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Flood defence and the market

· North American affairs

Tyler Cowen over at his Marginal Revolution blog lists out a load of articles about the case for privatising stuff like flood defence, and critiques of U.S. Federal efforts in that direction. He personally believes that flood defence, spectacularly breached in New Orleans, is a proper function of the state. But being the fine scholar and liberal writer he is, gives a comprehensive roll of reasons for thinking these things could be done better out of the State’s hands.

Flood defence can be presented as one of those classic “public goods” that cannot arise via the Invisible Hand of the market. Is that really the case, though? It seems to me that if the full, insurance-related costs of living in a flood zone were presented to the people either living or looking to live there, it might either encourage a lot of flood-related civil engineering defence, or for that matter discourage locating in such areas in the first place.

Anyway, hindsight is very easy, especially if you are thousands of miles away. In the meantime, I urge folk to look at the many examples of voluntary compassion flagged up by Glenn Reynolds.

September 2nd, 2005 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)

Samizdata quote of the day

· Slogans & Quotations

What an exciting time it is to be alive: ours still is the golden age of scientific discovery, creationists and other ignoramuses notwithstanding.

–Abiola Lapite, commenting on yet more advances in genetics.

September 2nd, 2005 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)

The marvels of the internet – following Katrina

· North American affairs

Thanks to Sean Sirrine of Objective Justice for pointing out the live audio feed from police radio in Hurricane blasted Baton Rouge.

Astonishing.

Want to see some robust news blogged from the front lines of the crisis in New Orleans? Try here.

Perhaps someone has some ideas on links to reputable sites where people can help with donations? Here is one place to start if you want to lend a hand.

September 2nd, 2005 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)

Double taxation

· UK affairs

This fascinating factoid courtesy of The Times’s Gabriel Rozenberg:

Tolley’s Yellow Tax Handbook is the standard professional reference on UK direct taxation. Its format has changed little for many years.

1996-1997 edition: 4,555 pages.

2005-2006 edition: 9,050 pages.

As Rozenberg points out, for income tax law to get to the size that a summary filled 4,555 pages took nearly 200 years. Boy, has the present government been busy.

Close observers of the Treasury will know that this has happened at the same time as the Inland Revenue has been piloting a glorious project that could only happen in Whitehall, the Comprehensive Tax Law rewrite. This, the first part of which is about to be enacted, is allegedly designed–this is not a joke–to simplify UK tax law without changing it.

It does serve to emphasise something that is often neglected, even by our friends at the ASI, who calculate Tax Freedom Day on the basis of the tax take. Tax burden, the cost of tax to the payer, is always greater than the actual tax he has to pay. The difference, the compliance cost, is hard to measure. But it is utterly invisible to the Civil Service, to most politicians, and most employees. To them it is someone else’s problem, if they notice at all.

But when bureaucratic treacle is poured into society’s gearboxes, everyone suffers indirectly. Compliance costs are still costs. Leaving aside the moral case against tax, they produce all the baneful economic effects of higher taxation (a split economy, advantages for tax-planners and those who can afford them, disincentive to work or invest, regulatory distortions), without putting more money into the public purse.

It is not just complication. Many of the more recent reforms (and this started under the Tories) move administrative and collection responsibilities from the government to the taxpayer or his employer, so Tolley’s doubling may well be an underestimate of the increase in compliance costs. Taxation has risen fast in Britain. But tax burden has risen, and continues to rise much faster.

September 2nd, 2005 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)

Missing it

· Arts & Entertainment · Media & Journalism

David Herman, writing in Prospect, does not think the Old Media are giving way to the New Media. He just reckons that some of the Old Media are crap:

The reason the Guardian’s circulation is falling is not because of the internet or because young people have gone blog-crazy but because G2 is full of uninteresting new columnists and the op-ed page has a kind of infantile ultra-leftism that no sane person would go near. Similarly, ITV is haemorrhaging viewers not because of the challenging new multi-channel environment but because it keeps making programmes like Celebrity Wrestling and Celebrity Love Island. After all, the Daily Mail and the Sunday Times do not seem to be losing too many readers and the viewing figures for BBC2, Channel Four and Channel Five are remarkably stable. Interestingly, it is the losers in the ratings wars who tend to be the hardcore technological determinists.

But hang on. If the numbers for some of the Old Media are “remarkably stable”, while other bits of the Old Media are “haemorrhaging” viewers and readers, does that not mean that the total amount of attention being paid to the Old Media is in decline?

It makes sense to me that the New Media should be better at supplying infantile ultra-leftism and uninteresting new columnists for free, than they are at replacing the Sunday Times and the Daily Mail. So, if infantile ultra-leftism is what you want, you no longer have to pay for it. However, free substitutes for the Sunday Times and the Daily Mail will be a bit longer in catching on, not least, I should guess, because their readers are more conservative in their reading habits as well as more Conservative in their opinions. The picture that Herman sketches is entirely consistent with the notion that the New Media are losing out, starting with their youngest readers and viewers.

And when the brains of all the not-so-infantile not-so-ultra-leftists cut in, as Blue Peter loses its influence over them and as Real Life impinges, will they suddenly switch back to reading newspapers, in the form of a smartened up Guardian, or the Sunday Times, or the Daily Mail? It seems improbable. They will surely carry right on with their New Media, and the New Media will expand to accommodate them, as viewers, as readers, as writers, and in whatever other ways develop.

David Herman sounds to me like he is saying that sailing ships will sail on unscathed, and that this steam stuff will never catch on. His title is: “Am I missing something?” Yes he is.

September 1st, 2005 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)

Boris on Sinophobia

· Asian affairs

Boris Johnson, the Tory MP and magazine editor, occasionally bugs me with his latter-day Bertie Wooster routine, which has become a bit of a self-parody, but it is hard not to like a man who writes a wonderfully clear-headed, cant-free article on China like this.

The Member for Henley-on-Thames is unimpressed by the current vogue for getting all upset about matters Chinese, whether it be terrors about Avian flu, dread of ultra-cheap clothes (low-price bras, oh the horrors!) and so forth. Boris is particularly harsh on the European Union’s bout of protectionist folly against cheap Chinese textile exports and the role of that lowlife, EU Commissioner Peter Mandelson:

It is all stark staring nonsense, and founded on the same misapprehension as Peter Mandelson’s demented decision to slap quotas on Chinese textiles, so that the mouths of the Scheldt and the Rhine are apparently silting up with 50 million pairs of cut-price Chinese trousers. It is idiocy, and not just because it is unlike Mandy to come between a British woman and her knickers.

And again:

The emergence of China and its integration into the world economy has been a major spur to growth and a deterrent to inflation. It is an unalloyed good, and it is sad to see our politicians responding with such chicken-hearted paranoia.

UPDATE: I put the wrong article in the link and have changed it. Mea culpa.

September 1st, 2005 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
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