A few corrections for Brits talking about Democrats and US gun laws

A few quick corrections for Nigel Farage, the Pierce/Maguire double act on Sky News’s paper reviews, and all the other British commentators out there these past few days who have been weighing in on America’s gun laws following the Democratic presidential debate on Tuesday night. If you watched Tuesday night’s debate, you'd probably think the biggest issue for Americans in the 2016 race is gun control. Firearms seemed to be the centerpiece of discussion in the two hour debate hosted by CNN.

But according to Gallup, gun control does not fall into even the top eight issues voters care about going into next November. The most important issue by a landslide is the economy, followed by "the way Government operates in Washington" (someone should e-mail Hillary Clinton to flag up this second one). That may not have been obvious on Tuesday, however, as America’s federal debt, deficit, growth numbers and unemployment figures were not mentioned. Not once.

But back to guns. Brits seem to have a real fascination with gun culture in America. (I don’t blame them – so do I.) But that fascination turns quickly to disbelief - disbelief that there could be any merit to living in a society with guns proliferated everywhere.

This blog isn't trying to convince Brits to take up gun culture in the UK (I already did that here), nor is it meant to explain the better side of gun culture in America (if you're in the market for that, click here). This is simply a red flag, blowing lonely in the wind, to tell you to be wary of the rhetoric I've heard on guns the past few days:

Farage on LBC

“Well, you know, I have to say I think the U.S.A gun laws are insane and… and…and I, you know, I do actually think on this, Obama actually makes quite a lot of sense. I mean the idea that… the idea that you don't have to prove, you know, who you are or have some basic background check before buying a 20-round repeating rifle strikes me as being quite extraordinary.” - Nigel Farage (Transcript credit: LBC)

I'm curious to know what laws - or lack there of - Mr Farage was referring to. Besides two major federal laws on guns - one pertaining to most background checks and one pertaining to manufacturing and importing of guns - almost all gun laws are implemented on a state level.

But Mr Farage was clearly taking issue with the comparably small amount of gun purchases that take place through private sales in some states - but still, he would need to be more specific. In Vermont, for example, you can buy a rifle with no background checks, but this doesn't seem to be a problem whatsoever (more detail below).

We also know that the majority of mass shootings in the States would not have been thwarted with more rigorous background checks, as most guns were obtained legally with background checks or obtained completely illegally through theft.

It seems fair for Farage to flag up problems with gun laws in the US on two simple conditions. 1) He knows what even just a few of the state laws are and b) how those laws actually impact crime stats.

America loses 90 people a day from gun violence

This figure was mentioned this morning by the Pierce/Maguire team, who must have missed that CNN's fact-checker ranked this 'True, but Misleading'.

According to CNN's fact checker, only one-third of the deaths Clinton sited were "violence-related deaths by homicide or legal intervention". (Emphasis mine.)

Of the remaining two-thirds, the majority were suicides - and it's not clear that preventing access to guns will reduce the number of suicides committed.

Bernie Sanders: your anti-gun, American hero

Sorry to break some left-wing hearts, but this claim is probably the most outlandish of them all.

As Senator of Vermont, Sanders has a strong record as a social democrat - except when it comes to gun control. The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence gave him and his state an 'F' ranking in 2014 for not requiring background checks on private gun purchases, as well as allowing a host of other loose restrictions on firearms.

Of course, Sanders is on the right side of this issue, especially considering his state. Vermont is made up of a relatively high amount of rural gun owners, who value their hunting and protection rights. And despite having almost no gun control measures, Vermont remains one of the safest states in the country, with the least or second least amount of murders per year.

Americans are begging to have their guns taken away.

Americans are pretty sensible. Republicans and Democrats alike support background checks and general gun safety laws. The are also big supporters of gun ownership and the Second Amendment, and support for gun control continues to wain.

In hindsight, both Clinton and Sanders gave a spectacular performance on Tuesday in relation to guns; they talked big on gun control to excite the base, while managing to avoid the promotion of any policy that could be seen as a real imposition on gun owners.

This blog previously read that Bernie Sanders is the Governor of Vermont. This has been changed to Senator.

Mariana Mazzucato's interesting economic argument

Alberto Mingardi, one of those we around here think to be a top bloke, has an excellent analysis of the rather, umm, interesting economic ideas of Mariana Mazzucato over at Cato. Mazzucato it the one who insists that because all of the components of the Apple iPhone had their start in some government research grant or other then the government should be owning a piece of Apple. To really cover the issues with this line of thinking please do read the whole of Mingardi's piece. For a flavour though, he notes an interesting thought. Which is that this obviously didn't happen with the original Industrial Revolution because government didn't fund anything other than the military and the debt back in those days. So it's clearly not necessary that government fund research, despite Mazzucato's insistence that it must. And we can then go one step further: not that government has its mitts all over 40% of everything in the economy it would really be rather surprising if something as complex as a smartphone didn't have some fort of series of connections to said state. Because it's got connections to rather large parts of that economy that the state has its mitts all over, of course.

Again, well worth reading.

And we must also turn to a more speculative reading of this situation. Do understand that this is entirely opinion. And it is our opinion that it's a very interesting fact that the first governmental R&D funding organisation to adopt Mazzucato's prescriptions is that of the European Union. The latest round of EU funding for R&D will indeed insist that the EU should take part in any financial rewards that develop out of any research or even D that it has funded.

And the original research by Mazzucato that led to the conclusion that this should be done was funded by the EU. An EU which we very well know would love to have its "own resources", that is funding that it doesn't get by going cap in hand to the national governments.

Again, let us be very clear indeed that this is opinion and opinion only, but we are of the opinion that there's a very definite whiff of policy driven evidence making in the air.

Proof that Britain is a profoundly conservative nation

Do note that we do not mean that Britain is a Conservative nation, only a conservative one. And our proof comes from an unlikely source, George Monbiot:

Battered into passivity by the media’s misinformation machine, distracted by consumer culture and the celebrity circus, we live in a permanent fug of confusion about the sources of oppression, and of alienation from the means by which they might be addressed.It is tempting to assert that civic life in this country is dead – but it’s not true. Millions of people belong to NGOs, or volunteer for charities. Eerily, however, there seems to be no connection between this mass participation and political change.

That is, we let the politicians prance in their Westminster bubble and keep on keeping on ourselves. We can see that there are things that we can do, ourselves and without direction, to make our country, our nation, a better place.

So, we go do them. Without orders, without instruction, without central control or even an ideology to guide us upon our way. Those who train the guide dogs for the blind, raise money for the air ambulances, the hospices, those who rescue those in peril on the seas: volunteers all. Done not for the glory of anything, just for the humanity of having done it.

We could call this evidence of profound liberality, and in a sense it is. You want to pitch in to society then do so, you don't then don't. No one is forced to do anything but the system as a whole works well, better than many if not all others.

It is also profoundly conservative (again, not Conservative). This is Edmund Burke's little platoons of society just getting on with being society. We ourselves are generally radicals which is the complete antithesis of conservatism. And yet this is at least one aspect of the conservative society that is Britain, even modern day Britain, which we thoroughly approve of.

Civil society should carry on being just and only what it is, civil society, and don't let anyone tell us different.

Corbyn's win and the future of politics

The election of Jeremy Corbyn as the new Labour Party leader tells us three things. First, that we have (deservedly) lost faith in the prevailing political class. Second, that the old class-and-age-based party alliances are dead. And third, that things are going to be a lot more interesting (if also a little worrying). First, Corbyn (like Donald Trump in the Republican Party election in the US) did well because he does not follow the accepted norms for politicians. For one thing, he didn't wear a suit in regulation camera-friendly plain colours or, like rival Andy Burnham, blue-grey and the regular white shirt and camera-friendly plain tie too. Indeed, there was speculation that Corbyn's minders had briefly got him to dispose of his undershirt, but this hope was soon dashed. He was neither clean-shaven nor coiffured. Unlike the others he looked like a regular person, in fact – acting his age as a mature person who does not need to dress like a mannequin to be taken seriously, but can be taken seriously on his experience alone.

Maybe that is why he used just two words when the others used ten. He had no need to exert his presence by filling the available airtime, because his presence alone was quite sufficient, and the views he was expressing were so gripping. No need to fill the airways with platitudes when you can simply drop one or two bombshells and enjoy the silence.

The reason why he gripped the debate and garnered the votes was precisely that. Whatever you might think of his positioning, he seems like the sort of person you can have an honest conversation with in the pub, rather than someone who believes nothing and spouts focus-group-tested soundbites at you. Britain, it seems – or at least the Labour side of it – is ready for such straight talking after the porage of the Blair-Cameron era. The fact is that we are fed up with identikit politicians and want leaders who will take firm views on things they believe in – even if we sometimes disagree with them.

Second, with this stance, Corbyn can attract new people to his side of politics, breaking them away from their traditional tribes (as the LibDems tried, but failed to do). Mrs Thatcher, similarly, had strong support in the working-class and Northern areas that were hardly traditional Tory heartland communities. They voted for her, even though they disagreed with much of what she did, because at least she looked like a leader, who knew where she was going, and not as a cipher that could let us drift off down the path to hell if it seemed to be less controversial. And there are a lot of potential things coming up that might split old alliances too – such as Scottish devolution and the EU referendum. The Labour Party in Scotland is dead, but might a more-left UK Labour Party be more willing to do a deal, or be more able to pick up the votes of disgruntled Scots? It all suggests that a Corbyn-led Labour Party (if it can hold together) could well pick up all kinds of new support from new places, and from non-voters who have given up on Westminster government entirely.

Third, all that is going to be interesting. The Labour (or indeed Tory) moderates who try to paint Corbyn as a dangerous nutter will seem as significant as the temperance campaigners who complained that Churchill drank too much.

With any luck the old consensus in which we drift gracefully into more and more public spending and more and more regulation and more and more intrusive legislation over our lives might suffer a shock, as it did in the Thatcher era. It probably won't last long until we are drowned in cross-party porage again, but enjoy it while it lasts, if you enjoy a white-knuckle ride that is.

Ruth Davidson speech to Adam Smith Institute

This week the ASI hosted the feisty Ruth Davidson to deliver a lecture on lessons from Scotland's founding father of economics - Adam Smith - as she outlined her vision of an alternative to the SNP's statist agenda.

Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you this evening.

It seems to me that there is a rather long and – if I might say – inglorious tradition of Scottish politicians hanging speeches round the neck of Adam Smith and his legacy.

I’m sure you’re familiar with them, but – for me – there seems to be two main types.

The first type is what I would refer to as the Gordon Brown method.

The Brown method is where you examine Smith’s philosophy from three hundred years ago and demonstrate that, astonishingly, it coincides almost exactly with your own policy agenda here in early 21st century.

Yes, it turns out that Adam Smith was a kind of New Labour prophet, just waiting to be discovered all this time.

Which shows your current policy platform isn’t a tricksy wheeze to triangulate left and right, all the better to scoop up the votes of middle England. Oh no!

It turns out that it has a “golden thread” linking it right back to the heart of the Scottish enlightenment where, before the words “Tony Blair” were ever heard, it was first discovered that liberal economics and social justice could go hand in hand.

The fact that Smith actually came from Kirkcaldy is just the cherry on top of the cake.

I can only say that if I was Gordon Brown looking for some kind of ballast to hold my political beliefs together, I probably wouldn’t have been able to resist either!

But that isn’t the only type of speech of course. There’s a slightly shabbier version of the Brown method which adds a great dollop of parochialism mixed with hubris.

This is the one where Politician B seeks to assert that pretty much everyone has got Adam Smith wrong from Day One. Apart, of course, from the speaker himself.

And why have they got him wrong?

Broadly speaking, continues Politician B, this is because they are not Scottish.

And, in not being Scottish, they therefore fail to understand the true meaning of Adam Smith.

Target number one is, of course, the Adam Smith Institute.

...

(Read the full speech here.)

The suggestion is that Labour should sponsor its own Militant entryism

At least this is how we read this:

Labour leadership frontrunner Jeremy Corbyn has unveiled plans to give grants to working-class party members to help them become MPs to stop it being dominated by people from affluent backgrounds.

Data from his campaign team claims Labour now has more MPs who went to private school – around 12% – than those from manual working backgrounds.

Corbyn would set up a diversity fund to help party members who are shortlisted in one of the top 100 target seats at the next election while they are trying to win selection. Campaign costs can amount to £4,500, his team claims.

We suspect that it will not just be those of working class backgrounds who are aided through the candidate selection process in this manner, but those who hold the correct views. Correct here meaning somewhere over on the magic money tree side of socialist views.

As The Beard pointed out, history runs first as tragedy and then as farce. And some of us are sufficiently greybeard to recall when the Labour Party expended great effort to root out the Militant Tendency. Now the suggestion is that the Labour Party should actually subsidise such entryism.

Yes, there is an element of farce to that, isn't there?

Expressive voting and the paradox of Corbyn

Last week, YouGov released a new poll of Labour leadership selectors that suggested that Jeremy Corbyn may very well win in the first round. Corbyn’s meteoric rise from charity case to front runner has been all the more remarkable because, in the words of Alastair Campbell, “Jeremy Corbyn as … every piece of political intelligence, experience and analysis tells you will never be elected Prime Minister.” So what’s going on here? Is conventional Westminster wisdom wrong? Is the favourite of the unions capable of repeating the success of Syriza? Or has Labour rediscovered its “desire never to win again”? Perhaps neither.

A useful insight might come from public choice theory, and in particular from a highly-regarded and heavily-cited book by Geoffrey Brennan and Loren Lomasky. In Democracy and Decision: the pure theory of electoral preference, Brennan & Lomasky offer a new explanation for the “paradox of voting”, the rationality-defying fact that people vote despite the fact that the probability of one’s vote mattering is almost zero. As Sam observed on these pages:

No individual can reasonably expect her vote to determine or even influence the outcome of an election. In America, the chance of a one-vote victory margin that would determine the 2008 presidential election was about 1 in 10 million in some swing states, and 1 in a billion in places like California or Texas.

Thus a rational voter would be a non-voter, avoiding the cost of registering for and participating in something that they cannot possibly hope to affect. And yet people vote.

Brennan & Lomasky offer a different explanation. Individuals do not vote primarily to affect the outcome (which they know they cannot) but to express an preference; indeed, to express themselves. Much as we might shout at a football match on television or curse out loud when on our own, there is something inherent in the human psyche that wishes to express its opinion. What is more, the way in which we express ourselves helps define who we are, and enables us to feel good about ourselves.

The crucial point here is that there is absolutely zero cost to expressing oneself any way one pleases at the ballot box, because one’s vote is hardly likely to matter. For the same reason, the only tangible benefit one is likely to reap from voting is that feeling one gets for choosing “the right” candidate. Vote Labour and you are a caring person; vote Conservative and you are a responsible person; vote UKIP and you are a proud patriot; vote Green and you want to save our planet...

Which brings us back to Mr Corbyn. John Mann, Labour MP for Bassetlaw, tweeted that “Quite a number of Corbyn supporters [said] to me that principled opposition is better than seeking an electoral majority.” He dismissed this as “The elite speak[ing]”.

But maybe what is going on here is that Labour supporters, bruised by a crushing defeat and frustrated by the thought of another five years of Conservative rule, are voting not rationally but expressively. Remember, the chance that any single vote matters is going to be tiny: Edlin, Gelman, and Kaplan suggest that “The probability of a pivotal vote is inversely proportional to the number of voters…”; that means that a Labour leadership selector has a 1-in-400,000 chance of being decisive.

But they have a precisely 1-in-1 chance of defining who they are by how they vote. With a probability of one they can make a statement that they are caring and principled, that they believe in social justice, that they reject the Conservative dogma that has dominated electoral politics for a third of a century. Conventional Westminster wisdom may be right that Corbyn isn’t electable, but whether Corbyn becomes leader is not a function of their single vote, whereas that single vote says everything about the voter and their values.

What results, as public choice theorists know only too well, is a collective action problem. No individual can affect the outcome and therefore the worst outcome results. It is important to acknowledge, also, that it is highly unlikely that voters are fully conscious of how the incentives affect their behaviour. But it does explain why supporters whose party has only ever won when it has tacked to the centre are nonetheless willing to vote for the most extreme candidate on the ticket despite the fact that their last, somewhat off-centre leader, lost them the general election.

It may not be the “right” thing to do, but God! It feels good!

If Jeremy Corbyn wins…

Some on the centre right hope that Jeremy Corbyn will win the Labour leadership on the grounds that it will make Labour unelectable.  Indeed, some are reputed to have joined the Labour Party in order to vote for him.  They have thus joined forces with the hard left, who are said to have infiltrated Labour in order to elect him.  Labour's rather strange way of electing its leader seems almost designed to encourage entryism, and is Ed Milband's last legacy to them, one that might well finish them off.

If Corbyn is elected it will probably break the Labour Party.  Just as Labour moderates left in the early 1980s to form the Social Democratic Party when the left seized control of Labour, so would moderate Labour MPs probably break away in the event of a Corbyn victory.  They might, farther down the road, join with the remaining Liberal-Democrats to form a centre left party that would be by no means unelectable.

The real burden of a Corbyn win would be more immediate.  It would legitimize political and economic fantasy.  If he became official Leader of the Opposition, his views would merit coverage daily in the media as if they were serious politics.  They are not.  We know that state control of industry does not work.  We have been there and seen it not working and it took heroic and sustained efforts to undo it. 

We also know enough to be deeply skeptical about a society in which high taxes are used to distribute largesse that makes too many people dependent on state provision.  Yet if Corbyn wins, this will all be treated as if it were a serious plan without adverse consequences.  There would be a brain drain, and the inflow of talent would cease.  With the disincentive of punitive taxation, growth would be squeezed out and stagnation would set in.

People who suppose that his victory would make the left unelectable miss the very important point that in the short term it would make it respectable.  It should not be.

The new politics is interesting, isn't it?

Edward T. Walker is an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

And what does this sociologist have to tell us all?

The nasty battle between Uber and New York' Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration over its proposal to limit how many drivers Uber and other ridesharing companies could put on the streets has ended, with the city and the ride-hailing giant agreeing to postpone a decision pending a "traffic study." There's no doubt who won, though. The mayor underestimated his opponent and was forced to retreat. It wasn't just conventional pressure — ads, money, lobbying — that caught the mayor off guard. Uber mobilised its customers, leveraging the power of its app to prompt a populist social-media assault, all in support of a $US50 billion ($68 billion) corporation. The company added a "de Blasio's Uber" feature so that every time New Yorkers logged on to order a car, they were reminded of the mayor's threat and were sent directly to a petition opposing the new rules. Users were also offered free Uber rides to a June 30 rally at New York's City Hall. Eventually, the mayor and the City Council received 17,000 emails in opposition. Just as Uber has offloaded most costs of operating a taxi onto its drivers, the company uses its customers to do much of its political heavy lifting.

Yes.....

These practices are redefining what it means to take part in politics. Social-media platforms were briefly perceived as democratising tools, engendering transparency and empowerment in the digital age. But these new protest-on-demand movements blur the distinction between genuine citizen organising and what often is called "astroturf": participation that looks grass roots but actually isn't, because it's been orchestrated to benefit a well-heeled patron. This Uberisation of activism allows corporate sponsors to call the tune: Consider how for-profit colleges leaned on vulnerable students for political pressure, how Comcast enlisted its philanthropic beneficiaries to support the Time Warner merger or the way that the beverage industry hired protesters to oppose soda taxes. Technology may be neutral, but grass roots should mean bottom up, not top down. The #blacklivesmatter movement is a genuine grass-roots civil rights campaign, mobilised through social media. So is the environmentalist Bill McKibben's 350.org, with its blend of online organising, social media strategy and in-person campaigning around climate change. But Uber's corporate populism is not. We should learn to recognise the difference.

Hmm. Apparently the actual users of, customers, of a service shouldn't be allowed to tell politicians what they think about regulating that service.

Only those who have no direct interest and thus know nuttin' about it should have a voice.

Sociology is a very interesting subject these days, isn't it?

Replace the House of Lords with a Lottery

Before the House of Lords Act 1999, foolish legislation from the Commons would often be blocked, delayed or amended by wise men that did not owe anything to anyone and would thus be wise and objective in their decisions. Tony Blair was defeated 38 times in the Commons in his 1st year of government. After 1999 the chamber became nothing more than a useless chamber of former party donors who had been given life peerages often at the request of the Prime Minister. Unsurprisingly they would enter the chamber owing the Prime Minister a favour or two and suddenly a lot of poor legislation is being passed without so much a whimper from that once mighty chamber. While we can all agree the current system is broken, conservatives should recognize the old one is lost, and thus a redesign of the House of Lords should keep the best of the old while discarding some of the more unnecessary inequality of the old system.

My idea is a lottery system, whereby people are, at random, selected to serve as a “Lord” for one Parliamentary session, much like an extended form of Jury service. There would be rules of course- no-one should be forced into it, and those who do accept would have to declare all interests for the purpose of public accountability. To ensure wisdom prevails there should be a minimum age of 45, and anyone who has been closely involved with a political party in the last 5 years should be disqualified. The few hundred who accept will be compensated generously for any time they have missed out of work, and of course because they are all older, this year long task will not take vital time younger people would need in the job market or higher education.

The sheer hassle of such a system will discourage the government from passing excessive legislation to the Lords- and certainly make the legislation understandable for the average laymen who will be serving. The selected group should have the powers the Lords currently have- with the suspensory veto extended from 1 year to 5 years and the formal discarding of the Salisbury Doctrine.

Hopefully this change will result in a conservation of the liberties and property rights Britain still has, and an end to the de facto unicameralism of our current House of Commons.

Theo Cox Dodgson is winner of the Under-18 category of the ASI's 'Young Writer on Liberty' competition. You can follow him on Twitter @theoretical23.