Some things that are not right about the Britain of today

There's a great deal that's good about modern Britain. We eat better food, most of us live longer, and we have neat gadgets with which to enhance our lives.  But there are some things that have been wrong for a long time and are still wrong:

1. The shortage of UK housing and the lack of affordability for first-time buyers is caused by a shortage of land on which houses can be built. The 1947 Town and Country Planning Act has strangled cities by its excessive restriction of new building. Non-green land within the green belt – distressed land and farmland - should be given building permission, and the 1947 Act replaced by a presumption of permission, with procedure for objections to be heard and ruled upon. Within cities rights should be given to add an extra storey to existing dwellings.

2. The tax code is absurdly over-complicated, serving only to keep tax lawyers and accountants in business, and even they don't understand all of it. It should be simplified, with a minimum of rate bands and an end to the complex exemptions and allowances. Income tax rates should be low enough to incentivize, both at top and bottom ends. Business taxes should be low, with investment in new equipment and machinery taken off taxable income to boost expansion and productivity.

3. National Insurance is a costly anachronism. It is income tax by another name, but governed by different rules, rates and thresholds. What is called the 'employer contribution' is a fiction, since it comes from the wage pool that would otherwise be available for employees. National Insurance should be made parallel with income tax, starting at the same threshold. If government shies away from revealing the true level of income tax by merging them, NI should be renamed 'Employment Tax' and levied alongside Income Tax and by the same rules.

4. The 'war on drugs' has failed. Prohibition promotes street crime and makes drugs expensive and untrustworthy. Teenage gang members kill each other in turf wars.  The prisons are packed with drug offenders. They overload the courts. The ban on cannabis and ecstasy sets millions of ordinary people at odds with the police. Legalization would enable quality control, better prevention of underage use, and it would augment tax revenues. It would save billions as it freed up the prisons and the courts, and would enable addiction to be treated as a medical, rather than a criminal, problem.

5. Energy policy in Britain is confused and incoherent. The EU Renewable Energy Directive requires us to reach 20% from renewable sources by 2020. This has led the UK to require companies to use expensive sources such as wind power, and has led to both businesses and private homes paying higher bills. The government wants to cap energy prices by law, and there is a real chance there will be insufficient energy to meet UK needs. In fact solar has been falling rapidly in costs, and fracked gas offers the chance to replace oil and coal for lower costs and far less pollution. Instead of capping prices, the government should give energy companies the freedom to innovate and remove barriers to new entrants wanting to compete.  

6. UK transport leaves much to be desired. We are spending billions on the High Speed Two rail links, and not enough on improving infrastructure elsewhere. Meanwhile road transport is headed for electrification and autonomy, and the UK should be accelerating the switch by promoting the facilities needed to support this, and by removing the regulations holding it back. Other innovations that need to be planned for and encouraged include the use of delivery drones and of people-carrying drones as urban taxis.

7. Departure from the EU will give the UK the chance to customize its immigration laws. The overall cap on numbers has been unfortunate in that, unable to restrict flows from the EU, the UK has made non-EU nationals bear the brunt. This has included students and much-needed skilled workers in order to bring down overall numbers. As we leave the EU and regain control of our immigration system, the UK will be free to consider removing limits on people from Canada, Australia and New Zealand (the CANZUK area), to exclude students, and to have a points system that favours skilled incomers from anywhere.

8. Education at school level is improving, thanks to the role of Academies and Free Schools in breaking up local authority control and in extending choice to more parents.  It provides a good basis for moving to a Swedish system where parents can choose between state and private schools, taking the state funding to the school of their choice.  The private schools can be both profit and non-profit ones, and the government should facilitate their establishment by removing some local authority obstruction and red tape.  At university level the loans system should be changed to one where the fees are paid by government, and the student signs an obligation to have repayments made when they are earning enough.

9. The National Health Service doesn't work. The model of free state universal care paid from taxation and controlled centrally does not work. Its founders blithely supposed costs would go down as people's health improved.  In fact the demand is potentially infinite. The overall budget makes it a zero sum game in which procedures have to compete for funds. Ones given what they see as insufficient priority will always wave shrouds on TV and demand more funds. The NHS should continue to be free at the point of use, but should be replaced by an insurance-based system serviced by private providers.

10. There should be a more flexible and encouraging approach to innovation. The Financial Conduct Authority's 'sandbox' approach allows firms designated within it to innovate financial products without the wide regulation that applies to larger, more established firms. A similar scheme should do the same for new technologies. Much of the future will be made by driverless cars, drones, aerial taxis, genetic engineering and other innovations, and it is important that government acts to prevent local authorities restricting new business models to protect existing businesses, and does not do so itself. The EU has shown itself unsympathetic to new models such as Google and Amazon, but a post-Brexit Britain should be more receptive to innovation, whether in machines, in medicine, or in business models.

Another day, another round of terrible science reporting on vaping

This week, several high-profile media outlets are reporting on a new study suggesting that vaping causes DNA mutations which lead to cancer. While some were more cautious in their reporting, the Daily Mail and Lad Bible both opted for the headline “Vaping causes cancer”. Such reporting is irresponsible, especially since it omits significant criticisms of the study’s conclusions. Responding to the study, Prof. Peter Hajek (Director of the Tobacco Dependence Research Unit at Queen Mary University of London) said:

Human cells were submerged in nicotine and in off-the-shelf bought carcinogenic nitrosamines. It is not surprising of course that this damaged the cells, but this has no relationship to any effects of e-cigarettes on people who use them.

In the other part of this study, animals [mice] were exposed to what for them are extremely large doses of nicotine and this also generated some damage, but this too has unclear relevance for effects of vaping.

No comparison with conventional cigarettes was made, but in the text of the article, the authors acknowledge the key bit of information that is of crucial relevance in this story: Vapers show a reduction in these chemicals of 97% compared to smokers. They should have added that his may well be the level that non-smokers obtain from their environment.

Let me put this plainly. This study does not show that vaping causes cancer. The animal component of the study is especially poor evidence for such a hypothesis. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that subjecting mice to human-level doses of nicotine at frequencies far in excess of even the most committed vaper’s behaviour (puffs of 4-second duration at 30-second intervals for 3 hours a day) is a poor indicator of whether vaping is carcinogenic to humans.

This isn’t the first time that ill-informed, sensationalist reporting of the health effects of vaping has poisoned public perceptions of these products, which are currently saving lives as smoking cessation aids. When I first started vaping, I was alarmed to read claims in major news outlets (such as NPR) that hidden formaldehyde in e-cigarette aerosols could increase lifetime cancer risk by as much as 15 times more than if I was a long-term cigarette smoker. Unlike this week’s articles, NPR at least included responses from people who were aware of some basic facts about vaping. The study’s conclusions were, if you’ll pardon the pun, a load of hot air:

The authors had constructed a battery and atomizer combination that, when operated at a higher voltage setting, would mean that the atomizer ran extremely hot and constituents in the liquid would create thermal decomposition products, including formaldehyde.

The fatal flaw in the [study’s conclusions] is that under these conditions the vapour tastes so acrid and harsh that human users will not inhale it—a widely known phenomenon known as ‘dry puff’. It means that calculations of human cancer risks are based on conditions that no human user would tolerate even momentarily, let alone over a full life-time.

One-sided clickbait scaremongering on e-cigarettes can mean lives lost. It puts people off switching from cigarettes to vaping alternatives, despite the latter being at least 95% safer according to Public Health England. As our former Executive Director has highlighted, many smokers are discouraged from switching due to misplaced safety concerns:

23% of smokers said they hadn't tried an e-cig because they were concerned about safety, and of people who had tried e-cigs but gave them up, 35% said that it was because e-cigs might not be safe enough.

This week’s reporting genuinely infuriates me. I work in a think-tank that, among other things, concerns itself with liberal approaches to harm reduction; I therefore have a strong incentive to dig deeper when headlines warn that vaping causes cancer. Many of my friends do not but do read Lad Bible and The Daily Mail; they are more likely to take such claims at face value and adjust their views on e-cigarettes accordingly. Sadly, politicians are often in the same situation. Reporting that omits the fact that vaping is significantly safer than smoking cigarettes will make it harder to pass the sort of liberal regulatory reforms that will save lives. 

Image credit: Vaping360.com

Governments really just aren't good at maintenance

We're told that the estate of the US national park system is just rotting away. Not enough money you see:

At Zion national park, a popular trail has been closed since 2010. At the Grand Canyon, a rusting pipeline that supplies drinking water to the busiest part of the park breaks at least a half-dozen times a year. At Voyageurs, a historic cabin collapsed.

The National Park Service is the protector of some of America’s greatest environmental and cultural treasures. Yet a huge funding shortfall means that the strain of America’s passion for its parks is showing. Trails are crumbling and buildings are rotting. In all there is an $11bn backlog of maintenance work that repair crews have been unable to perform, a number that has mostly increased every year in the past decade.

“Americans should be deeply concerned,” said John Garder, senior director of budget and appropriations at the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA). The National Park Service, he argued, is hamstrung by a lack of resources and is in “triage mode”.

There's a long time internet friend of ours who runs a company in exactly this field. Taking on contracts from those governmental peeps to run the facilities at such parks:

On several occasions, I have wondered why progressives continue to be so supportive of paying too many government workers too much at the cost of reducing the government services they seem so passionate about.  This is something I seen in the public parks world all the time.  Arizona State Parks, for example, has about half of its employees in headquarters buildings rather out in the field serving the public while at the same time paying these headquarters staff very high salaries.  This is despite the fact that the agency has tens of millions of dollars of deferred maintenance it refuses to address.

I see this story repeated over and over in the public parks world -- when forced to choose, government agencies will cut back on maintenance and services to protect total staffing numbers, pay, and benefits.

This is something of a corollary to Parkinson's Law (s) about bureaucracy. Politicians are never interested in maintenance because no one does get to cut a red ribbon every time the Forth Bridge is repainted. And a bureaucracy isn't interested as above, the concern of that organisation is the survival and pay of the organisation itself, nothing more.

The truth being just that the long term provision of goods and services, the maintenance necessary to make that happen, isn't a process well dealt with by government. There is a reason why the Eastern Block, entirely government run, looked so shabby and it wasn't just the poverty which a planned economy produces.

It's also why all PFI contracts have the maintenance costs written into them, so that they cannot be cut to suit the political wind.

Look beyond the Brexit forecasts

The leaked report from Britain’s civil service, apparently showing that the UK would be worse off after the country leaves the EU, can be quietly forgotten. It is based on out-of-date assumptions about a world that has long since moved on.

One might start, of course, by asking why the report has been leaked at all—when it is only a draft that is far away from being presented to ministers, if it should get that far at all. The answer is, of course, that it questions the wisdom of Brexit. But then Britain’s civil-service establishment—traditionally hostile to change, keen to keep the UK a big fish in small pools of any sort—is anti-Brexit to its core. Nothing new there, then.

The thing is, that there’s nothing new in the analysis, either. Whitehall, and its East End branch the Bank of England, are fixated with the current conception of the ‘gravity model’ of trade. This is the idea that the volume of trade a country can do is most strongly related to the size of its trading partners their closeness to it. Not surprisingly, this model concludes that our best bet is to hang in with the EU, because there are some very large economies there (Germany, France…) that are about as close as any country could be. QED.

But as leading economists (and ASI authors) including Professor Patrick Minford of Cardiff, Professor Kevin Dowd of Durham and others have shown, this ‘gravity’ model based on geographic proximity does not fit all the facts. A look over the UK’s trading history reveals that it is wrong, and getting more wrong by the day. In the 19th Century, the UK’s main trading partners were the US, Canada, the West Indies, Argentina, Brazil and China. No near neighbours in that lot. Nor, today, does the gravity model account for the huge surge in the UK’s export services, particularly financial services, all around the globe. Barriers must play a part, some of these were strict quotas and blocks, some others on cost. Costs have been brought down nearby, but have been kept up or expanded elsewhere and we still have substantial transport costs. Transport and related costs are a better prediction of trade potential as Tim Worstall has argued previously. 

And the gravity model does not explain well the fact that we do so much trade with Anglophone countries—even though the US and Canada are much further away than the EU, while Australia and New Zealand are about as far away as any country could be. Often the Anglosphere (and the Brexit analysis is guilty of this) ignores the potential of trade with these countries. Bringing down barriers in countries with a common language boosts trade and investment. Bringing down barriers so those that can speak our language can move, live and build businesses here increases trade (from the USA, to India, Ireland, and Australia). It’s part of the reason EU trade has grown so reliant on the UK: we speak English and they’ve learned it. Proximity as a measurement alone underestimates British and Irish trade by 5 times, and there’s good reason to think we might expect a greater than currently modelled boost in trade with the rest of the world. Our share of trade with the (much closer) EU countries has fallen, from 54% in 2006 to just 43% today and that’s before we’ve even begun making it easier to trade with the rest of the world.

In fact, the traditional model of trade works much better at explaining the flow of imports and exports. That is because it is based on solid realities like comparative advantage—whereby countries buy things from other countries that are comparatively better at producing them. And on historic, cultural, language and trading ties. And the fact that EU-style protectionism—yes, it’s supposed to be zero-tariff free trade, but look at all the regulatory and other barriers that EU countries erect to keep out others' goods and services—just gets in the way of trade.

Remember too, that as road, maritime and air transport get so much easier and more efficient, more entrepreneurs are going out to more distant countries to exploit those comparative advantages and round-the-world ties, while moving goods over long distances has become much safer and cheaper. Meanwhile, worldwide internet connections have made doing deals with and exporting services to people in faraway places very much faster and easier than they were in the days of fax machines. 

Ask a silly question and you get a silly answer. Ask a sensible question and feed it into Whitehall’s theory- (as opposed to reality)- based calculating machine and you will get a very silly answer indeed. Very much worth leaking if that’s your prejudice, because no media reports look beyond the bogus ‘worse off out’ headline. But not exactly QED, Sir Humphrey. 

Looking at the world through Neoliberal eyes

In my 2015 lecture to Brighton University, “Looking at the World Through Neoliberal Eyes,” I made the point that neoliberals tend to compare the present with the past, rather than with some hypothetical imagined future.

Many on the Left tend to imagine what the world could become by dreaming up an idealized image of what it might be like. They compare that vision with the current world, using it to point to what they perceive to be its inadequacies and injustices.

Neoliberals tend to look at what the world was like in the past, comparing it to the present world to point to the progress that has been made, and to incremental ways in which yet more progress might be achieved. They look at the improvements in life expectancy, in deaths in infancy and childbirth, in control of diseases, in living standards, and they identify what they see as the principal sources of these improvements.

Some of this is down to advances in knowledge, especially of scientific and medical knowledge, and some of it is down to changing attitudes as more becomes possible. But a large part is owed to the increased wealth created by trade and specialization, wealth that funds yet more research and its application, and that makes it possible to afford improved standards.

Neoliberals look to improvements, of course, but more often than not, by using methods that have been tested and seen to work in practice. This is part of the empiricism that characterizes the outlook. When new ideas are tried, neoliberals are usually cautious, testing them carefully, ready to incorporate modifications when necessary, and to abandon that which does not work in favour of that which does.

Some on the Left claim that “true” socialism has never been tried, pointing to some hypothetical version of what socialism might be like in the future. Neoliberals reply that it has been tried many times in the past by people who acted in its name and declared it was socialism they were implementing. They point out that socialist governments have always failed, producing shortages, shoddy goods and services, often starvation, and sometimes mass murder. It has been tried and found wanting, not in theory but in practice.

Nick Cohen proves Hayek's "Road to Serfdom" correct

One of Hayek's points in "The Road to Serfdom" was that a government health care service, one financed and provided directly, would lead to a dictatorship. Nothing produces more giggles on the left than this very idea, that "free" health care would make us serfs if not slaves. 

Except, of course, it's true:

If you imagine a healthy future for Britain, or any other country that has put the hunger of millennia behind it, you see a kind of dictatorship. Not a tyranny, but a society that ruthlessly restricts free choice. It is a future that views the mass of people as base creatures jerked around by desires they cannot control. Expert authority must engineer their lives from above for their own good and the common good.

That's just the bien pensants telling the rest of us how we must live of course, not a new phenomenon, but then:

Here’s my partial sketch of how Britain would have to change to limit the costs to the NHS that stunted lives and avoidable pain will bring.

Yes, we must change our behaviour in order to suit the NHS. Which was the very point that Hayek was making. Once we have an institution, one that in modern Britain is closer to a religion than anything else in the collective belief system, then we must alter ourselves to suit the institution.

We must not eat sugar because that costs the NHS money, we must not be obese, or drink, smoke, because that costs the NHS. That all save it money is true, for shorter lives lead to less health care expense, but still, the mantra is that we cannot, must not, live our lives as we wish, suffer our deaths at our pleasure, from those pleasures even, but must change our ways to be worthy of the State institution.

It is the Grand Delusion again, that the aim and point of this government business is to change humans into fitting the system, rather than the system existing to allow us to be human in all our messy glory. New Soviet Man, that non-human that would make centrally planned socialism work, is no different in basic philosophy from NHS Man, the thin lipped and hipped prude who does nothing fun in order to die unhappy but at the convenience of the government run health care system.

Hayek really did warn us about this however much it makes lefties giggle. 

Amazingly, The Observer used to be both liberal and observant

An interesting little example of how times have changed. Sonia Sodha, who is the chief leader writer for The Observer:

Laying on drinking fountains isn’t enough; despite their ubiquity in the US, Americans consume almost three times as much bottled water per capita than here. We need to go further: let’s become the first country to ban bottled water altogether. Will anyone lament not being able to fork out for a bottle of San P in their Waitrose? Maybe. Tough – they should get themselves down to Argos and shell out for a £40 SodaStream. They’ll make their cash back in no time and the planet will be a happier place for it. And perhaps a few years from now we can think about imposing annual flying allowances.

We're entirely willing to agree that waste bottles are something which should be managed - don't want to choke no whales after all. But banning something that people obviously like and desire just because you can't see the point of it is rather a good definition of illiberalism.

There is one more little detail which we'd like to point to:

The airport: not the most fun place to while away a couple of hours. Most modern airports seem to prioritise row after row of fancy shops over providing enough seats at the gate. One of my pet peeves is how hard they make it to get your hands on free drinking water once you’ve dutifully chucked yours out before security. More than half of UK airports don’t provide drinking fountains, forcing travellers to choose between begging bartenders to fill up their bottle or coughing up for over-priced water.

We have some experience of airports. We're really pretty sure that they're equipped with toilets. Or given the amount of pearl clutching currently going on we should refer to them as the smallest room, the loo or the thingie. All of these comfort stations being equipped, at least in our experience, with sinks, taps and running water.

No one does run a special supply of non-drinking water into such privies. We must therefore assume that Ms. Sodha has a remarkably strong bladder - given the water she desires to consume this is a possibility we suppose - or is equally remarkably unobservant.

We too think that world can be improved even if we're rather more liberal in our suggestions. But we really do insist that those who make proposals for such improvements would be well served by being able to observe the world as it is before pronouncing. As those producing one of the country's great newspapers used to, in our memory at least, be capable of.

How much charity giving is just a subsidy to advertising?

One of us has been rather surprised, after perhaps a decade of not paying attention to the medium, to find that the Americans can actually make reasonably good TV shows. The resultant binge watching has led to exposure to the standard British advertising associated with such habits. A bit of which raises an interesting question.

How much of the government subsidy to charitable giving actually just ends up as a subsidy to such advertising? 

As we understand it this is not about gift aid, the return of tax that has been paid upon money that is then donated. Rather, upon the advertisements (from the likes of Save the Children, Action Aid and so on) there is a claim that, up to a certain amount, the government will 100% match donations made. So, when a viewer texts in with a £2 a month donation there is a match to that from public funds.

Well, OK. More taxpayer money goes to those organisations which, by their actions, people think should have more money. That's better than some committee somewhere deciding upon the allocation. And yet, and yet.....

Standard theory tells us that some amount of this matching money will end up not as an increase in the amount spent upon alleviating famine, plague and destitution, but as an increase in the advertising being done and thus a subsidy to the TV stations.

Imagine, sans subsidy, a charity pays 50 pence (purely made up numbers) in order to gain a £2 donation. That's £1.50 more to be spent upon alleviation. Now add in that subsidy. It makes sense for the charity to be paying up to £3.50 on advertising in order to gain that £2 donation plus the matching £2. For the net effect upon their funds is still that £1.50 increase in resources.

Theory tells us that some of this will almost certainly happen. Over time that it certainly will. What theory doesn't tell us is how much of this will happen. It is possible that it will be a little tiny bit at the margin and that the net effect is a substantial increase in the funds allocated to famine, plague and destitution relief. It is also possible that the arms race to advertise to gain donations will swallow up all of that matching funding, in fact theory tells us that net funding allocated to famine etc could actually fall.

Note the similarity here to the tax incidence argument - who pays the cheque isn't necessarily the same as who bears the economic burden. We are discussing much the same thing here. That more cash is nominally allocated to plague relief doesn't mean that more gets there - it's entirely possible that it ends up instead in larger advertising budgets and thus in the coffers of the TV stations. 

We don't know the answer here but we insist that it's an interesting question. How much of that matching charitable donations by government actually ends up as a subsidy to advertising to gain donations? Theoretical answers range from fractionally above 0% to over 100%. But what does reality say? And shouldn't we find out given that it is we taxpayers coughing up for this?

What an amusing demand - the rules of a private organisation must be turned into the law

Or perhaps not so amusing given the mindset it reveals:

The #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have enabled women to speak up about sexual harassment and abuse, so it’s cheering to see the Producers Guild of America taking the situation seriously by publishing new guidelines to combat sexual harassment on film sets. Post-Harvey Weinstein, action, as opposed to just words, is needed in the industry. It’s a good sign that Wonder Woman 2, the sequel to the female-helmed blockbuster, has already signed up to the guidelines, and hopefully this will encourage other forthcoming productions to do the same.

But, while it’s a step in the right direction, it may not effect much radical change. First, membership of the PGA is voluntary, so film producers can opt out of joining or leave the organisation if they aren’t keen on adhering to the new standards. Second, the guidelines are not legally constraining, so the 7,500 members of the PGA are bound only by “best practice” suggestions: their membership would not necessarily be threatened if they did not integrate them into their productions.

Sexual harassment may be considered discrimination, in legal terms, but without a legal requirement to put the PGA guidelines into practice, it is possible that many producers may not bother.

Leave aside the background here, the entire MeToo story. Look at the actual demand there. Membership of the PGA is voluntary. Anyone can make a film without being a member. It's simply a private club, a part of those little platoons which make up society. 

But those rules of that private club must be turned into law which apply to everyone, club member or not. This is to demand that the rules of the Boy Scouts, the Labour Party, the Derwentwater Bowls Club, be turned into the law of the land.

Not, perhaps, all that amusing in fact. Rather, a betrayal of a complete lack of understanding of what civil society actually is.

Policy Priorities in 2018: Practical Liberalism

Beyond increasing productivity and incentivising innovation, we advance the cause of individual liberty by promoting practical, evidence-based, liberal solutions to pressing social issues. Regulatory prohibitions often restrict liberty, and can also backfire creating dangerous black markets. We will make the evidence-based case for expanding consumer choice, ending counterproductive prohibitions, and reducing harm. Innovation, not greater regulation, can improve public health as consumers demand healthier, safer products.

The UK has become a world-leader in tobacco harm reduction. Smoking rates are falling as smokers switch to safer e-cigarettes. Fears that e-cigarettes would increase tobacco use by making smoking ‘cool’ were unfounded; in fact, the recent decline in smoking has been strongest among 18-24 year olds. But we can do better. European regulation is slowing take-up. Manufacturers and public health campaigners are restricted from advertising the fact that e-cigarettes are safer. This is a huge problem when 19% of smokers haven’t tried an e-cigarette because they were concerned about safety. Worse still, regulating tank sizes, nicotine strength and bottle sizes may make e-cigarettes less desirable for some users. This is a serious problem as evidence suggests bans on e-cigarette flavours led to higher smoking rates. The sheer number of lives that could be saved if smokers switched to e-cigarettes is staggering. This is why we are prioritising harm reduction in 2018. Repealing EU vaping restrictions, stopping indoor vaping bans in public buildings (the ASI now allows considerate vaping in the office), and making it easier to bring the next generation of e-cigarettes to market will all be key in saving lives by expanding choice.

We may be leading the way on e-cigarettes, but we’re falling behind on cannabis. By July 1st, Canada will have legalised cannabis nationwide. Rising evidence from across the US has proven doomsday predictions of cannabis legalisation have fallen flat. The case for cannabis legalisation is powerful. Criminalisation has increased organised crime, created stronger strains, and led to undesirable street dealing. Drug dealers don’t check for ID and they don’t label the strength of their products. It’s led to a nationwide street lottery where strains vary massively in strength and safety. More of the same simply won’t work. We can stamp out street cannabis by taking supply out of the control of criminals and creating a legal, regulated market. In 2018, we will ensure evidence, not hyperbole, guides the debate around cannabis legalisation.

When prices are artificially capped, shortages occur. This is not only the case for housing. Every year hundreds die waiting for a kidney transplant, while thousands sit on dialysis spending nearly 12 hours a week in a hospital. The situation for bone marrow is similar – 140 patients fail to find a donor each year, with the situation especially bad for ethnic minorities. Financial incentives can solve this problem. Compensation for blood and plasma donors in the US has effectively ended the seasonal shortages that affect other countries, with fears about exploitation or safety being unfounded. As a result of campaigning by think tanks, ethicists and economists, compensation for bone marrow donors is now allowed in the USA as of last year. In New Zealand, new laws will compensate organ donors for lost wages. Both parties recognise there’s a problem, with Theresa May announcing an opt-out system for organ donation. That will help, but not solve, the problem. And it’s not a long-term solution. Autonomous vehicles will save lives, but leave fewer organs available for donation. Financial incentives provide our best bet to cut waiting lists and save lives, and in 2018 we will team up with international think tanks to make the case.

Criminalization fuels violence in illegal drug markets, and the same is true for sex work. The UK’s current approach to regulating sex work is failing, putting the safety and wellbeing of over 70,000 (predominantly female) sex workers at risk. Street sex workers face fines and criminal records at the moment rather than access to social and healthcare interventions or protection against client violence, while indoor sex workers must break the law if they want to band together for safety. Some advocates believe that adopting the Nordic Model, which criminalizes clients alone, is the way forward, but a wealth of evidence shows that attempting to ‘end demand’ harms sex workers in a myriad of different ways. The best solution is full decriminalization, which has been the policy of New Zealand since 2003. Research shows that this liberal approach will reduce violence against sex workers, improve relations with police (assisting in anti-trafficking efforts), give them the best chance to assert their legal rights, and assist public health efforts to combat HIV/AIDS. As well as advocating for full decriminalization, we’ll be debunking flawed arguments in favour of the Nordic Model and encouraging local authorities to experiment with managed street sex work zones.

This is the third part of our Policy Priorities in 2018 series. Check out how we're tackling Britain's productivity crisis and encourage permissionless innovation. 

Addendum: Oh, and we'll also continue to make the best memes of any think-tank.

Image credit: Vaping360.com