Why Walkable Cities Enjoy More Freedom

If you happen to visit Egypt and find yourself in the famous Tahrir Square, you might be puzzled: how could this space accommodate two million protesters? In fact, the square looked different at the time of the Arab Spring, up until the new military government ringed its central part with an iron fence. A similar transformation happened with the Pearl roundabout in the capital of Bahrain where demonstrators used to gather — it was turned into a traffic junction. In my hometown, Moscow, the square where millions called for the end of Soviet rule in 1991 now houses an hideous shopping mall.

For a pro-liberty movement to raise its head, Twitter is not enough: face-to-face contact is crucial. That is why when oppressive governments want to destroy civil society, they destroy public spaces. Street markets, green squares and lively parks (think of the iconic Hyde Park corner) are places where citizens meet, negotiate and slowly learn to trust each other. Joseph Stalin knew it well, hence he made sure that city dwellers had no public spaces to socialise in. The results were devastating: chronic mistrust that post-communist societies are yet to overcome. Today, 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the levels of social capital in Dresden and Leipzig are still lower than in Munich and Hamburg, which bears its economic as well as political costs.

One study shows that residents living in walkable neighbourhoods exhibit at least 80% greater levels of social capital than those living in car-dependent ones. That is something to consider, given that only a half of Brits know their neighbour’s name. The economic benefits are also clear: improved walking infrastructure can increase retail sales by 30%. London has witnessed it on Oxford Street where the creation of a Tokyo-style pedestrian crossing led to a 25% increase in turnover in the adjacent stores.

In the 20th century, the world has fallen in and out of love with urban utopias. Le Corbusier’s “Radiant City” with its enormous avenues and gigantic block houses is probably the most famous (or infamous) proposal — look for gloomy pictures to get an impression on how Paris would look like if his ideas were put to practice (or just imagine Barbican extended to the size of a city). American journalist and one of the founders of modern urban studies, Jane Jacobs, challenged these ideas in “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” while praising spontaneous order in urban development.

What was common for the socialist urban projects? They glorified the automobile as a means of transportation. In contrast, the most appealing examples Jacobs presented in her book were all neighbourhoods with intense pedestrian flow. Besides boosting community life and helping cities to prosper, she argues, walkable cities are also safer ones. More pedestrians means more “eyes on the streets”, which lowers the need for police surveillance (Britain has almost 6 million CCTVs, one for every 11 people).

That’s all fine, but who pays? It’s true that large-scale urban redevelopment projects can be very expensive. However, engaging with private capital has proven to be a viable strategy both in and outside of the UK. One inspirational example comes from right across the Channel. In Rotterdam, local architects proposed a pedestrian bridge that would link two parts of the city separated by a railroad. When the local government refused to fund it, they launched a public crowdfunding campaign and raised enough money to complete the project. This is a perfect example of how social capital can bridge aspirations and reality — sometimes even literally.

Many citizens are sceptical about large-scale urban projects, and for a reason: the most ambitious of them are being implemented in a top-down-way. Take Barcelona’s car-free ”superblocks” or Paris' mayor’s pledge to halve the number of private cars — both faced strong opposition from residents. Back in the sixties, Jacobs warned against one-size-fits all solutions. In one of her public speeches she pointed to the corner grocery store as a sign of commercial diversity in a city — and soon began to receive projects where planners literally allocated slots for corner grocery stores. Such “patronising conception”, she argues, is not something a modern city needs.

Of course, there will always be NIMBYs (“Not In My Backyard”) opposing any changes to the city landscape but YIMBY is the new black. Few years ago, when I was serving as an elected official in Moscow, I was the only outspoken YIMBY in my district. Once at the public hearings I was even accused of being bribed by the developer — just because I supported a private park project! Here, once again, we face the problem of trust, and it is hard to blame people for being distrustful when social ties are so weak. This vicious circle — no public spaces so no social capital, no social capital so no public spaces — should be finally broken.

Vera Kichanova is a recipient of the John Blundell Studentship. She was the first Russian libertarian to be elected to public office and is currently working on her doctoral dissertation on market urbanism at King's College London.

Mary Shelley gets a plaque, why not David Ricardo?

This is something we've mentioned before as a desire but never quite been able to manage ourselves, given the plethora of things which can be attempted. But this story about Mary Shelley raises again the subject:

This year marks the bicentenary of the publication of that book, Frankenstein – famous in its day and ever since, interpreted in art, film, comics, ballet and music. The almost forgotten link between its creation and the city of Bath will be marked for the first time by a plaque to be unveiled on Tuesday.

Mary Godwin – child of the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who died 10 days after her daughter’s birth, and the radical writer and campaigner William Godwin – wrote much of the book during months living in Bath while her life was scarred by traumatic events.

Bath being the sort of place where such things happened at the time. It's still entirely possible to walk past Nelson's house he had when a middle ranking officer, sidle by the one he had when richer and cross the road to the pub above which he earlier recovered from losing his arm for example. No more than 100 yards between the three.

Frankenstein was indeed a seminal work in the development of the novel and why not celebrate it with a plaque? But this brings us to our own little bonnet bee.

David Ricardo reading Adam Smith (in 1809 if memory serves) was also an epochal moment. We've no doubt that comparative advantage, the laws of rent and so on would have been explained by someone at some time but Ricardo has changed the world and very much for the better too. We also know that he read Smith while on holiday in Bath. What we don't know is in which house.

That is something though which it should be possible to discover. We've mentioned this before but never quite pursued the answer properly. We'd be very interested if someone did. We'd most certainly join forces to petition for a plaque when it is all worked out.

We even know, because we've met them at one of our dos, one of Ricardo's descendants, one who has the desk at which he wrote his seminal work. They would make a jolly addition to the unveiling, wouldn't they?

The Continental Telegraph

There’s a new kid on the block. It’s a site called The Continental Telegraph.
Tim Worstall of this parish took the initiative in setting it up, and it’s already
drawing thousands of readers. This is not surprising because it features short,
punchy stories on a variety of hot news topics. It’s well worth a look. Indeed, it
can be quite addictive. Check it out here to get a new take in what’s happening.
But you don’t have to eat fewer hot cross buns…

Regulation means dead ponies

It's a general theme around here that not all aspects of life need to be subject to government regulation. In fact, that large parts of life work very much better free of such burdens. It might be possible to describe this as the non-Germanic approach - we do not need rules for everything.

One point that perhaps gains less recognition than it should is that it isn't just government imposition which is the problem, it is that attempt to regulate itself often enough. As with the Exmoor ponies:

Exmoor ponies are being culled by farmers because of delays in obtaining “passports” that prove their pedigree.

The animals are listed as endangered by the Rare Breed Survival Trust and require the paperwork from the Exmoor Pony Society in order to be sold.

But breeders, who largely keep them simply to ensure their survival, have claimed that they are having to wait months for the documents to be issued due to bureaucratic red tape and cannot afford to keep the ponies for that long.

This is not to castigate the penpushers it is simply to point to the end result. 

Sure, Exmoor ponies are special, we, along with many others, are entirely happy with the idea that they therefore be specially treated. But look at what the end result here is. Exactly the system built to ensure that specialness is what ends up with some of them being shot. Not for any reason other than that the regulation itself places a bottleneck across the normally free flowing market.

It's undoubtedly true that certain regulations are worth more than their cost. It's also undoubtedly true that some are worth less. Our contention is only that we're currently at the point where much of the regulation we have is in that second class and should thus be headed for the slaughterhouse. You know, so that rather fewer ponies do.

Is this genius or crass stupidity?

Deborah Doane used to run the World Development Movement, one of the more crassly foolish of the development NGOs. You know the sort of thing, we must all smash capitalism so that the poor can never become rich like wot we all did. So foolish that they had to change their name to Global Justice Now once enough people caught on.

It should be said that this proposal from her could be complete genius though it does rather depend upon which side you're on here:

From solidarity comes a need to reimagine ownership and accountability. In effect, NGOs are owned by their donors in the global north. A more networked organisation, made up of community-owned groups or co-operatives, could produce a model of mutual delivery, with accountability emerging from the bottom up, not the top down.

In the current model, accountability is about how much food was distributed, or how many girls were educated, to prove value for money to donors. A new model would redefine success – and be based on capacity, empowerment and voice.

In effect stop insisting that the billions upon billions that flow through the aid system and those NGOs actually achieve anything and instead measure by Teh Feelz. If more angry people complain about capitalism then that's the job done.

A cursory think through this shows that it is crass stupidity. After all, we really do want the poor to get rich and we should be measuring how well our aid achieves this so that we can do more of what works, less of what doesn't.

A more detailed think through shows that it is, from Doane's and similar viewpoint, actually an idea of genius. For if what you actually want is billions upon billions to whine about capitalism with no accountability at all then isn't this just what you would desire? Billions upon billions to whine about capitalism with no accountability at all?

Of course, we should tell Doane and all who sail in her idea to go boil their heads but it is still a clever play for our money, isn't it?

Repeating the insanity over organ donation opt in and out

The British Parliament has, once again, committed one of its regular mistakes. Such errors but always coming from the manner in which the political classes never actually do consider the evidence the real world affords them. This time it's over organ donations and presumed consent.

Ministers backed a change in the law yesterday that would turn everyone into an organ donor unless they opt out.

Presumed consent is set to be introduced in England, in line with Scotland and Wales, after a Private Member's Bill was passed unopposed in the Commons.

Health minister Jackie Doyle-Price said the Government planned to call it Max's Law after Max Johnson, ten, who was saved by a heart transplant.

Einstein was said to have said that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results was the definition of insanity. We must conclude, therefore, that those who rule us are insane.

Sure, it sounds sensible. People die waiting for organ transplants, other people die with organs that could potentially be transplanted. Confiscate that second stock to feed the need, why not?

Well, the why not is, quite apart from anything else like "Our Bodies Alone" and such slogans is that it doesn't damn well work. For near all of us die, even if with organs intact, with the organs in no fit state for transplant. There just aren't enough of us who die healthy enough that is.

In fact, as has mordantly been pointed out more than once, the only way we'd gain an increase in organs for transplant is if we stopped insisting upon motorcycle helmets. For that's, roughly enough, what we need as donors, brain dead fit young people lying in the ICU, not us oldsters succumbing to cancers, degenerative diseases and dementias.

Now, perhaps this is not true? But the thing is we've tested it. in Wales as noted. And transplant rates haven't shifted at all. We already were, with opt in, using all the usable organs people left lying around at their departure. We're thus nationalising the corpses of the nation to no effect whatsoever.

Einstein was right by the way.

John McDonnell does really have to say this, doesn't he?

We're reminded of a bit of ancient history concerning scientific socialism here:

Britain is too obsessed with economic “growth for the sake of growth”, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has claimed.

High taxes and spending are part of the solution, he said, but cannot solve what he calls “fundamental” problems in the economy.

Redistribution only “made sense when the economy was growing and creating relatively secure, relatively well-paid work”, the shadow chancellor said.

He said the Government is “fixated” on economic growth and should instead shift its focus onto “decent, secure work... and combatting climate change”.

The old argument about the science of socialism was that it would be more efficient than capitalism and markets. Eliminate all that waste of competition and plan what is to be produced, by whom, where, and we'll all have more stuff. We'll be richer in short.

Then we went and tested the contention to destruction and 1989 showed that it was incorrect.

Oh well, not the first nor the last scientific or political proposition shown to be wrong. What's much more interesting is that the justification for the same policies has changed in this modern age. For all too many people still insist we should be doing those same things, they just trot out different reasons as to why we should. Some that it would be fairer that way, others even going so far as to insist that we shouldn't have economic growth therefore planning and socialism.

Which brings us to John McDonnell. He rather does have to say what he has, doesn't he? Objective reality shows that is proffered plans won't produce economic growth. Therefore he must insist that economic growth isn't what we're aiming for in the first place if he is to convince us of the righteousness of the plans.

We ourselves know what GDP, economic growth, really is. It's a rise in the value added in an economy. That, in turn, simply increases the potential for doing whatever it is that we wish to do. Whether you want more redistribution, more spending upon less pollution, less animal cruelty, better housing, schools capable of teaching pupils, really, whatever your list of what the good life is a larger economy increases the ability to produce or provide those very things. Thus switching the goal in favour of other targets doesn't work - we're still made better off by higher GDP even if we might argue about how that extra value should be deployed.

What we do when we're richer is arguable, but being richer isn't some thing to abjure in favour of what we might want to argue about. 

Objecting to Objections to NGDP Targeting

Russell Lynch, writing in the Evening Standard, has raised two standard objections to NGDP targets, and they are valid concerns. 

"One advantage of the current regime is that it is broadly understandable to Joe Public, who’ll most likely grasp Mandarin before nominal GDP."

I sympathise with this point and have previously advocated replacing the CPI target with a CPIH to bring the UK in line with other European countries. But at some point we should take a step back and ask whether using less bad inflation proxies is enough. 

A clear upside of inflation targeting is the ease of communication but this is partly a function of the significant resources that the Bank of England devote to PR. Their schools outreach focuses on “Target 2.0” and this was introduced as part of a swathe of measures to educate the public. The reason there’s so much public attention is because that’s the chosen target. 

I’m sure that “inflation” means more to Joe Public than NGDP. But this backfires when Joe Public sees a disjoint between the wage growth experienced, booming asset price boom, and an oscillating CPI measure that the Bank increasingly ignores. If the Bank were really committed to signalling to the public that the 2% target is sincere there would have been a lot more changes in policy since 2008. Ironically the stability praised by commentators is in part a result of ignoring the remit. 

"Second, the benchmark is only as good as the figures on which it is based, which are less frequent than inflation data and prone to revision."

This point neglects the scale of opportunity from switching to an NGDP target. Data revisions matter most when policy is driven by the discretion of policy makers. But part of the argument for abandoning the present regime is to reduce the burden on decision making. The reason the paper discusses prediction markets is to introduce mechanisms that incorporate the collective wisdom of the market. My preferred NGDP regime would be a level target focusing on NGDP expectations. This would be forward looking and less prone to past revisions. But more importantly it would dispense with the monthly meetings where decisions get made. Monetary policy would be continually tied to a fixed nominal target and we could dispense with the apparatus of the chattering news junkies. 

Here's that pesky environmental Kuznets Curve again

We don't have to go far to find people telling us that China's gross pollution is the future fate of us all. Capitalism and development lead to air that chokes, water that poisons.

And that just isn't how it works at all now, is it? That gross pollution, like our own Industrial Age, is a stage which is passed through. A simple and useful description of the point being this about China's very pollution: 

“In the past, we made money first and could only talk about the environment later. But it’s clear the government has changed its mind,” he said. “We can see everything is starting to move in the right direction.”

That's simply what happens. When the alternative to straining every sinew to make a living is not to live then the environment gets very short shrift. At some point in development that luxury good (this is a technical term, it means we spend more of our rising incomes upon it, not that it is a luxury in the colloquial sense) of clean air gets the attention it might deserve.

This is simply an observation of how the world works, not something we say either should or must be. It's just that every society which has developed has done this as it develops. We've no reason at all to think that this won't be true of China, India, Bangladesh and the others too.

The real importance of the observation is that we shouldn't be spending heavily on that clean environment when such diversion from merely making a living does actually kill people. The lesson being don't become Greenpeace too soon.

IVF is the final frontier of capitalism?

It is possible, we suppose - if you squint very hard and define yourself carefully - to insist that in-vitro fertilisation is indeed that final stage of capitalism. That's not the way we think this is being said:

Kennedy recalled going in for treatment in a state of “blind panic and emotional chaos”, which she said was common for most people.

“It is a very charged time and I came out of the experience feeling brutalised. It was nothing physical, it was the attitude of the private sector … It felt like it was all about money,” she said. “It is the privatisation of reproduction, the final frontier of capitalism.”

We're really pretty certain that reproduction has been, over time, something of a private matter. In fact, the only time it has really been a public matter - in the sense of state governance of it, not social approval of different methods - has been when the eugenecists started to prevent the poor, feeble minded and generally, by their lights, undesirables from reproducing. Other than that we've all rather let people who wish to make the two backed beast get on with it, haven't we? Including the insistence that it is a private decision to bring any result to term or not.

We'd also, just because we enjoy being snide, note that the Medical Research Council refused to fund that research into IVF itself.

Reproduction as a private sector activity does seem to us to be fairly well established as the norm in human society.

But then we squint a bit and define ourselves carefully. Before 1978 those infertile - in some manners at least - had no chance of having children. Some parts of their current ability to do so have been, we'll agree, state funded and or provided. But it is only this roughly capitalist, roughly market based, socio-economic system which has led to a level of technology which provides that new found ability for them to be fecund. So if you want to call this, that the childless can become with child, a final frontier of capitalism we'll accept that. As long as you're using the same definitions we are.

What bliss it is in this dawn to be alive, eh? As some 5 million people born using the treatment are able to say.