If only Andy Beckett understood the economic statistic he's trying to use

In one of Paul Krugman’s exceptional essays we are informed of a great, grand even, truth:

The question here is not why Lind got these numbers wrong. It takes considerable experience to know where to look and what to worry about in economic statistics, and one should not expect someone who does not work in the field to be able to get it right without some guidance. The question is, instead, why Mr. Lind felt that it was a good idea to make sweeping pronouncements about this subject, when he clearly was unwilling to invest time and energy in actually understanding it.

Economic statistics can indeed tell us interesting things. But we’ve got to understand the economic statistic to understand what is being told to us. At which point, Mr. Beckett:

What might life be like in Britain if most people’s wages were more generous? One answer is more like life in many other rich countries. According to the United Nations, the share of our gross domestic product that goes to employees is lower than in France, Germany, Italy, Australia, South Korea, Canada, the US and half a dozen other, often more successful, capitalist nations. This “labour share” has fallen in Britain in most years since the late 1970s, when the great counterattack began against unions and decent pay for the many. The absence of this broad-brush but telling indicator from everyday debate in Britain is a sign of how much our politics is shaped by essentially rightwing assumptions.

Well, no, not really. From his own source we can see that the Swedish labour share is lower than that of the UK. In fact, the labour share in all of those supposedly highly desirable Nordics is lower. Which is a bit of a blow for those wanting to use the labour share of the economy as an advertisement for something like the Nordic social democracy of course.

The underlying problem here - and it’s an entirely common one on the British left - is failing to understand what the labour share actually is. GDP is, by definition, all production, or all incomes, or all consumption. Everything that is produced is consumed, incomes are the link between the two. So, if we measure all incomes we can see how much of the economy flows to capital, labour and so on. That’s fine.

But in detail we need to allocate across four different sections. The capital share, yes. The labour share, yes. Then there’s “mixed income”. Here the problem is the self-employed and so on. We’re never really sure how much of the independent workman’s income is from his labour and how much from his capital. So, we count it separately. The UN numbers being used here mix those two, the labour share and mixed income, an error which obscures rather than illuminates.

The fourth is “taxes upon consumption and subsidies to production”. This is a vital part of making the calculation add up to 100% of GDP. This is also what makes the capital share not, repeat not, the inverse of the labour share. If we increase the VAT take - by, say, putting VAT on food as at least one of the Nordics does - then we will likely reduce the labour share (it’s difficult to see how that would affect the capital share). If we reduced the feed in tariff on electricity from solar panels we would - likely - increase the labour share.

A large part of the decline in the labour share over the decades has been in the rise in this portion of national income as measured by, umm, income. The capital share is, in fact, about and around the post-war average - that late 70s decline was the abnormality, not the other decades. VAT is double and more the rate it used to be for example and the New Green Deal or whatever it’s called hasn’t exactly decreased subsidies to production over the years.

Sure, economic statistics tell us all sorts of interesting things. But it is necessary to understand the statistic to be able to extract the useful information. Bit of a pity that not everyone bothers to do that really.

To put this in a more jovial manner. We’d pay good money to watch Mr. Beckett explain to Polly Toynbee why he insists upon using a number which disproves her decades long insistence that “We must be more like Sweden.” We might even try to sell tickets to watch that, ghastly neoliberals that we are.

The Online Safety Bill endangers Sex Workers

The Online Safety Bill, which is currently making its way through the House of Commons, aims to crack down on harmful content online. Since the initial introduction of the Bill, an amendment clause has been added which now includes ‘inciting or controlling prostitution for gain’ as content that tech companies must aim to eradicate. Despite the ostensibly sensible nature of the amendment, which aims to eliminate sex trafficking from the online world, it is likely to have adverse effects on the safety of consenting sex workers. This is because companies aiming to avoid fines are under immense pressure to introduce measures in line with these regulations, such as the removal of any sex work advertising, ultimately leading to the exclusion of sex workers from online platforms.     

The evidence to suggest this legislative move is dangerous to sex workers is not only anecdotal; one only needs to look at the impact of FOSTA/SESTA in the US which, like the Online Safety Bill, had similar anti sex trafficking aims. 

FOSTA/SESTA is a piece of legislation that combined the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) with the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA). It made it illegal to knowingly assist or facilitate sex trafficking online. It also undermined Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (which protects online services against civil liability for the actions of their users) to exclude sex trafficking laws from its immunity. According to the 485 members of Congress who supported the law, FOSTA/SESTA would make the US safer by bringing an end to the sex trafficking market.

Since FOSTA/SESTA was passed in 2018, its impacts have been subject to in-depth analysis which have highlighted its flaws  A paper by The Fordham Law Review outlined the impact of the legislation on the sex trafficking market. It concluded that FOSTA/SESTA was ‘neither a necessary nor a productive step in abolishing online sex trafficking’, explaining that rather than eliminating the trafficking market, it has merely shifted location, moving away from US servers. Moreover, it has become more difficult for law enforcement to tackle and locate trafficked people, as online platforms which often collaborated with law enforcement were forced to shut down. It is worth noting that before FOSTA/SESTA was ratified, the US Department of Justice authored a letter to Congress expressing its concerns that the bill would make it more difficult to investigate trafficking cases.

Moreover, FOSTA/SESTA has forced the sex work industry away from the safety and anonymity of the internet and into more dangerous situations. There are 3 main reasons why this is the case:

1. The online sex market provides workers with tools to screen potential clients. Craigslist and Backpage, which existed prior to FOSTA/SESTA in the US, provided client vetting services. The UK equivalent that is still running is SAAFE, which allows sex workers to vet clients, and it also has a question space where sex workers can chat amongst themselves about dangerous clients and providing general advice to stay safe. A 2019 study from Baylor University estimated that, in the 8 years Craigslist Erotic Services was active, the female homicide rate decreased by 17% as a result (from 2002 to 2010). Unfortunately, when pushed from this space, sex workers have to find customers on the street quickly in isolated and discreet spaces, without much time or tools to assess them, out of fear of being caught by law enforcement officers. This makes them much more vulnerable to violence from their clients. According to a study in San Fransisco of one hundred and thirty street sex workers, 82% reported being physically assaulted in some way, with 55% of these assaults being committed by a client. 

2. Sex workers are able to work independently in the safer environment that the internet facilitates rather than for a pimp who often exert control over sex workers and inflict violence. A US Department of Justice article found that the power and control pimps possess over sex workers often resembles an abusive relationship, and sex workers who work for a pimp share similar experiences to women who survive domestic violence. This includes being subject to psychological, sexual and physical violence and often being unable to leave the relationship due to financial or other forms of control. In San Francisco, crimes relating to pimping more than tripled in 2018 after the introduction of FOSTA/SESTA, with sex workers reporting that ‘former pimps have come out of the woodwork offering to ‘manage’ their business since they were now rendered unable to find client online’.

3. By being off the streets, the chance of police violence against sex workers decreases. In a 2022 London-based BMJ study into the effect of police enforcement on violence and mental health about sex workers, it was found that 42% of street based workers experienced violence from police, in comparison to 7% of off-street sex workers. It is worth noting that statistics around police violence against sex workers may be underreported as many sex workers hesitate to report police violence out of fear of criminal charges or further abuse. 

It is for this reason that criticism against the new amendment in the Online Safety bill is justified. The increased risk it will bring to consenting sex workers, based off the evidence from the effects of similar legislation in the US, gives critics credible scope to argue for the retraction of this amendment. If in the US, FOSTA/SESTA had increased violence against sex workers but had achieved its aim in reducing sex trafficking cases then indeed, it would be up to the government to balance the tensions between the safety of sex workers and sex trafficking victims. However, this is not the case, and FOSTA/SESTA has not only led to increased risks for sex workers but has has negligible impact on reducing sex trafficking rates. The government should seriously consider repealing this amendment to the Online Safety Bill.

The buggy whip makers would like a word with the childrens' authors

Buggy whip makers are a standard economic shorthand for those who lose their jobs owing to technological advance. The buggy whip makers would like a word with the childrens’ authors:

A Tech Worker Is Selling A Children's Book He Made Using AI. Professional Illustrators Are Pissed.

Ammaar Reshi told BuzzFeed News that he has received death threats and messages encouraging self-harm on social media.

The argument being used?

One critic is Anupa Roper, a children’s book author based in the UK, who said she had a “sinking feeling in the pit of [her] stomach,” when she saw Reshi’s tweet. “I’m thinking, Is it really that easy to create something that I had to pour my heart and soul into?" Roper said.

Well, perhaps it is. If it is, isn’t that great and wondrous? We can now have more childrens’ books with the use of less human labour.

Fellow UK children’s author Josie Dom refused to download Reshi’s book. “I don’t feel he deserves to earn any money from the book, because he has not actually put much work into it,” she said. However, based on reading the sample pages on Amazon, Dom said, she is “concerned that the use of AI in creating stories will create a proliferation of poor-quality stories, both on the writing and the illustration side.”

That’s a bit Marxian really - as little labour has gone into it therefore it must be worth not much.

“I totally understand as an artist if you see this as an existential threat to your livelihood. This makes absolute sense.”

It is indeed understandable just as was that a century and more back. Who will buy my buggy whips if this new-fangled car thing is allowed to proliferate?

We’ve a couple of reasons we don’t in fact worry about this very much. One is that the AIs and ‘bots have been coming for the sector where some of us make our living for well over a decade now. Financial reporting used to have a bread and butter sector of producing a quick precis of a corporate report. That’s now all automated, the children of economic writers go crustless as a result. Thanks for all that support we got from childrens’ authors.

A second is that it’s not in fact all that much of a threat. As with economic writers at the top of their game so with childrens’ authors now. There have long been hundreds of millions out there who can type, very few who produce something which will capture the attention of a child or a politician, to the extent there’s a useful difference. Adding more typists doesn’t change this.

But the really important point here is imagine that the AI can in fact produce childrens’ books - or economic commentary. This will indeed displace those who currently do those things. Which is good, this makes us all - in aggregate, there are those wounded in the process - richer. For now we are able to enjoy economics, or bedtime reading, without having used human labour to gain it. That labour can then go off and produce something else that we can also consume. We get to consume that new production and also that economics, that Goodnight Moon as well. We’re richer.

This is, in fact, what all economic advance is about - using less human labour to produce what we all may consume. The entire point of technological advance is to destroy jobs - those jobs that are a cost of the production.

Actually, that’s a point. One of us has at least 10 million words out there on the internet. How much do you need to be able to train ChatGPT in a particular style……hmmmm….

Create the alternative first rather than deploy a ban

As we’ve been known to say around here if you wish folk to change the way they do things then create that alternative first. Show that it is indeed better than the current method and people will voluntarily switch. That people don’t switch is, in and of itself, all the proof needed to show that it is not, in fact, better. At which point why would you ban the first method in order to force the uptake of the new and worse?

Firstly:

New natural gas-only boilers are facing a ban within four years under net zero proposals for the grid to use hydrogen instead.

All boilers installed after 2026 would have to be hydrogen-ready under the plan, which the Government announced in a consultation on Tuesday.

No, that’s the ban coming first, that’s the wrong way to do it. The proof being:

Subzero temperatures are pushing Britain’s already struggling industrial sector to the brink, heralding a winter of shutdowns that could do lasting damage.

Wholesale electricity prices soared on Sunday as the first snowfall of winter prompted a scramble to secure power supplies. While households are protected by the price cap, industry must pay the higher prices if they are to secure the power needed to run their businesses.

Gareth Stace, director of industry association UK Steel, said very high wholesale electricity prices on Monday caused all his members to shut down some production until rates settled again.

We’ve banned fracking, banned thermal coal in any useful sense, forced the building of windmills and solar, both things that don’t, in fact, work well in winter stills at our high latitudes. The result? Industry has to close down. The correct answer was and is, as above, build the new and better first and gawp in amazement as all voluntarily switch to the new and better.

And if it’s not better they won’t switch and why should they switch to something worse? Further, if they won’t switch we’ve our proof that it’s not better.

Striving to make the world a better place is an excellent activity. But the sequence has to be build the better first, not ban the old and hope like hell.

Well, what about the workers then?

An interesting side-finding from this moan about the difficulties of the working class in penetrating the arts establishment:

Huge decline of working class people in the arts reflects fall in wider society

Study shows the proportion of musicians, writers and artists with working-class origins has shrunk by half since the 1970s

There are fewer people of working class background coming up through that arts sector, entirely true. But the reason this is true is, as the paper itself says, because there are simply fewer people who are working class:

This reflected a similar decline in the number of people with working-class origins, according to the paper in the journal Sociology by researchers from the universities of Edinburgh, Manchester and Sheffield. People whose parents had a working-class job accounted for about 37% of the workforce in 1981, but by 2011 that had fallen to about 21%.

We can vaguely be serious about this if we wish. Adam Smith’s work can be read as that emergence of the bourgeois as a force in society. Deirdrie McCloskey’s reading is that subsequent development is actually the triumph of those bourgeois values - it’s when society started to operate to them that society started to expand and succeed. Greg Clark’s “A Farewell to Alms” has as its rough structure the idea that the bourgeois outbred the proletariat and so, by Lamarckian inheritance, the bourgeois values spread through the society. They’re all telling much the same story that is.

We can be slightly less serious about it and note that Marxian and revolutionary demand from a century back, that insistence upon the elimination of the bougeoisie. Well, not entirely from a century back, it seems to live on at Comment is Free. The actual outcome seeming to be entirely the opposite. The working class is being, through social mobility, entirely absorbed into the bourgeois. That’s the actual outcome of the class war. The result of this is that all that stuff about power to the workers, the proletariat should be running the country, is nonsense. Not only is the working class not the majority any more - democracy does mean the power should be with the majority and thus with that bourgeoisie - we’re getting close to the point where there isn’t a working class at all.

Being entirely unserious, we win by assimilation into the Borg.

Sadly, it’s also necessary to be entirely serious about this. Because despite the fact that according to objective conditions there is no working class left to take power and revolutionise society that’s not going to stop the intelligentsia from demanding that event. Meaning we’re still stuck with Comment is Free for the immediate future.

How to solve the housing problem

We have an outbreak of mysteriousness in the British economy:

Buy-to-let investors are swooping to snap up property bargains as buyer demand disappears amid the housing market downturn.

Between January and November, the share of offers made by buy-to-let investors on properties that had no other bids more than doubled from 14pc to 37pc, analysis by Hamptons estate agents found.

This was the highest proportion on record in at least four years and was far above the 20pc pre-pandemic benchmark in November 2019.

Rent is the income that can be made from owning that capital asset, the buy to let house. The price of the capital asset has gone down, the income to be made from it is going up. Therefore more people are buying the asset in order to increase the supply of the thing that has gone up in price. This will moderate the price increase by increasing the supply of it.

Such mysteriousness, it’s almost as if there’s some set of rules, incentives even, that govern how people react to the world changing around them. Hopefully someone will be able to put aside some time to write the book which will explain this miraculousness to us all.

Until then, and while we all remain entirely without a clue, we’d better use politics to sort out our problems for us:

A cross-party group of MPs is seeking to change the law so childcare is treated as an infrastructure issue like schools, GPs and public transport, placing a duty on major housebuilders to ensure new developments have sufficient provision to match an expanding population.

The plan, led by the Labour MP Stella Creasy, comes as an amendment to the levelling up and regeneration bill, which returns to the Commons on Tuesday for the final part of its committee stage.

Yes, that will clearly work. Rents have leapt, so we need more housing that can be let out to people who would like to have somewhere to rent. At which point we’re going to limit the supply of housing that can be rented. Here the limitation is that we must first, before building houses to be rented out, ensure a supply of young women with too few GCSEs to gain access to a grievance studies course. That being where the country has traditionally gained its childcare labour force. Fortunately, given the modern education system, this might not be all that much of a limit.

Yes, well done, politics clearly solves our problems better than appealing to some mysteriousness like an invisible hand or something. How could anyone believe otherwise?

If you force people to do it, you've given the game away

Leave aside the innate stupidity of the plan for a moment and consider instead the ordering of it.

OK, actually, consider the stupidity of the plan first:

“Draconian” plans to divide Oxford residents into six climate zones have led to council chiefs calling in the police over "extreme abuse".

In a UK first, the city will be carved into six districts from 2024 and car drivers must apply for a permit to travel between them for a maximum of 100 days a year.

The “traffic filters” come as Oxford City Council and Oxfordshire County Council hope to become a “15-minute city”, with GPs, schools and shops in local clusters.

The entire point of cities is “agglomeration”. More folk packed into an area creates more interactions between folk. Interactions also have another name, the foundation of innovation and economic growth. We simply get richer when people move to the Big City and swarm all over each other in the Big City. Having the Big City without the interaction - the serendipity of the interaction - is insane.

We also have economies and diseconomies of scale. To entirely invent some numbers - entirely invent you understand, just for the example - we desire one GP per thousand people, one Alzheimer’s ward per 10,000 and one heart surgeon per 100k. We certainly don’t need one heart surgeon per 1,000 and one GP per 100k would only be slightly more efficient than the current NHS.

Where that sweet spot is between economies and diseconomies changes near daily as technology changes. So there’s no possibility of anyone planning to provide those varied things correctly, to scale. As, of course, the current NHS shows us and that’s government merely limiting itself to health care instead of the entire urban economy.

Divvying up a city in this manner cannot be planned and runs against the entire incentive to have a city in the first place. Which is stupid enough.

But now consider the order in which this is being attempted. The movement between sectors is to be limited first, hoping that the new ordering of services will then arrive. This is like building that socialist economy then hoping that New Soviet Man will turn up to make it work. This is also the wrong way around, as that earlier experiment was.

If the 15 minute city is so desirable - desired that is, by the only people who matter, the populace - then if the 15 minute city is created by allocating the services according to the plan then the movement restrictions are not needed. Everyone will be so ecstatically fulfilled by the new plan that they’ll all, entirely voluntarily - possibly even with Hosannahs of praise to the councillors - live within their little 15 minute neighbourhoods.

There are only two possible justifications for the movement restrictions. The first is that the councils will not manage to plan those services so that the 15 minute city exists. The second is that the populace will decide they don’t like the 15 minute city and so won’t stay within it. Neither of those are good enough justifications for those limitations - indeed, they positively argue against them.

As we’ve been known to point out before, if you’ve this grand new idea then great. Try it out. If people like it then they’ll voluntarily adopt it and you’ve succeeded in the only important economic task, providing more of what people want. You know, the way free markets work. The moment you’ve got to force people to do it you’ve given the game away - even you don’t think people will do it by choice.

Yes, yes, we do need to have politics and that does mean that some people will end up with political power. It’s just that we don’t actually want anyone to exercise it now, do we?

An interesting proof perfect of the gender pay gap

One of the reasons that men and women get paid different amounts - on average and across the range of all jobs - is because women are more sensible than men. There’s more to life than grinding away for gelt and pilf and women tend to balance their pursuit of such with those other interests in a different manner from many men. More of those other things that the gilt and pelf that is.

Given that employers are there to profit from labour, not the balanced life - it’s difficult for an employer to make money from such activities outside the workplace after all - this leads to men preferentially, and as always on average and in general, gaining access to those higher paid jobs where more dedication to the gelt and pilf is desired by said employers.

Which brings us to this:

Two women have sued Twitter for sex descrimination during sweeping layoffs of thousands of staff orchestrated by billionaire owner Elon Musk.

The former female staff members have brought an unfair dismissal claim against the tech company, arguing more women were laid off than men by Mr Musk.

In a court filing, the former staff claimed Mr Musk had unfairly demanded staff commit to “extremely hardcore” working hours, despite knowing this would force mothers and female caregivers to quit.

Lawyers for the claimants said: “Elon Musk would certainly have known that these policy changes and expectations would have a disproportionate impact on women, who are more often caregivers for children and other family members, and thus not able to comply with such demands.”

Leave aside all of the oughts and shoulds. This is exactly the same story as that gender pay gap one. Because women are more sensible they’ll not devote their lives to mere gilt and pelf and therefore demands that a workforce do so are gender discriminatory.

We can add back in those oughts and should bes if we wish but we do need to also conduct that analysis of the is. Some part of the gender pay gap - across the population and on average - is because of these different gender preoccupations - on average and across the population - with amassing gilt and pelf rather than the more interesting things in life.

Shrug.

Our preference is that nothing whatsoever be done about this. On the basis that we’re liberals. The aim of this whole let’s have a civilisation game is that more folk get to have more of what folk want. So, the correct outcome is whatever the interactions of those tens of millions for a country, or billions for us all, lead to as long as that basic aim is met - more folk getting to gain more of what folk want.

Men and women - on average and across the population - have slightly different work habits and desires about work. Men and women - across the population and on average - gain different amounts of cash from their work.

And?

Trafigura - The glory of workers' cooperatives

What a glory of a mixed and free market economy this is:

The commodities trading firm Trafigura is to hand more than $1.7bn (£1.4bn) to its top traders and shareholders after the energy crisis, fuelled by the war in Ukraine, led to a surge in profits.

Trafigura, one of the world’s largest specialist commodity traders, posted a record $7bn net profit in its last financial year, more than the previous four years combined after making gains from the market volatility caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Its chief financial officer, Christophe Salmon, hailed an “exceptionally strong year”, as profits more than doubled and revenues grew to $318.5bn in the year to 30 September, up from $231.3bn a year earlier.

The $1.71bn payout to its 1,100 shareholders, including top employees, equates to about $1.56m a head if shared equally. That’s an increase of about 35% compared with 2021’s dividend of $1.12bn to around 1,000 top traders and investors.

Trafigura is, of course, a worker owned cooperative.

Trafigura is an independent, employee-owned physical trading and logistics business.

There are other companies in that space - Cargill comes to mind - which are family-owned and capitalist. Trafigura is, by any reasonable definition, a socialist organisation. Those who work there gain the full value of the sweat of their brow.

Isn’t this excellent? Folk get to structure their organisations as they wish, that free part of free market means that we do have different structures, some sating some ethical desires, some others, which then compete for the custom of the populace.

Given that Trafigura has the same ownership structure as John Lewis - or Richer Sounds, now that sale has gone through - no doubt those who praise worker coops and employee owned firms will be vocal in their support of this success.

They will won’t they, be logically consistent?

Cumbrian coal - What's this got to do with you, Matey?

In all the shouting about the go ahead for the Cumbrian coal mine this is the comment that grates the most:

Tony Bosworth, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth…..”and this mine risks becoming an expensive stranded asset.”

The money being used seems to flow through West Cumbria Mining, itself backed by EMR Capital, that seems to be a conduit for varied sources of private equity. That is, the money being used is not that of Mr. Bosworth nor of Friends of the Earth. Meaning that the correct response to this claim of Mr. Bosworth’s - or of FoE - is what’s that got to do with you, Matey?

Because this is how a market economy works. People are free to waste their money on whatever moonbeams into sunshine cucumber machine they desire. Rather than be subject to the insistences of some prodnose with a grievance.

Sadly, the major newspaper commentators seem not much better:

Besides, steelmakers have dramatically reduced Russian imports since the invasion of Ukraine, and the industry is moving rapidly to low-carbon alternatives to coking coal such as hydrogen anyway, so the project risks quickly becoming an expensive white elephant.

That’s not even the right question, let alone the right answer.

As background, yes, we need coking coal if we’re to continue running blast furnaces. “We” here being humanity in general. Yes, DRI with hydrogen looks like it might well become the technology of choice in time. Electric arc furnaces have been making inroads into the market for 60 years now and show no signs of stopping. But that 60 years is an important number. For that recycling of scrap in arc furnaces - led in a market sense by Nucor over in the US - has taken that 60 years to penetrate the market. For blast furnaces are vast capital investments and once one has been built the financial incentive is to keep using it until it falls over. This is the Nordhaus point about climate change. The least cost method of reducing emissions is to keep using all our old kit until it does fall over, but make absolutely certain that new stuff we build is non-emittive.

They did give Nordhaus the Nobel for this point so it’s worth including it in our calculations.

But to step back from the decision making about whether we, ourselves, think that it’s a good investment or not. And consider what is being said by these varied people now. Which is that those not involved in the investment decision, those with no money at risk, do in fact know whether it is going to be a profitable investment or not. Which is fine - you think it’ll lose money then don’t invest in it. But they’re going that unallowable one step further. They’re saying that because they, themselves, think it will be unprofitable then other people cannot be allowed to invest in it.

No, that’s not how a free market system works. Other people get to do as they wish with their money. That’s rather what private property means and it’s very much what the free part of free markets means.

Yes, yes, we grasp all the points about public policy and emissions and so on. Given that we are talking about planning permission of course there’s an element of planning in this as well. But those aren’t the points - nor even the desirability of coking coal or steel making - that we insist upon highlighting here.

The claim is that West Cumbria Mining should not be allowed to do that because they’ll lose money. The answer to that being what’s that to do with you, Matey? Because the essence of, the driving force of, free market capitalism is that the capitalists are free to spray their money up against any wall they wish. Yes, we know all too many don’t believe this but the experience of the last 250 years is that we get, on balance, more correct decisions this way than through any other investment decision process anyone has ever tried.

West Cumbria Mining will lose money? Let ‘em lose it then. Shrug.