Duck Duck Go

Why not use DuckDuckGo for search?



The Alphabet group’s products (slogan: “do the right thing”) are admirable in many ways.
However, I suspect Google Search may be ideologically biased.

The Pinch: house prices and student debt

David Willetts’ The Pinch (2010) made what amounted to a single point, fluffed up into over 200 pages of discursive ramble. The single point: capital and income differentials between older and younger Brits appear to have increased over recent decades. The resulting book was a readable but somewhat vacuous moan about the alleged deterioration of the “intergenerational contract”.

The book caused a stir at the time because hand-wringing about inequality had previously focused on class, rather than age, differences.

There is no a priori reason why there should be financial equality between any two social groups, or why a given level of financial inequality should be bad, or wrong. Similarly, there is no a priori reason why an increase in such inequality should be bad, or wrong. (Perhaps the previous level of inequality was too low.) This is more obviously relevant when looking at young versus old, since there are statistical differences in financial requirements for different age groups.

Such observations don’t deter writers like Lord Willetts from trying to score emotional points. As education spokesman, Willetts opposed grammar schools, which gives some indication of the type of equality espoused by him.

In The Pinch – as in most writing about inequality – the supposed unfairness aspect is mostly presumed or insinuated. The reader is simply expected to be shocked that one group is better off than another, or more so than at some earlier time. It is taken as axiomatic that any trend in inequality should be in the direction of less rather than more.

Because Willetts is a Conservative, his suggested solution to the supposed problem (to the extent one can be inferred from the book) seems to involve calls for more cooperation and less selfishness, rather than for direct intervention.

The Pinch received a re-mention recently because it superficially links to the ongoing issue of Britain’s runaway property market, which has meant that young people face difficulty making their first house purchase.

As is usual, the possibility that distortions caused by leftist tinkering might be the main culprit is not considered. Could the massive rise in the welfare state have changed things for the worse for those who come after it? Could inflation of university degrees have led to the appalling student loan scheme, crippling the young with debt? Could an over-enthusiastic immigration policy, leading to a shortage of housing, have generated a bubble? Commentators like Willetts tend to ignore such questions, preferring to blame popular bogeymen such as individualism.

The above is a brief commentary on a complex issue.
Additional funding would facilitate a more detailed analysis.

spellcheck #3

Conservatives’ leaflet for the 4 May Oxfordshire County Council elections, my emphasis.

Support for [proposed infrastructure projects] will be forthcoming only if the benefits outweight the disadvantages for Oxfordshire residents.

And here’s a case of eats shoots and leaves:

[Oxfordshire is] a fantastic location to live, learn work and play.

“Learn work”? As in, “it’s time for you to learn work, my boy”?

spellcheck #2

Like the last one, it’s wrong apostrophes.
This time we are looking at a web article and its typographical flaws.
It’s only the web, but it’s the NME.
Essential reading, when I was a teenager.
And weren’t its hallowed halls where Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill started their careers?
If the web is to become Newspapers 2.0, its attention to detail needs to improve.

[Bob Dylan’s] fifth album caused shockwaves that were to be felt long after it’s 1965 release ...

[re Neil Young’s Harvest:] it’s huge sales gave him the freedom to do what he wanted ...

(Emphasis mine.)
Incidentally, re the NME: its list of the top 500 albums seems a good deal sounder than Rolling Stone’s. But The Smiths at number one?
The group’s sound was peerless at the time, but I fear its brand of melancholia has not aged well.
It’s just my opinion against the NME’s, but its top spot seems more suited to the late Mr Jones.

Morally inferior minorities

Further to the previous post, I was struck by this sentence in the article by Labour’s education spokesperson.

Only 7 per cent of children in England attend private school.

Given that morality seems to be invoked (according to the headline, taxing private school fees is “fair”), the use of “only” suggests some interesting possible implications. Presumably, if the figure were 30 per cent, the proposal would be deemed to be significantly less acceptable, morally speaking.

One might infer a new principle of democracy from this, according to which there is some threshold level (perhaps 10 per cent?) which helps to determine the moral score assigned to a possible action of government. If fewer than this threshold percentage of voters are expected to suffer from the action – and this minority can be considered as ‘better off’ in some sense – then the action will be regarded as morally acceptable.

Presumably, if the percentage is well below the threshold level – say 1 per cent, or 0.1 per cent – we need not worry much at all. And if the proportion is really small, say 1 in 10,000 – well, why aren’t we doing it already?

Socialist education

Socialists claim to believe that parents giving their children a better-than-average education is unfair. But do any of them consider that state schools might be a bad solution, damaging lives and (if anything) entrenching existing advantages?

Is it possible there is something flawed in the assumptions that:
(a) the motivation of teachers is not a revelant variable, or
(b) motivation is not affected by whether it is individual parents, or the state, paying the salaries (“he who pays the piper calls the tune”)?
Or is there perhaps a misplaced belief that the collective wants every one of its educational charges to do well, with the same fervour as that of a parent towards their own child, and that this will somehow be transmitted to state school staff?

Judging by the remarks of Labour education spokesperson Angela Rayner, proposing a 20% tax on private school fees (allegedly to finance school meals), none of these thoughts have crossed the minds of any of the key people in her department. But that is hardly surprising, since the same could be said about most of the academics operating in the area of “education” – even if none of their research identifies itself as being socialist in spirit.

The likely result of the proposed policy? A few thousand of the least well-off middle-class parents – already straining under the burden of also having to finance the state system, whether they use it or not – will find it impossible to spare their children from the horrors of that system. Will state education improve as a result of the tax revenue gained? Unlikely, judging by past experience.

A possible interpretation. Socialism does not like people being able to avoid indoctrination by the collective, e.g. by having their children taught things of which the collective does not approve, or by avoiding schools and other collectivised institutions altogether.

However, banning private schools, home education and so on, and simply forcing all children, without exception, to attend the same grim places (for as many years of their lives as possible) might arouse opposition. Instead, the plan may be to strangle the alternatives gradually – by abolishing charitable status, increasing child removal powers, taxing private schools more heavily, etc.

Independence

Gate of Dawn, Vilnius

In 1991, there were celebrations in Vilnius when Lithuania declared independence from what President Reagan had called the “evil empire”.

Former Soviet states had to confront many problems in achieving the transition to a market economy. Nevertheless, the transition was successful, and few of their citizens would nowadays countenance a return to communism.

When long fought-for independence finally becomes a reality, it is right to celebrate, even if the event itself is only the start of a long process.

Nietzsche and tattoos

Apparently, young people (also known as “youth”) often amuse themselves these days by drinking vodka and getting tattooed.

These both seem like forms of self-mutilation, and remind me of descriptions of the former Soviet Union. There, life was mostly grim, and if you were young you sometimes reacted to it not by avoidance but by embracing, as a kind of rebellious gesture — both acknowledging the pain and defying it.

I wonder what Nietzsche would have made of it. Nietzsche believed in the virtue of exposing yourself deliberately to pain and hardship, as a way of advancing psychologically.
Perhaps he would have applauded vodka and tattoos as expressions of yea-saying to bleakness. On the other hand, he might have condemned them as symptoms of slave morality.

Reality: ‘made by society’

Celia Green:

We live in an age when humanity believes in itself. It believes in itself very thoroughly indeed. It is the beginning and the end to itself, its own solution to every problem.

Humanity knows that philosophy was made by it, and religion was made by it, and society was made by it. In fact, reality was made by it.

For (thus runs the reasoning) the agreement of a multiplicity of persons is the criterion we adopt for reality. There is no other criterion for determining reality. There is no other sense in which the word ‘reality’ can be used. Therefore reality is what a collection of people agree to call by this name.

from The Decline and Fall of Science

Trained experts, stockmarkets and voters

“Terrible things are certain to happen to Britain, if it leaves the EU!”
“Terrible things are certain to happen to the US, if Donald Trump wins the election!”
That is what all the trained experts have been proclaiming.

At least, so it seems. If there were any trained experts saying something significantly different, they presumably weren’t given much of a platform in the mainstream media.

The stockmarket indices, which tend to anticipate the economy by about a year, are telling a different story.
Stockmarkets don’t always get it right, but in my experience they do so more often than trained experts.

If the markets are right on this occasion, then for those who care about things like growth and unemployment it is perhaps fortunate that the majority of voters chose to ignore the warnings of the experts.

FTSE 100

S&P 500

spellcheck

Label, bottle of toilet cleaner made by S C Johnson, incorrect apostrophe:

With it’s uniquely shaped neck, Duck 5in1 Liquid Marine provides complete cleaning for your toilet, leaving it fresh, even under the rim.

Protecting or endangering?

The Financial Conduct Authority is proposing to restrict betting on financials for private investors. ETX Capital comments: “if the proposal to reduce leverage is approved you would need to deposit more money in your account to trade.”

Any investor who is not a complete novice knows the risks attached to owning shares; knows that they can go down as well as up. The same is true of those who invest with leverage and on a short timescale: they are aware that losses are at least as likely as profits.

A risk which investors are perhaps less in focus on is that their broker will go belly‑up, potentially leading to the complete loss of funds held with that broker.

In 2011 MF Global, which had taken over futures/CFD broker GNI, went bust due to a variety of problems e.g. unauthorised trading by employees. Assets, including funds belonging to clients of former GNI, were frozen until the firm had been wound up, which took more than a year.

In 2015, spread-betting and CFD broker Alpari UK went bust as a result of losses arising from an extreme move in the Swiss Franc.

When an investment firm folds, client funds are typically lost, unless reimbursed by a government bailout fund such as the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. The more client funds are held by the firm, the bigger the losses (or reimbursements) involved.

I wonder whether the FCA has considered that requiring spread-betting and CFD clients to hold more funds with their broker, for a given size of position, increases risk — both for clients, and for taxpayers who may have to make good the losses in cases of insolvency.

Staatssicherheit

Among a long list of problem areas identified by David Anderson QC in relation to proposed counter-extremism legislation, he mentions

the extent to which police, public authorities, informers and other members of the public will be encouraged to scrutinise the political and religious views expressed by other adults and children ...

[and] whether surveillance and investigatory powers (tailing, bugging, undercover police operations, CHIS, interception warrants, searches of communications data) may be used for the purposes of determining whether a person has engaged in, or been exposed to, extremist activity, in person or over the internet ...

Which raises the following question with regard to those who, while having nothing to do with promoting violence, disseminate views which the government dislikes:
— how much tailing, bugging, covert ops, hacking of emails and web activity, etc is already taking place?

* For those unfamiliar with the concept of CHIS (covert human intelligence sources), see this Home Office document. Page 11 gives a couple of examples.

‘Exchanging ideas’

Celia Green:

I think people talk so much about the importance of ‘exchanging ideas’ because it is actually impossible in their world.

Everyone has so dense a layer of reactive personality that to talk objectively about anything is out of the question.

Aphorism, from Advice to Clever Children.