The free market is a system of cooperation
for mutual benefit.

I spoke yesterday on clause 3 of the Protection of Freedoms Bill in committee. It relates to the retention of DNA from those arrested but not convicted. Via Hansard:

Steve Baker: I support the clause. We have heard a great deal this afternoon about balance; in particular, the balance between evidence and principle has come out in hon. Members’ remarks. Consideration of that balance speaks very much to the nature of the clause. A lot of the talk has been about evidence, but it struck me that it has also been a conversation about counterfactuals. How many crimes will we not detect if we adopt the measure? I am not sure how one proves how many crimes have not been detected.

The hon. Member for Darlington complained that the measure might be political and not evidential, and she said it with considerable passion. For me, the hon. Lady ably demonstrated that we have adopted a kind of managerialism on the subject that is not driven by principle. It is a fear of consequences, perhaps, rather than what we stand for fundamentally.

If I remember correctly, the hon. Member for Glasgow North West mentioned the Scottish principle of “not proven”, which I would like to pick up. When the Minister talked about our commitment to innocent until proven guilty, which I welcome and fully support, I was reminded of the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. Pressure groups such as the Adam Smith Institute have written to us on this, and if we adopt the measure, in doing so we somehow pick up the Scottish idea of not proven. We charge someone, they are not convicted and yet we put them under the taint of suspicion by retaining their DNA. The hon. Lady mentioned criminologists and their notion that—forgive me if I misphrase this, I am only an engineer—the fundamental pointer to criminality is having been arrested.

Mrs Chapman: I am not a criminologist either, or a lawyer or an engineer; in fact, I was a housewife before I came here.

Michael Ellis: Nothing wrong with that.

Mrs Chapman: Thank you. The point I made was that arrests were an indicator. There are many indicators, but that is the most reliable one we have.

Steve Baker: I am most grateful to the hon. Lady for that clarification; nevertheless, I say that that principle stands in stark contrast to the notion of innocent until proven guilty.

The clause is a balance. It is already a balance between the principle of innocent until proven guilty and, knowing what the hon. Lady has told us, concern that we might not detect certain crimes. It is by no means a dogmatic application of principle, and I know that many will criticise it, but it heads in the right direction in what I could describe—without wishing to be overly pejorative—as a slightly neurotic atmosphere of concern. I believe that we should go further and be more principled. We should assert innocent until proven guilty. If we were to adopt the Scottish notion of not proven and have people living under the taint of suspicion simply because they had been arrested, I would like us to make that decision plainly and clearly, so that we know what we have adopted. Nevertheless, I shall support the Government.

Via Private versus Public Nudging « Mark Pennington on Pileus:

Listening to Professor Thaler I was reminded of the claim made by many socialists in the past – Lenin being perhaps the most prominent – that since private firms routinely engage in ‘planning’ there should not be any concern about the state ‘planning’ on  a society wide scale. Yet, as Hayek noted on numerous occasions, to recognise that ‘planning ‘ is an essential element of a progressive society tells us nothing about ‘who should plan’  and ‘for whom’. Likewise, to acknowledge that ‘nudging’ strategies may be an aid  to effective decision-making in the context of limited rationality, tells us nothing about ‘who should nudge’ and ‘for whom’.  It does not follow that since some nudging may be desirable that we should automatically favour governmental nudging. On the contrary, there are several reasons to suggest that ‘private’ nudging should in fact be preferred to the statist variety.

First, in a context of limited knowledge and limited rationality, we do not know which nudges are most appropriate and for which particular types of behaviour. It makes sense, therefore, to rely on a decentralised process which reduces the possibility of erroneous nudges being imposed on a society wide basis – and this requires that no particular nudge is imposed by law. In the same way that planning by private firms is preferable to planning by government’s precisely because it is competitive, decentralised and voluntary planning, so competitive nudging in markets and civil society is to be preferred to ‘central nudging’ by the state.   That the consequences of misplaced nudging by government agencies tend to be far more pronounced than equivalent failures in the private sphere is all too evident in what has happened to savings ratios across much of the developed world. It is odd, to put it mildly, that governments which have ‘nudged’ people towards immediate consumption through a combination of inflationary monetary policies and taxes on capital should now be trusted to encourage more frugal habits.

I recommend the entire article.

Something posted by Big Brother Watch on DNA prompted me to glance back at Albert Speer’s Inside The Third Reich. In the conclusions to this book, the war criminal wrote, referring to his final remarks at Nuremburg:

The criminal events of those years were not only an outgrowth of Hitler’s personality. The extent of the crimes was also due to the fact that Hitler was the first to be able to employ the implements of technology to multiply crime.

I thought of the consequences that unrestricted rule together with the power of technology–making use of it but also driven by it–might have in the future. [...]

“The nightmare shared by many people,” I said, “that some day the nations of the world may be dominated by technology-that nightmare was very nearly made a reality under Hitler’s authoritarian system. Every country in the world today faces the danger of being terrorized by technology; but in a modern dictatorship this seems to me to be unavoidable. Therefore, the more technological the world becomes, the more essential will be the demand for individual freedom and the self-awareness of the individual human being as the counterpoise to technology… [...]”

“The catastrophe of this war,” I wrote in my cell in 1947, “has proved the sensitivity of the system of modern civilisation evolved in the course of centuries. Now we know that we do not live in a earthquake-proof structure. The build-up of negative impulses, each reinforcing the other, can inexorably shake to pieces the complicated apparatus of the modern world. There is no halting of this process by will alone. The danger is that the automatism of progress will depersonalize man further and withdraw more and more of his self-responsibility.”

Dazzled by the possibilities of technology, I devoted crucial years of my life to serving it. But in the end my feelings about it are highly skeptical.

In the book’s afterword, Speer explains that he wrote the book not only to describe the past, but to issue warnings for the future. Though from time to time Big Brother Watch gets on my nerves through its tone, I feel it fills an essential niche: we shall always need someone to remind us how dangerous technology can be.

The Economist described Speer’s book as “A classic”. I recommend it for a perspective on why we shall always need Big Brother Watch.

Via The view from Wycombe: Big Brother or the Big Society? – Big Brother Watch, I respond to the recent Guerilla stickering in the town:

In the last few days, we have had a round of guerrilla stickering in Wycombe. There was the sticker of the week. Then there was talk of prosecution at the Bucks Free Press. Finally, the sticker returned.

Now, it is a good photograph. As a totem for the surveillance society, it is superb. Perhaps some even find it superficially funny to see all-round “CCTV in operation” signs, a draconian alcohol prohibition, an exhortation not to urinate or defecate in the street and, as if in some final act of absurdity, a restriction on feeding the birds.

But why? Why was it thought necessary to watch, to prohibit and to spell out a requirement of common decency?

Read more.

A serious breach of etiquette from The Prisoner:

In your heads must still be the remnant of a brain! In your hearts must still be the desire to be a human being again!

Shocking. I think I will just go and watch it to make sure.

Further reading

• The Abolition of Man
• David Cameron, The Big Society