A Sutton Trust report suggests that university tuition fees, currently capped by law at £3,255 per year, would have to rise to £7,000 per year before the cost deterred a significant number of would-be students. The report is being spun as meaning that government plans to raise or scrap the fee cap would cause a fall in student numbers. Which of course is probably not a bad thing given the prevalence in recent years of students with poor school results going to bad universities, degrees from which are worthless, doing 'joke' degrees like Travel and Tourism, or doing a degree purely for the student lifestyle rather than the education. This would be no problem except that they're sending the bill to the taxpayer. But ignoring that for a moment, isn't it worrying that fees of £7,000 per year could decrease student numbers?
When you consider that only a couple of the most expensive universities in the United States such as Yale charge £7,000 per year for tuition, it seems much less of a problem. It's true that American universities offer four-year degrees so the total cost is greater than for most British degrees, which are just three years, at the same rate. Then again, you are getting (with the possible exception of Oxbridge) more bang for your buck so the 'deterrent' effects of price will be mitigated at least somewhat.
Even so, the cost of a three-year degree at £7,000 per year would be equal to that of a four-year degree at Ivy League schools like Brown and Harvard.
We know that students from wealthy families do better at school and are more likely to go to the very best British universities even though fees are capped. Presumably those who would be put off going to university by such fees would be at the poorer end of the demographic and thus less likely to be looking at Oxbridge anyway.
If the fee cap were to be scrapped we could probably assume that Oxbridge and perhaps one or two others like LSE would charge in the region of £7,000 per year whilst other universities would be less, and that the only problem this might cause would be that the small number of poor students who are academically qualified to attend Oxbridge etc would have to settle for a cheaper university. Even then, we know that US universities offer such generous financial aid to poorer students that black kids with the necessary qualifications attend Ivy League schools at the same rate as similarly qualifies (and statistically wealthier) white kids.
Even if such aid did not materialise, a fee cap does not follow as a solution to the problem. Surely the most appropriate government action would be to provide assistance to the poorest and most highly qualified students so that they can attend these expensive universities, whilst else-wise allowing the free and proper operation of prices.
Price Fixing
Trash Talking
The BBC asks 'should recycling be rewarded?' The obvious answer is: It depends. The question is analogous to 'should work be rewarded?' If a person is working to produce left handed monkey wrenches or deep-sea bath tubs then probably not. If they are working to grow food or build cars then the answer is likely to be yes. So it is with recycling. If recycling is a productive pursuit then people should be paid for it. Indeed markets perform this function well with other things. People do not generally go to work in the morning out of the goodness of their hearts or because the government fines the unemployed and rewards those in work, they go to work because market induce them to do so through the wage incentive. If recycling is indeed productive then markets should incentivize people to do it by offering payment. The question really is whether recycling is productive, whether it's more productive than the alternative uses of resources, and whether markets are providing the appropriate incentives given the answers to those questions.
As far as I am aware the reality is that household recycling is generally not productive in that it uses more scarce resources to collect, sort, clean and prepare recycled material for use in the production process than it does to acquire new material from scratch - and this is why there are few examples of firms being willing to pay for household waste. A notable exception in the past is payment in return for aluminium cans, though the reduction in the thickness of cans and thus the quantity of aluminium that can be derived from these has largely ended this practice. Of course, most people do recycle regularly without realizing it. Television is frequently punctuated with adverts for companies that will pay in return for scrap gold, and selling things we no longer want on eBay has become an obsession for some. This is also a good demonstration of how markets adjust prices in accordance with the scarcity (relative to the level of demand) for goods. If the materials needed to produce new aluminium cans were rare, nearing depletion, can manufacturers would be willing to pay handsomely for used cans to recycle. Equally, if the resources needed to produce new cans were plentiful they would be unwilling to pay large sums for used cans. And of course, everytime we sit down on our sofas, drive our cars or type at our keyboards we are recycling these things because it is more efficient to re-use them than to buy a new one every time.
This should not be confused with the question of whether people should be explicitly charged (e.g. by the kilogram) for the landfill waste they produce . Incentives need to be on both sides for people to make good choices.
Now, markets might not offer (an efficient level of) payment for recycling material if the benefits of using that material are not confined to the firm itself i.e. if recycling has a social benefit above and beyond the private benefit. For example, if producing glass bottles from scratch is extremely polluting (which dirties people's washing and gives them cancer) whilst recycling bottles produces no pollution, and all other costs and benefits are equal, it would be more efficient to recycle. Yet this might not occur because the bottle manufacturer does not feel (most) of the benefit of refraining from polluting the air. However, most of the materials that households can recycle are not especially polluting to produce. More over, the recycling process can often be quite polluting itself. It's quite uncertain then that recycling reduces social costs and that government action to incentivize it could be justified on that basis. Where there are social costs, it seems simpler and more comprehensive to impose fines (i.e. taxes) on the pursuit that is actually socially costly such as producing bottles in a polluting way. This would give firms the appropriate incentives, not just to recycle rather than produce in a polluting way, but to use other solutions such as making the process of producing new bottles cleaner, or inventing an alternative to bottles that can be made without pollution.
One commenter on the BBC's question replied that a reward scheme would be better than proposals to fine people who throw away 'too much' or recycle 'too little' because fines only induce people to fly-tip. This is an example of the unfortunate but all too common misconception that there is a substantive incentive difference between imposed costs and granted benefits.
Suppose we have determined some target for how much we would like people to throw away (to landfill/incineration etc) and two options are proposed on how to achieve this. The first is to fine people £10 each time they exceed the target. The second is to reward people £10 each time they meet (or fall below) the target. The commenter believes that the option to fine would cause people to fly-tip any waste they produce over the target level so as to avoid the cost of the fine, but the situation under the reward option is identical. The cost of going over target under both schemes is £10. By going over target with a system of fines, obviously a fine is incurred of £10. By going over target with a reward system, equally, you lose out on £10 you could have had. The effect is the same, either way there is £10 at stake in the decision.
Furthermore, because rewards must be paid for through taxation, and fine revenues spent on public goods*, a reward to cooperators (those who do not exceed the target level) is an implicit fine on rule-breakers because they will be taxed but not rewarded. Equally, a fine on rule-breakers is an implicit reward to cooperators because they will benefit from services provided with the revenues.
Having said that, there may be two small differences between fines and rewards. The first, and fluffier of the two, is the psychological effects of mathematically identical incentives being couched in terms of punishment and reward. This is a matter for psychologists, but given the impersonal nature of refuse laws I would be surprised if this had a significant effect. The second is that humans tend to experience diminishing returns to income. That is to say that we value the first £10 of income more than we value the next £10. If our daily income rises from £0 to £10 we move from starvation to survival, a very large benefit. If we move from £10 to £20 we move from (assuming we accrue income 7 days a week) survival to being able to rent a house, feed ourselves and pay some bills - a large move, but smaller than the previous. If we move from a daily income of £1,000 to £1,010 then the benefit is smaller still. This is relevant because the £10 we already have in our pocket is likely to be valued slightly more than the £10 of potential income that we might forgo by failing to meet the target. This would indicate that fines might be a slightly more cost-effective way of ensuring compliance than rewards because we might have to offer an £11 reward to create incentives equal to those of a £10 fine. However, there is no inherent difference which many people find it difficult to wrap their head around.
*In the sense of those goods provided by government, not the strict economic sense of a public good.
Why you shouldn't vote
It's election day once again, our twice-a-decade or so chance to participate in the democratic process, to have our say, to express our judgement of the current government, to 'throw the rascals out' or award a mandate to some other group. Today most everybody is telling you to vote. You'll see television and internet ads, newspaper opinions, even Google implicitly telling you to vote. Twitter and Facebook, forums and blogs, are full of people urging you to vote. "You must vote," they say, "it is your duty to vote."
I often explain to people that voting is pointless in a practical sense, and inevitably people reply "So you're saying I shouldn't vote," confusing a positive statement with a normative one. I don't tell people they should not vote, I only describe an empirical fact. I have to back up and say "Hey, I never said you shouldn't vote. Just that you shouldn't feel motivated to vote because you think you're making a difference. If voting makes you happy, go for it." But here I'm going to say otherwise, and say what nobody else is sayong: You should not vote.
You should not vote, firstly because it makes no difference in the real world to whether you do or not. There have probably been millions of elections in the course of history (given that each country has hundreds of districts, multiple levels of government etc) and no significant election has ever turned on a single vote. We can say at least then, that the chance of any given election turning on a single vote is likely to be in the order of millions to one. Indeed, it has been calculated that the chance of a US presidential election turning on one vote is 100 million to one. Even if this were to occur of course, your vote only made a difference if you voted for the winner. So in such a competitive election, where the probability of you voting for the winner is about 50%, the probability that your vote will make a difference is 200 million.
It can be shown graphically how your vote makes no difference. The charts below show a situation where two parties, A and B, face off in a single member plurality election. In the first, you make the decision to vote and the result is 12 votes to party B and 10 to party A. Party B wins.
In the second, you make the decision not to vote and the result is 11 votes to party B and 10 to party A. Party B wins. It wins regardless of whether you vote or not.
There is then no significant practical gain from voting, you do not influence the outcome. Even supposing you did influence the outcome of a constituency election, it is very rare for a party to have a (bare or absolute) majority in the commons of one seat, and things are further complicated by the lords and the EU and the tendency for parties to rescind on their election promises, so you still wouldn't have a significant, predictable influence on legislation.
This apparent irrationality of voting has long been noted and the paradox that people continue to vote regardless has been discussed at length. Most conclude, and indeed there's much evidence to suggest, that people vote for two reasons: 1) Because it makes them feel good, to participate, exercise their right, make their voice heard etc and more importantly 2) to avoid the costs of not voting, because there is a perceived 'duty to vote' which leads people to feel guilty and be shamed by their friends and family if they do not. Being seen to vote, and thus to be civic minded and responsible, is a major benefit, and why introducing postal voting usually leads to a fall in turnout rather than an increase.
Usually this is all considered well and good. Voting is thought important in a collective sense, we need some people to vote, yet it would be irrational for any individual to vote unless they got some private benefit like feeling satisfied for gaining standing amongst their peers. If it makes people feel good, there's nothing wrong with it, and it fulfils an important political function.
I disagree. People should not feel good about voting. They should not because they are participating only in a bankrupt system, they are legitimizing a government which deserves no legitimacy and perpetuating the self-sacrificing, debasing and utterly destructive philosophy of duty to the state.
"But if nobody voted..." then government would observably have no legitimacy and people would see it for the morally destitute institution it is.
The only duty you have on election day is not to engage with the most destructive force known to man. Don't make a pact with the devil, he doesn't deserve your vote for or against.
Libertarian Standing
A study by The Pew Research Center finds that Americans are equally divided on how they view libertarianism, with half regarding it as negative and half positively.
Republicans view the term negatively, Democrats are split, and independents view it positively.
Interesting stuff. I wonder if the negative rating from Republicans is a result of ignorance (Republicans tend to be less educated and less well informed than Democrats) and thus confusion of "libertarian" with "liberal" in the modern American sense of left wing.
Neighbourhood Watch
I saw this poster on a phone box at the weekend. It terrified me to my very soul, and for entirely different reasons to those intended.
You gotta be kid-ney!
The Nuffield Council on Bioethics suggests that financial incentives be used to encourage organ donation. They are completely right, as I detailed here.
Putting Rocks in Your Harbour
Reactionary protectionism is akin to saying that because I have put rocks in my harbour, you will put rocks in your own. This is essentially what Brazil has said. There's nothing legitimate or beneficial to Americans in general about the US government subsidizing American cotton farmers (though the cotton farmers like it of course), but this helps not hinders Brazilians. If American taxpayers want to be so generous as to pay to produce the cotton that Brazilians buy, why should they object? Why anything but rejoice at their good fortune?
Brazilian cotton farmers, of course, may be unable to compete with the government subsidized American farmers. Placing a tax on the American goods that Brazilians buy, making life more expensive for Brazilians, is not the answer. Brazilian cotton farmers will not be happy, but ultimately it benefits Brazil for it to have a cheaper source of cotton and for the labour and resources previously dedicated to cotton production to be freed, now able to be employed for more productive purposes.
Unpatriotic Games
Suggesting that you do not want England (not even the United Kingdom...) to win the football World Cup is likely to get you a jackbooted call from the po po. The 'visit' was said not to be "in response to any public complaint about the shirt slogan [but rather] by an officer acting on his own initiative." Going and telling the shop owner that a complaint had been made would be one thing, for an officer to spot the shirt (what was he doing looking closely enough in a shop window to read the tiny writing on this one??) in a window and take it upon himself to try and intimidate a local businessman into censoring himself is another.
They call it an "advisory visit". Perhaps Grampian Police could use an "advisory visit" vis a vis staying the hell out of other people's business.
