One life. Live it.

The Times is running two letters under the heading, Should the Upper House be a Senate? (£). The first letter calls for a federal senate with equal representation for each nation of the UK. (Quite why the smaller nations should be disproportionately powerful, I do not know.)  The second calls for a chamber of representatives from “leading professional and other expert bodies such as the Law Society, the British Medical Association, the Institute of Chartered Accountants, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, and so on.”

In either case, the call is for representatives with special interests, whether regional or professional. This is an old and wrong-headed idea.

Mises’ 1927 book Liberalism: The Classical Tradition deals with this in chapter 4, section 3.  (Ah – recess reading!)  Amongst other things, he writes:

A parliament composed of the supporters of the antiliberal parties of special interests is not capable of carrying on its business and must, in the long run, disappoint everyone. This is what people mean today and have meant for many years now when they speak of the crisis of parliamentarism.

As the solution for this crisis, some demand the abolition of democracy and the parliamentary system and the institution of a dictatorship. We do not propose to discuss once again the objections to dictatorship. This we have already done in sufficient detail.

A second suggestion is directed toward remedying the alleged deficiencies of a general assembly composed of members elected directly by all the citizens, by either supplementing or replacing it altogether with a diet composed of delegates chosen by autonomous corporative bodies or guilds formed by the different branches of trade, industry, and the professions. The members of a general popular assembly, it is said, lack the requisite objectivity and the knowledge of economic affairs. What is needed is not so much a general policy as an economic policy. The representatives of industrial and professional guilds would be able to come to an agreement on questions whose solution either eludes entirely the delegates of constituencies formed on a merely geographical basis or becomes apparent to them only after long delay.

In regard to an assembly composed of delegates representing different occupational associations, the crucial question about which one must be clear is how a vote is to be taken, or, if each member is to have one vote, how many representatives are to be granted to each guild. This is a problem that must be resolved before the diet convenes; but once this question is settled, one can spare oneself the trouble of calling the assembly into session, for the outcome of the voting is thereby already determined. To be sure, it is quite another question whether the distribution of power among the guilds, once established, can be maintained. It will always be–let us not cherish any delusions on this score–unacceptable to the majority of the people. In order to create a parliament acceptable to the majority, there is no need of an assembly divided along occupational lines. Everything will depend on whether the discontent aroused by the policies adopted by the deputies of the guilds is great enough to lead to the violent overthrow of the whole system. In contrast to the democratic system, this one offers no guarantee that a change in policy desired by the overwhelming majority of the population will take place. In saying this, we have said everything that needs to be said against the idea of an assembly constituted on the basis of occupational divisions. For the liberal, any system which does not exclude every violent interruption of peaceful development is, from the very outset, out of the question.

If there was a “crisis of parliamentarism” in 1927, how much more so today.  Our slow abandonment of the classical British doctrine of liberty has indeed created a Parliament which disappoints everyone.  Moreover, we have mostly abandoned policy making by elected representatives in favour of rubber-stamping the work of officials, whether national or international.

What is required is a Parliament which works in the general interest, not one through which particular groups try to advantage themselves by force of law. That means a Parliament committed to the ideals of liberty under the law, which in turn implies a public persuaded that we cannot all live at everyone else’s expense.

However we proceed, special interests will continue to have their opportunities to lobby: they do not need to be elected. It would be crass to make this old error.

Via Robust Political Economy and Realistic Idealism « Pileus:

What criterion should we use to evaluate political theories and the institutions they advocate? In my book Robust Political Economy, I argue that it is the criterion of ‘robustness’. Institutions that meet this criterion are those best placed to cope with fundamental constraints that arise from the human condition. The most important constraints are those of limited rationality (the Hayekian ‘knowledge problem’) and the recognition that human beings respond, at least to a limited degree, to incentives. Judged against these constraints all human institutions are likely to ‘fail’, but some institutions may be better placed than others to withstand the stresses and strains wrought by the human condition.

I’m enjoying Mark Pennington’s superb book at the moment and I’ll blog about it more fully shortly.

Via Business Minister Mark Prisk wants to strip away the red tape – Telegraph:

Friedrich von Hayek is a controversial choice as a pin-up. But a signed pamphlet that the Austrian-born economist wrote in 1980 entitled “Full employment at any price” is proudly framed on Business Minister Mark Prisk’s wall. In placing it there, the Conservative MP for Hertford and Stortford is following in a line of leading Tories to place their faith in one of the 20th century’s most prominent economic theorists.

Great news, but let’s hope my colleagues are reading Hayek’s much-neglected Prices and Production, which explains the structure of capital and which allows a better grasp of real patterns of economic activity.

Hayek is useful, but I find his work takes for granted Mises, who wrote “Society is cooperation; it is community in action.” Consequently, Hayek can be misunderstood. Mises’ work has as a primary theme “social cooperation”: his theories explain the realities of acting individuals working together to improve their condition, that is, the cooperative relationships which constitute civilized society.

Meanwhile, I am beginning Mises’ Omnipotent Government – The Rise of the Total State and Total War (1944), which can be read online here. Read more

On a grey and showery day, skydivers at Weston on the Green commemorated D-day, not by skydiving, but by jumping static line at what for us is a low level: 3500ft. It makes you think.

D-day Commemoration – Dornier G92, originally uploaded by stevenjbaker.

Sport parachuting is relatively low risk, believe it or not. We go high with modern equipment: it works reliably and there is time to take the reserve if the main fails. No one is, or will be, shooting at you. But to be on a static line, lower, is a little unnerving.
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Every four years, as the November presidential election draws near, I have the same daydream: that I don’t know or care who the president of the United States is. More importantly, I don’t need to know or care. I don’t have to vote or even pay attention to debates. I can ignore all campaign commercials. There are no high stakes for my family or my country. My liberty and property are so secure that, frankly, it doesn’t matter who wins. I don’t even need to know his name.

In my daydream, the president is mostly a figurehead and a symbol, almost invisible to myself and my community. He has no public wealth at his disposal. He administers no regulatory departments. He cannot tax us, send our children into foreign wars, pass out welfare to the rich or the poor, appoint judges to take away our rights of self government, control a central bank that inflates the money supply and brings on the business cycle, or change the laws willy-nilly according to the special interests he likes or seeks to punish.

The article is here.