FREE THOUGHTS JAMIE JAMIE WHYTE FREE THOUGHTS Leave your preconceptions at the door; Jamie Whyte's novel and compelling insights will change the way you see the world. His writing is fresh, witty and provocative, and every time I read him I'm convinced anew that he's the wisest man on earth. Settle in for a wild intellectual ride. Steven Landsburg, author of The Armchair Economist About the author Jamie Whyte is the Head of Research and Publishing at the management consultancy Oliver Wyman and a senior fellow of the Adam Smith Institute. He has FREE THOUGHTS previously worked as a management consultant, as a philosophy lecturer and as a foreign currency trader. He is the author of Bad Thoughts: A Guide to Clear Thinking (in the US: Crimes Against Logic) and A Load of Blair. In 2006 he won the Bastiat Prize for Collected columns Journalism and in 2010 he was runner-up. Jamie Whyte Originally from New Zealand, he now lives in London with his wife and two daughters. ADAM SMITH INSTITUTE Free Thoughts Free Thoughts Collected Columns Jamie Whyte © Jamie Whyte 2012 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Published in the UK by ASI Ltd. ISBN: 1–902737–86–5 Printed in England For Khadija Contents Preface ix 1 Welfare and Liberty Trading off 2 The Good Life with David Cameron 6 Spread the word about the benefits of advertising 10 Sympathy is a failure of imagination 13 Adults of the world, unite! 17 A nudge in the wrong direction 21 A perfect day to blow up the nanny state 24 2 Social Justice Fairness is child’s play in British campaign 28 Why human rights lead to human wrongs 32 The only poverty is in the head 36 There is too much social mobility in Britain 40 Cameron should follow Jesus on executive pay 43 Business is not responsible for social justice 45 Omniscient Ed Miliband 47 The price of fairness 50 When corporate theft is good 53 In defence of Jimmy Carr 56 A heretic’s view of the National Health Service 60 3 The Rule of Law Am I a criminal? I haven’t a clue 64 Crime and punishment 68 If judges were aliens 71 vi Why our leaders insist on breaking the rules 74 Despotic taxation 77 Prison rate reflects society 80 4 Incentives Precise policing for the people of Snodbury 86 Base bankers’ pay on the bump and grind of the open market 89 A banker’s solution to grade inflation 93 Fewer voters are better voters 97 Donating organs could prove a costly decision 101 Make them bet 103 5 Discrimination What would Harriet Harman do? 108 Some of my best friends are hopeless at sums 111 The real threat to marriage 114 Incredibly sexist appointments 118 How to make my child feel like a black sheep 120 Competing to be impartial 122 Ed Balls and education apartheid 126 6 Risk and Guarantees Only a reckless mind could believe in safety first 130 Who broke banking culture? 134 Genetics is a risky business 138 Automatic Eurozone fiscal penalties are a SAD policy 142 How safe Sam ends up subsidising risky Ron 144 Rules won’t help in money or love 148 vii 7 Economic Policy Weighty economic ideas 154 Osborne’s crony capitalism 157 Don’t reform labour laws – eliminate them 160 Spending your money like a sex-crazed ape 163 A free lunch for you is a painful cost for someone else 165 Why taxes should be slashed by half 168 The kindness of geniuses 172 Grossly meaningless domestic product 174 Rich? Grumpy? Come on, let’s play spend my money 176 Cameron’s comedy economics 180 Minimal principles about the minimum wage 183 8 Politics and Culture Sincerely, folks, an apology on demand is so phony 186 When in doubt, call for Reg 189 Ed Miliband’s tribalism 191 Hard-working families 194 Morality fever is catching 196 I don’t believe that believers really believe 198 Homeopathy: voodoo on the NHS 201 Today, children, I will teach you my prejudices 205 Dumbing down? No, we’re much too clever 207 No holidays for our saviours 209 Unhappy about your looks? You should be 211 viii Preface In May 2004 Daniel Finkelstein, then editor of the comment section of The Times, emailed me. He invited me to submit articles for publication on his pages. This might have set a religious man to thinking about providence. For I received his email not an hour after quitting my job as a management consultant, with nothing more reassuring for my soon-to-be destitute wife and child than the hope of making a living writing. Which goes to show how tolerant providence can be. What had stirred up this hope in me, and encouraged Daniel Finkelstein to make his invitation, was the unexpected modest success of my 2003 Bad Thoughts, a book devoted to debunking wonky logic and nonsensical notions, such as providence. This was the line of work I continued in the columns I wrote for Daniel up to 2006, some of which can be found in Part 8 of this collection. But correcting just any old logical error is no job for a grown man. The point of good reasoning is to arrive at true opinions. And the effort is worthwhile only when the opinions concern serious issues. Since 2006 my columns have increasingly concerned the relationship between the state and individuals: invariably arguing that politicians should back off and leave us to make decisions for ourselves. That will soon get boring, you might think. But there are so many ways in which politicians seek to restrict our liberty, and such a variety of wonky justifications they offer, that you can write hundreds of pages in response to them without covering the same ground twice. The columns included in this collection range over subjects as diverse as taxation, religion, advertising, prison sentences, sex education, bankers’ pay, marriage, insurance and beauty contests. ix Newspaper columns must be self-contained. Apart from the common knowledge of the paper’s readers, you cannot assume familiarity with anything your argument depends on. The columns collected here are no exception, I hope. But I also hope that, taken together, they form a coherent whole – that, bit by bit, they artic- ulate a political philosophy. The term now commonly used for what you will find in these pages is “libertarianism”. It is a dreadful word: ugly and obviously artificial. The views expressed in these pages are simply liberal. Alas, Americans’ perverse use of “liberal” to mean left-wing – now catching on in Britain – has stolen the word from us real liberals. Say you are a liberal and people will think you favour state-sup- plied healthcare and education, anti-discrimination laws, industrial policy and the other illiberal policies popular on the left. Say you are libertarian, however, and they may think you are a member of an ideological cult. With some justification. Too many libertarians appeal to strange metaphysical entities, such as natural rights, or revere reason in a way that appears religious. You will find nothing like that in these pages. Defending liberty requires no dodgy ideas. On the contrary, attacking it does. I hope the columns in this collection will help to convince you. x Part 1 Welfare and Liberty Trading off Wall Street Journal 28 June 2010 I used to defer gratification when I was a teenager. Now that I am middle-aged I take it when it presents itself. Not only have the opportunities become rarer and more precious, but the benefits of deferral are always in the future. And my future is getting shorter every day. “A moment on the lips is a lifetime on the hips.” This equation advises us to forgo the pleasure of tasty but fattening food. It may be good advice when you are 20. But as you age and your hips’ lifetime shortens, the scales begin to tip in the direction of instant labial gratification. No one counts the calories of his last supper. It is not only age that makes the best trade-off between health and other good things vary from person to person. Rugby players take bigger risks with their health than most of us, not because they would soon die or get injured even if they did not, but because they enjoy the game more than most. Believe it or not, some people like being tackled by enormous men in boots. We humans are a diverse bunch. I mention this obvious fact only because it seems to have evaded the authorities who devote themselves to our welfare. Instead of allowing us to make our own trade-offs between health and the other things we value, they go around imposing a single trade-off on everyone – usually one that would suit only a tiny, hysterically risk-averse minority. 2 Trading off The recent reaction to Iceland’s volcanic ash provides a typical example. The authorities did not tell us their best estimate of the chance an airliner would crash into the sea and then allow us to trade-off our desire to travel against the risk of dying. They made the choice for us. By banning all flights, the authorities forced us all to act as if the benefit of travelling were insufficient to warrant the increased risk of dying. They were sure to be wrong in many cases: the man dying of cancer who wants to visit his brother one last time; the entrepre- neur desperate to close a precarious deal; the romantic whose heart aches to be reunited with his lover.