have been approved.

If there is a banned film you have always wanted, now might be the time to go seek it out. Be careful though, the government is claiming that it will carry on fining people regardless of the fact that no longer have the legal footin to do so. Graham Barnfield has an excellent and comprehensive article on this over at Spiked. His conclusion is to be aplauded:

The idiocies of the BBFC would be less frustrating were they not also the springboard for prosecutions. Why should the subjective decisions of a quango form the basis for fines and incarceration? The bottom line is that criminal law needs to butt out of the cinema and home entertainment industries. If consenting participants in film productions emerge unharmed from the production process, then the resulting films would meet a revised, forward-looking minimum legal threshold in future. (Whether they should go ahead on aesthetic or commercial grounds is a separate issue.) This latest humiliation for the Video Recordings Act 1984 should be a chance to wipe the tape clean and treat adult viewers as adults.

The fourth estate

4039

the-fourth-estate

Quality journalism might be lacking now, but in fact there is a long history of lies.

Controlling healthcare costs

4046

controlling-healthcare-costs

As I've blogged before, would-be reformers need to realize that we should not isolate people from the cost of healthcare, otherwise prices tend to spiral out of control. That is true whether you are relying on tax or insurance to fund your healthcare. Both systems rely on third-party payment, and both therefore cause the same problem.

Imagine a typical third-party payment scenario. You go to the doctors, feeling unwell. You've already paid your taxes or your insurance premium, so you'll want to feel like you're getting your money's worth. In other words, you'll want to maximise the amount of care you receive, regardless of the cost. Now look at it from the doctor's perspective: it is also in his interest to provide as many and as expensive services as possible. The more he does, the more money he earns from the insurance company or the government.

Put simply, in a third-party payment context, both parties to the healthcare transaction have an incentive to maximise costs, while neither has an incentive to contain them. And that feeds back into higher taxes, or higher insurance premiums – neither of which are remotely desirable.

Clearly, third-party payment is good for big-ticket health expenditure. Very few people could cover the cost of a serious illness out-of-pocket, so pooling risk and resources makes perfect sense. On the other hand, it's not sensible at all for dealing with lesser ailments, where its bureaucratic cost can often outweigh the cost of the services provided.

How do you translate this into policy? In the US, the best way would be to stop subsidizing employer-provided insurance, and encourage individual/family insurance instead (perhaps through a tax-credit). You would also want to encourage people to combine high-deductible insurance plans with health savings accounts, so that third-party payment is kept to a minimum. Studies have shown that health plans like this produce 3-year savings of $1m per 1000 participants.

In government-dominated systems like the UK's, it is a little more difficult. Assuming outright privatization is not on the cards (and it should be, at the very least in primary care) then the introduction of user charges and co-payments are the way to go. And really, that is not nearly such a radical suggestion as British politicians seem to think: pretty much every other European country has them.