There is such a thing as society -
it’s just not the same as the state.

Yesterday, I received a sneering email from an obviously partisan campaign group which implied that the Big Society is about nothing more than people giving their time. I beg to differ.

If society is “the sum of human conditions and activity regarded as a whole functioning interdependently” (Concise OED), then it comprises everything we do. Society includes family, friendship, volunteering, giving and exchanging.  It is a rich and comprehensive tapestry of human relationships which includes business.

Read the rest of my article: CentreRight: Surely the Big Society is about more than volunteering?.

I met Nassim Nicholas Taleb last year, briefly, at a lecture he gave on the impact of highly improbable events: Black Swans. I’m just reading his book now.

And then along came my own Black Swan.

Against all expectations, improbably yet explicably, but hopefully inconsequentially, I have been adopted as DK’s Blog Mascot.

As Taleb might point out, I shouldn’t be surprised. I didn’t expect to be in Parliament now either. Whatever next?

I just finished two other books which discuss the improbable in sociology and economics: Mandelbrot’s The (Mis)Behaviour of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin and Reward and Dowd and Hutchinson’s The Alchemists of Loss: How Modern Finance and Government Intervention Crashed the Financial System. Combined with Popper’s critique of historicism and Postrel’s The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict over Creativity, Enterprise and Progress, these ideas may make a potent mix.

I’ll mull them over and see what comes out.

I’m sure this will attract a mixed reaction:

The Coalition is planning to allow hundreds of secondary schools to control their own entry policies and Michael Gove warmly praised the system, which allocates places according to academic ability and reserves many places for children with the weakest performance.

“Fair-banding” admissions schemes are often seen as a way of breaking the middle-class dominance in the best-performing state secondaries since they prevent affluent parents from monopolising places by paying a premium to live in their catchment areas.

Banding generally means that 11 year-olds applying for school places sit an IQ-based “attainment test” and are then divided into seven or nine ability groups. The same number of children from each ability group are then given places at the school.

via Middle class to lose its grip on best state schools – Telegraph.

I see the government is “planning to allow” not proposing to compel, so I look forward to learning what choices schools make. Grammar schools have the freedom to continue their policies if they become academies.

As my predecessor, Paul Goodman, points out at ConservativeHome, the key problem is that there are too many applicants for each good school place. That is the problem we must solve and that is why I am a supporter of the Government’s education policies.

Beth and I are now home after a great week in Northumberland, which included our 14th wedding anniversary.

It seems to us a wonderful yet much-neglected county, though it is apparently not neglected by the RAF!

Over at CentreRight, I ask “Will the spending review be bold enough?“ This is a follow up to Professor Kevin Dowd’s article for The Cobden Centre: The UK is Broke.

Hazlitt’s remark in Economics in One Lesson seemed an appropriate introduction:

Today is already the tomorrow which the bad economist yesterday urged us to ignore.

I first mentioned Understanding the Law by Geoffrey Rivlin after observing the proceedings of Wycombe Magistrates’ Court. At last, I have finished it.

The book is a tour de force covering the law and its importance, the courts, the constitution, Parliament, the police, the judiciary, human rights, discrimination, the legal profession, the work of the courts and various historical, practical and ancillary subjects. At 370 pages, it is a considerable read but a triumph of brevity and wit in view of its scope. I enjoyed it.

However, I find myself for the first time, though inevitably not the last, in some disagreement with a judge. On page 334, by prefacing his remarks with “There seems to be no limit to man’s greed”, Rivlin appears to criticise the application of property rights to natural resources: he seems to separate property rights and responsible stewardship. I believe this is a mistake: sensible people take care of what they own, so property rights promote stewardship. Perhaps this is merely a weary aside but neither “property” nor “private property” appear in the index.

Happily, the fundamental importance of the right to own and enjoy property is explained in the first few pages of the book, but I lament the absence of either a chapter or an index entry on the subject. The essential weakness of property rights in contemporary society is set out in some detail by Shaffer in Boundaries of Order, so I was disappointed if not surprised to find this weakness present in Rivlin’s book by omission. As Mises explained, if classical liberalism were to be condensed to a single word, it would be “property”: we should not be astonished to find in these statist days a lack of emphasis on this fundamental concept.

Nevertheless, Understanding the Law is an excellent introduction to the English legal system and its practice today. I recommend it but perhaps consider reading Shaffer too.

Beth and I just spent a few days in Cumbria with old friends and their wonderful children. When he and I graduated together from the Royal Air Force College Cranwell, we never imagined that today I would be an MP and he would be managing a major manufacturing facility, but that is a story for another day. It was, of course, picturesque:

I am indebted to my old mate for the notion that what he wants is an organisation of heroes, not victims: people who boldly do the right thing, picking themselves up from setbacks on their own initiative and striving to take others along with them. I’m struck that one of the things heroes do is rescue others, not leave them behind.

It reminds me of Reagan:

It is time for us to realise that we are too great a nation to limit ourselves to small dreams. Those who say that we are in a time when there are no heroes… they just don’t know where to look.

It’s a theme I shall mull over.

Brought forward – I’m on holiday.

Thinking about the pressures on capitalism — or rather, on the interventionism that passes for capitalism today — and on the alternative which was most comprehensively implemented, I discovered this recipe for chaos and failure from Bukharin:

Under communism people receive a many-sided culture, and find themselves at home in various branches of production: today I work in an administrative capacity, I reckon up how many felt boots or how many French rolls must be produced in the following month; tomorrow I shall be working in a soap factory, next month perhaps in a steam-laundry, and the month after in an electric power station. This will be possible when all the members of society have been suitably educated.

via Nikolai Bukharin and Evgenii Preobrazhensky: The ABC of Communism – Chapter III : Communism and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

As one who has not long studied Marxism, it is frankly amazing that Bukharin was hailed by Lenin as “a most valuable and major theorist of the Party” when he wrote such impractical nonsense. Here’s another taste of his particular madness, expounding on what we know as “from each according to his ability to each according to his work” and “from each according to his ability to each according to his needs”:

The communist method of production presupposes in addition that production is not for the market, but for use. Under communism, it is no longer the individual manufacturer or the individual peasant who produces; the work of production is effected by the gigantic cooperative as a whole. In consequence of this change, we no longer have commodities, but only products. These products are not exchanged one for another; they are neither bought nor sold. They are simply stored in the communal warehouses, and are subsequently delivered to those who need them. In such conditions, money will no longer be required. ‘How can that be?’ some of you will ask. ‘In that case one person will get too much and another too little. What sense is there in such a method of distribution?’ The answer is as follows. At first, doubtless, and perhaps for twenty or thirty years, it will be necessary to have various regulations. Maybe certain products will only be supplied to those persons who have a special entry in their work-book or on their work-card. Subsequently, when communist society has been consolidated and fully developed, no such regulations will be needed. There will be an ample quantity of all products, our present wounds will long since have been healed, and everyone will be able to get just as much as he needs. ‘But will not people find it to their interest to take more than they need?’ Certainly not. Today, for example, no one thinks it worth while when he wants one seat in a tram, to take three tickets and keep two places empty. It will be just the same in the case of all products. A person will take from the communal storehouse precisely as much as he needs, no more. No one will have any interest in taking more than he wants in order to sell the surplus to others, since all these others can satisfy their needs whenever they please. Money will then have no value. Our meaning is that at the outset, in the first days of communist society, products will probably be distributed in accordance with the amount of work done by the applicant; at a later stage, however, they will simply be supplied according to the needs of the comrades.

Where to begin a critique? “The applicant” for products? I think perhaps we should bear in mind the madness of this system when we lament our present circumstances.  We should remember that even in Bukharin’s peculiar dreams, repression was essential:

For a long time yet, the working class will have to fight against, all its enemies, and in especial against the relics of the past, such as sloth, slackness, criminality, pride. All these will have to be stamped out. Two or three generations of persons will have to grow up under the new conditions before the need will pass for laws and punishments and for the use of repressive measures by the workers’ State.

From Bastiat’s dialogue What is Money?

B. I have not yet made up my mind that your views upon money and political economy in general are correct. But, from your conversation, this is what I have gathered: — That these questions are of the highest importance; for peace or war, order or anarchy, the union or the antagonism of citizens, are at the root of the answer to them. How is it that in France and most other countries which regard themselves as highly civilized, a science which concerns us all so nearly, and the diffusion of which would have so decisive an influence upon the fate of mankind, is so little known? Is it that the State does not teach it sufficiently?

F. Not exactly. For, without knowing it, the State applies itself to loading everybody’s brain with prejudices, and everybody’s heart with sentiments favorable to the spirit of anarchy, war, and hatred; so that, when a doctrine of order, peace, and union presents itself, it is in vain that it has clearness and truth on its side, — it cannot gain admittance.

A new video from the Party:

Sayeeda Warsi, Co-Chairman of Conservative Party, has written:

Labour’s incompetent handling of our economy will hit all of our pockets. The cuts to come are Labour’s cuts. So, it’s only fair that the people responsible should share some of the pain. That’s why today I have written to each of Labour’s leadership candidates asking them to voluntarily give up their severance pay, worth £20,000 each. Forfeiting this pay would be the first step towards rehabilitation, and the first time they had come to terms with the mistakes of the past.