Google is less shy. Here’s a visualisation of Android activations worldwide.

Conservative readers still don’t understand why the Coalition is hated in the poor areas of Britain. They would grasp the loathing better if they went back through the arguments they made in opposition, and realised that their leaders have failed to follow through the logic of the ideas they once espoused.

The best Tory criticism of Gordon Brown to my mind was that he had stood by while the boom bypassed large parts of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the North and South West. He left them with Soviet-style local economies, dominated by the public sector. Their populations’ prosperity depended on state subsidy rather than private endeavour.

True enough, but now Conservatives and Liberals are cutting the public sector, without ensuring that the private sector is ready to plug the gaps.

There’s more, all very pertinent to the question of what actually motivates the coalition. His remarks about crime are especially galling:

Note as well [the belief of working class people in Worksop] that the government will withdraw what protection the police offer them from the violent drunks and addicts, who infest their town.

If they really believed in Liberal economics, wouldn’t they try to create the conditions for growth in deprived areas that now have “Soviet-style local economies”? Tax breaks and free ports in Liverpool and Hull and Middlesbrough would drive wealth from the South East to the North, which would be a good thing, but also see new wealth generated there. People might even be weaned off the habits of Labour voting if they saw their areas regaining some of the dynamism of the nineteenth century.

I have seen nothing to undermine the suspicion that they don’t really believe their own free-market, enterprise-based talk. I hate to say this, but there’s a strong whiff of Tory protection of their own and disregard for the rest.

To say, as some libertarians do, that taxation is slavery is silly. It’s equally silly to say that the proposed requirement that unemployed people do some work in return for their benefits, aka workfare, is slavery.

Or is it?  Are they silly? And, either way, are they equally silly?

Slavery was rarely, if ever, a matter of working for nothing. Slaves who were not fed or housed had a rapidly diminishing usefulness to their owners. Clothing, food and shelter were sometimes supplemented by the ability to acquire property, sometimes enough to lead to wealth, some even exercised social influence. But at minimum, slaves were, like human cattle, given hay and a barn.

The analogy comes from P.J. O’Rourke:

the “right” to education, the “right” to health care, the “right” to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

This doesn’t fit the pattern but, according to that particular libertarian, being a benefits claimant is in itself comparable to slavery.

That claimants might have to take part in work that is not of their choosing does not hurt the comparison; having to do work that is not one’s choice is a characteristic of slavery.

A lack of choice in housing is another characteristic, one that also applies to most benefits claimants. In general what was lost in slavery was, at minimum, choice. Conditions were sometimes comfortable, often they were brutal. In no case could slaves could make important choices for themselves. P.J.’s Law is, if nothing else, the antithesis of slavery: “There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please.”

According to this argument, being on benefits without Workfare is like being a slave with no work; with Workfare, it’s like being a slave with some work – nobody is suggesting a sixty hour week, they’re not even suggesting there’s work every week.

For different reasons, Paul Sagar reached a conclusion that agreed with 50% of the above:

[Workfare] work becomes – for those who would prefer not to starve in the gutter – enforced labour extracted by the power of the state. Accordingly, that now starts to look rather like a form of state-enforced slavery in the context of societies that have developed legal structures and norms that previously provided for the unconditional protection of the most vulnerable.

Sagar finds context important:

the libertarian response is defective insofar as it refuses to engage withthe reality of a preceding practical context against which to understand the state-citizen relationship in something like “workfare” reforms.It is just not good enough to attempt to analyse political interactions and changes in vacuo … Changes and power structures happen in concrete political and historical contexts…

… libertarianism is astoundingly historically ignorant, insofar as it does not pay attention to why systems of benefit support have evolved in our societies. And in turn libertarianism is naive, insofar as no attention is paid to the empirical evidence that when people are left to the capricious mercies of the market they do not sit around picking their noses, but agitate for (often violent) forms of political extremism to address social and economic short-comings.

Thank goodness today’s benefits claimants never engage in political violence.

But he’s right that context is important. Part of the context here is the perception that the benefits system is failing in some respects. It’s succeeding in stopping people from starving. On the whole, it stops people dying of hypothermia in the winter. These are self-evidently important achievements. But there’s a widespread view that the benefits system institutionalises people into dependency. There’s also an idea that welfare can be unfair, taking money from struggling, hard-working middle-income taxpayers and handing it to the workshy. If you’re going to argue against Workfare, there are the bits you have to engage with.

(Incidentally, part of Sagar’s argument is that the benefits system shouldn’t change because it hasn’t previously done the new things it might do if it changes. No shit?)

Chris Dillow took a quantative approach to the question of the workshy and, he suggested, exposed a common trick employed by the right:

The vast majority of unemployment – over 9-10ths on this reckoning – has nothing to do with people not wanting to work, and everything to do with a lack of demand for labour.
And this is where that rightist trick (or error) enters. They mistake small truths for large ones, and use the small truth to obfuscate the big one. So, the truth – that a few of the unemployed don’t want to work – is exaggerated and used to hide the bigger truth, that the vast majority of unemployment has other causes.

I think he misunderstands the right. This isn’t a trick, it’s a question of emphasis and, perhaps, relentlessness. But then, we choose our relentlessness but most of us have it. With Chris, it’s egalitarianism, hence this non-sequitur:

“The poor benefit from living in wealthy capitalist societies.” This trivial truth hides a trickier question: does free market capitalism benefit them more than egalitarian alternatives?

The poor, of course, do benefit from living in societies with higher than average levels of economic freedom (which is what he means by “capitalism”). The question of whether freedom is better than egalitarianism (or rather, the mechanisms you would need to introduce into society in order to ensure egalitarian outcomes) is a completely separate matter, it isn’t either/or as a juxtaposition like this suggests. Nor would it be a tricky question: from what we’ve seen so far, the answer is “yes”.

The relentlessness of the right is fine-grained, atomic. There’s a focus on individuals in every respect, and a corresponding reluctance to view things in terms of collectives, communities, victim groups. This is fairly consistent, it informs most policy areas, and it’s why it doesn’t matter what the percentage of lead-swingers is, to the right. It isn’t a trick, it’s a difference of emphasis.

Libertarians sometimes argue that hard choices, even though they are hard, are still choices. Thus someone subject to Workfare could choose to stop claiming benefits. So Workfare isn’t slavery. But how much choice does a person really have between a hated regime and starvation? Effectively none, says Paul Sagar in the post linked to above.

I’m not sure he noticed, though, that this argument applies equally to tax payers. Do you really have the option of not working if you don’t want to pay tax? Then you’d be on benefits, and a full-time slave instead of a part-time slave, and skint to boot. How are you going to build a life for your family like that*?

So it goes – the trap of tax-serfdom is deepest for the most conscientious. And nobody has much of a choice: the benefits claimant will have to do work if Workfare comes along, the tax payer who pays those benefits has to work anyway. Although they do get to choose the work they do, which is more than the Workfare bods will be able to boast.

The right does have an edge in this argument, though. There’s a common factor to all these actual and metaphorical instances of slavery: individuals subordinated to authority. In every case where this happens, the individual loses choice.

Slavery was a spectrum that went from iron-collared, radically castrated, African slaves in Arabia, to obese Eunuch Viziers of the Ottoman Empire; from 90% mortality and inhuman brutality to silk-clad, farting opulence.

The only thing the different forms of slavery had in common is the subjugation of the individual by another entity. Workfare has that in common with slavery. So does the coercive state, from the viewpoint of a taxpayer. Bear in mind, there’s a security in cradle-to-grave slavery that comforts millions. Never choice, but always a roof; never choice, but always food; never choice, but always clothing. Never choice, but always healthcare and education. Slavery isn’t necessarily unpopular.

But when, exactly, did it become a left-wing cause?

Oh, and do I win a modified Godwin Award?

*Yes, this does also apply to benefits claimants: how can they build a life for their families on benefits? The difference of view between right and left is again a matter of emphasis: the right congratulate the tax-payer for keeping the wolf from the claimants’ doors, which they do; the left mourns the poverty of the claimant, who might be unemployed through no personal fault, which is also valid. This does, though, suggest that a two-tier system might be more just. One tier for those who really can’t work though they’d love to; a different, subsistence level, tier for those who could but don’t. How you’d tell the difference is another matter.

Two comments:

• India making cheaper cars and prosthetic limbs enriches us all: we can buy their cars and prosthetics*. This isn’t a zero-sum game. The faster poor countries get richer, the faster we get richer.
• Could you imagine this from Pakistan? It’s not like India isn’t a religious country, but maybe it does matter which religion people follow.

*And that prosthetic leg is amazing at any price.

UPDATE: Also see this post.

UPDATE: Mark Wallace makes a similar point.

Evan Davis suggested to Osborne that he was using the words “progressive” and “fair” in different ways to the Labour Party. And of course, that’s right. That’s the point. The Conservatives are reclaiming these words for general use again and this is a very good thing. It also happens to have been one of the bees in my bonnet.

Words like “fair”, “justice” and “equality” have been used by the socialist left in ways that are deeply dishonest and damaging. They are dishonest because they are deliberate subversions of the real meanings of the words. A fair or just output or outcome is related to, affected by, inputs. If you work hard, it’s fair that you be rewarded. If you don’t, it’s unfair that you should be rewarded. But the socialist use of these words flips this on its back so it becomes “fair” that people who work hard have money taken from them and given to people who don’t work hard. It’s fair that people, all people, should have similar levels of opportunity (they are not going to have the same opportunities) but it’s unfair to penalise success and reward failure or laziness. Equality of opportunity is fair; equality of outcome is unfair, whatever other merits it might have.

The misuse of these words is also damaging. Removing consequences from actions makes it harder to identify and opt for successful strategies. The further down the social and economic scales you go, the greater this distortion. The richer people in society can see very clearly what works and what doesn’t work, and this affects behaviour and tends to increase wealth. Those at the bottom can rationally opt for gaming the system rather than seeking genuine economic advancement, and this acts to entrench them deeper and more permanently in poverty. A humanitarian rather than an egalitarian approach to welfare would avoid some of this problem.

In passing, the fact that Davis put this question to Osborne but hasn’t put it to any socialists who have misused these words in his interviews is yet another reflection of the institutional bias of the BBC. The website Biased BBC aims to highlight and combat this bias. Unfortunately, it sometimes displays an opposite bias of its own. In this post, David Vance expresses his disapproval of the BBC’s attitude to gay marriage:

The BBC relentlessly push the Stonewall approved line that homosexual people must be allowed to “marry” in the interests of fairness and “equality”. There is such an interview on Today at 8.48am. It’s remarkable how the State Broadcaster can blithely dismiss millennia of human experience and instead pursue this radical re-definition of the institute of marriage to accommodate militant gays.

Gay marriage, as an idea, is not the province of “militant gays”. Vance’s objections are rooted, ultimately, in a young-earth creationism that feels humans were designed, fully formed, for specific forms of heterosexual sexual activity and that anything else is a perversion. This is, of course, drivel – we actually evolved to have recreational and non-procreative sex. Mr Vance’s biases undermine the campaign to highlight the biases of the BBC. They make it much easier for those who defend the BBC to suggest that criticism come solely from reactionary political extremists.

Laurie Santos has been experimenting with “monkeynomics”. She has taught a group of monkeys to use money – metal discs – to pay for treats then after straightforward “purchases” of treats, one grape for one disc, become routine she offers two scenarios in each of which the monkeys can decide between two options. These are scenarios in which human decision making has been analysed and found to follow a set pattern.

In the first scenario, the monkeys have a choice between two people, A and B, each of whom offers one grape. A always adds one grape when a money offers a coin, making two. B gives just the one grape 50% of the time, and 50% of the time adds two more, making three. This is a situation of possible gain. But rationally, especially with the opportunity to make multiple purchases, both average out at 2 grapes so it makes little difference which you choose. However, humans are biased towards one of these options; for our purposes it doesn’t matter which.

The second scenario is one in which both A and B each offers three grapes. A always takes one away before handing over two, B gives all three half the time, and 50% of the time takes two away, leaving one. This is functionally identical to the first scenario but feels different. A always gives 2 grapes, B might give 1 or 3, but in the first scenario it feels like possible gain and in the second it feels like possible loss. This time humans display the opposite bias.

This shows that human decision making is at least partly irrational. If we were rational, even if we displayed a bias toward one or other of A and B, we would display the same bias in both scenarios.

Monkeys behave in exactly the same way. The biases are the same in each scenario and, just as with humans, the bias changes between the two. The irrationality is the same, something that is more revealing than a similarity in rational decision making – which could be attributed to the underlying rationality of the decision.

More work needs to be done, but this at least raises the possibility that even decision making of this sort, that affects our deepest economic behaviour, could be hard-wired in us. Our common ancestor with the monkeys in the experiments lived something like 35 million years ago.

I recently argued with Chris Dillow about whether status is inherent (following an initial post by Tim Worstall); the evidence seems to show it is. Taking an evolutionary perspective, concern for status can be seen in most, perhaps all, of our part of the tree. These experiments in economic behaviour show how subtle and far-reaching inherited behaviour might be. That’s inconvenient for utopian political beliefs, because these generally rely on the possibility that human behaviour could be changed.

An evolutionary perspective can cast light on other political debates, especially when the fallacies of creationism are unpicked. That’s the subject for a later post.

Imagine we had no speculation at all? Not even physical hoarding.

You don’t have to imagine. As I pointed out in a post a year ago, this was exactly the situation during much of the Middle Ages, when regrating was at times illegal and always condemned by the Church. Regrating means:

To buy in large quantities, as corn, provisions, etc., at a market or fair, with the intention of selling the same again, in or near the same place, at a higher price, — a practice which was formerly treated as a public offense.

The consequence was word formation; they had to invent a new word, “caristia”, to denote the shortage of labourers that would occur from year to year because so many people had died the previous season from malnutrition. This isn’t the Black Death, just year on year fluctuations in labour supply caused by death from starvation.

I find it interesting that those who object to commodities speculation today consider themselves to be radical when they are in fact reactionary. They consider themselves to be motivated by morality and in a way that’s true. But it’s the morality of the medieval Catholic Church.

That’s why I think these folks are right wing, not left wing.

Moreover, given the nature of political influence and the complexity of government decisions, our results should not be seen as a “smoking gun”. Instead we provide suggestive evidence of the influence of subprime borrowers and lenders on policy.

But for all that, it’s a disturbing read:

Taken together, our results suggest that constituent interests, measured with the fraction of subprime borrowers in a given Congressional district before the subprime mortgage expansion, and special interests, measured with campaign contributions from the mortgage industry, both helped to shape government policies that encouraged the rapid growth of subprime mortgage credit.

And thence the global recession.