Norm asks: Why is one inequality different? The context is a piece contrasting the strides towards greater racial and gender equality in the USA with the widening economic stratification that has accompanied it.

Here’s the answer: one inequality is not different. Equality means ‘of opportunity’ – and this is precisely what is meant by greater racial and gender equality: equality of opportunity.

Differing economic outcomes are not a measure of equality. In fact, differing economic outcomes are an inevitable consequence of equality of opportunity.

The apparent paradox is no more than a conjuring trick with words. In the chalk corner we have equality. In the cheese corner we have redistribution of wealth. They aren’t the same thing at all and never will be, however much you try to redefine the meanings of words for the purpose of political rhetoric.

Take this, for example:

… dictatorial regimes often manage to keep themselves in power because they are recognized by foreigners as representing the state and its people, and therefore as entitled to sell the country’s natural resources and to borrow money in its people’s name. These privileges conferred by foreigners keep autocrats in power despite the fact that they were not elected and do not rule in the interest of the population.

Or this:

If we offer a prize, so to speak, to anyone who manages to bring a country under his physical control – namely, that they can then sell the country’s resources and borrow in its name – then it’s not surprising that generals or guerrilla movements will want to compete for this prize. But that the prize is there is really not the fault of the insiders. It is the fault of the dominant states and of the system of international law they maintain. They create this disturbing fact that, if only you manage to bring a national territory under your physical control, then you will be recognized worldwide as its legitimate government: entitled to sell its people’s natural resources, to borrow and sign treaties in their name, and entitled also to import the weapons you need to keep yourself in power.

It goes much further than this, as the Arab Spring demonstrated. A policy of maintaining regional ‘stability’ led to large grants of money being made in ‘aid’ to tyrannical regimes. The scare quotes are because I don’t think the Middle East has been particularly stable and I don’t think aid is a very good word for the giving of financial support to tyrants.

And further:

… the massive corruption common in so many developing countries would be quite impossible if Western countries did not provide convenient opportunities to ship ill-gotten funds out of the country. It wouldn’t make much sense for a ruler to store in his basement large quantities of stolen cash in his own country’s currency. A corrupt ruler wants to be able to keep this money safe and to be able to spend it. And for this, he needs to convert it into a Western currency and store it in a bank abroad, where it can also earn investment returns and be bequeathed to his heirs. Global Financial Integrity estimates that less-developed countries have lost at least $342 billion per annum in this way during the 2000 to 2008 period.

The (right) libertarian-inclined writer P J O’Rourke commented that when politicians regulate commerce, the first things that get bought and sold are the politicians. Pogge puts it like this:

Our Supreme Court has even lifted this practice of buying legislation to the level of a constitutional principle by repeatedly protecting corporate spending for and against political candidates, as well as promises and threats of such spending to bribe and blackmail such candidates, by appeal to the free-speech clause of the First Amendment. I think that many citizens understand how our system works, or rather, fails to work, for structural reasons. But who has the capacity and the incentives to bring change? The banks and other corporations love the system because it allows them to buy legislation that serves their own interests even at the expense of the vast majority of citizens. Incumbent politicians love the system because it allows them to raise millions of dollars toward defending their seats. And the politicians, of course, get to appoint the judges who decide whether our constitutional protection of free speech also protects a bank’s purchase of legislation.

There isn’t much room between those two positions. But then Pogge goes on:

… the lack of a realistic political reform path leads to apathy and the kind of mindless frustration that manifests itself in the Tea Party-style hatred of any and all government.

I haven’t studied the Tea Party movement in any detail but from what I’ve seen it is far from mindless. What it is, rather, is unsophisticated, blue collar, not always very well-informed, and sometimes inarticulate. But Pogge falls into the trap, I think, of regarding them, instinctively, as enemies because he imagines them in the trenches on the far side of No Man’s Land. In fact, to some extent – not all – they are his natural allies.

It’s a very long interview and I’ve made this point well enough, I hope, not to need to give further examples. What strikes me above all is that if, instead of fighting on the grounds of principles – egalitarianism, religious conservatism, libertarianism and so on – where we disagree, people tried to find common ground in what they can agree are serious problems and then examine reality to agree what pragmatic steps might alleviate these problems, then we’d be able to advance liberalism far more effectively. Today, there is no effective, organised Liberal movement. Liberal values are scattered across the political landscape and, because they are scattered, they have few means of effective expression. Between the gaps, the illiberal, the corrupt and the self-serving can advance and profit.

We can argue about whether we should redistribute more; I think not because we’ve done lots of that I don’t think it has worked either domestically or internationally. We can argue about whether we should be striving for greater domestic and international economic freedom, free markets, free trade – which I do think have worked in practice. But wouldn’t it be better to be arguing about those thing having solved the problems, identified above, about which there can be widespread liberal consensus?

 In the now famous taped conversation between him and Darius Guppy, just months before the latter would be busted in a £1.8 million insurance scam, Boris conspired to have a News of the Worldjournalist, Stuart Collier, beaten up on behalf of his old School chum. In the tape Boris says he’ll obtain Collier’s phone number and then get an address. As the UK has never published reverse directories how would Boris achieve this?

Well blagging of course. It had to be via the police or a British Telecom staffer. Most likely would be a copper, as it was standard practice on Fleet Street back then to take advantage of the fact that the Police National Computer did not record such inquiries unless an individual was flagged as a person of interest. BT on the other hand much tighter internal controls. Boris displayed both the knowledge and intent to blag, though there is no evidence that he actually supplied the requested information, despite saying he would.

I was responsible for that tape recording: I hired an ex-BT employee to tap Guppy’s phone. Incidentally, while the conflict between myself and Guppy was a dirty fight, I’m sorry Johnson has got caught up in it. Anyway, Guido is wrong. Johnson had worked for News International and told Guppy he would approach an ex-colleague who had Collier’s address. Clive Goodman made enquiries, he told me, and discovered Johnson made no such approach despite assuring Guppy he would. I think Johnson was stiffing Guppy deliberately and had no intention of helping, but that’s just my opinion.

In any event, Guido’s wrong about this.

Via.

The News of the World yesterday became the subject of a second police inquiry after Scotland Yard announced that it was to investigate whether the newspaper made illegal payments to serving police officers.

[...]

None of the officers is said to be senior. All are below the rank of commander…

This sort of corruption wasn’t limited to the News of the World. I saw it at first hand in the early 1990s when I was a witness in the Darius Guppy case; for all Guppy’s whining and lying, he actually had cause for his complaints about police conduct. A private letter from the future Earl Spencer to him, which had been found during a search of his flat, was passed by the police to the press and it was subsequently printed.

Only a minority of police officers had relationships with journalists. This wasn’t for any noble reasons. Only detectives were likely to have access to enough newsworthy stories, so uniformed officers were rarely press sources. The various squads dedicated to serious crime were the most likely to be connected with journalists but it would have been a shambles if everyone on a squad had their own contacts, so someone around the rank of Inspector would have maintained the contact and shared out the proceeds with the rest of the squad.

I was introduced, as a prosecution witness, to the journalist contact of the police team who were investigating Guppy. This was before the trial. The introduction was made, in person, by one of the more senior team members. I have no doubt he was paid for making it.

The journalist did not work for News International, but one of the other tabloids. He now writes for that most worthy of newspapers, The Independent, and is a prominent anti-war voice there.

News International do need to be investigated for this. But so does every other newspaper publisher.

There are a fair number of pious broadsheet journalists who’ve done this sort of thing, routinely, in the past as they climbed up the ladder. Full disclosure would be interesting.

News International has maintained that royal reporter Clive Goodman, jailed for hacking phones belonging to members of the royal household, was the only journalist involved in the practice.

McMullan is one of six former News of the World journalists who have independently told the Guardian that Coulson, who was deputy editor from 2000 and editor from January 2003 to January 2007, knew that his reporters were engaging in unlawful acts.

Back around 1990, when I sold that tape of Darius Guppy and Boris Johnson to Clive Goodman, he told me that any such deal needed the express approval of the editor.

This might be a reasonable analogy, but is it a wise one for a leftist to make? People entering the military lose many of their civil rights, for the greater good. They have very limited freedom of expression. If they’re not exactly expendable they’re certainly liable to be placed in mortal danger, again for the greater good. Being so heavily institutionalised, the military has set new depths in corrupt crony procurement.

And, of course, everything is paid for by other people. This rings certain bells.

Norm commented:

No modern society could function if it weren’t in important ways a common undertaking, one in which everybody depended on the efforts of others. So maybe Kristof is on to something.

But in fact, no society could function without mutual dependency, not even pre-modern ones. From Adam Smith onwards, free-market advocates have stressed the interdependency of the world. That’s the whole point of Smith’s story of the pin factory. He was writing about the division of labour, but this division is largely a voluntary matter, not one imposed by an institution like the military, and it leads inevitably to mutual dependence.

The division between free-market liberals, who for some reason get called right wing nowadays, and socialists is that though both are from the radical tradition, the free-marketers want cooperation to be voluntary, not least because they think it’s more efficient when it is, but also because freedom is seen as a good in its own right.

To compare it with the military is something you’d expect of a critic of socialism, not an advocate.

Very many public figures and politicians are subjected to campaigns that step well beyond the realms of reasonable discourse but occasionally the campaigns are right. It would be dangerous to allow the powerful to silence this sort of criticism, so unfortunately the less powerful have to have the same lack of protection. After all, politicians should be subject to the same laws as the rest of us, and vice versa.

It’s easy to say this when you haven’t been the target of this sort of campaign. One of the good things about being the subject, myself, of an online campaign by Darius Guppy is that he gives me the opportunity to walk the walk when it comes to the subject of free expression.