Liberalism and organisations

With traditionalist critics of liberalism such as Mark Richardson persistently pointing out that the myth of the autonomous, self-authoring individual is one of keys to understanding liberal individualism, it's worth considering whether the principles of liberalism apply to organisations and societies as well.

In the same way that liberal theory argues that individuals should be free to re-create themselves, according to their own whims and logic, liberal elites see themselves as being justified in continually changing organisations such as businesses, government departments and NGOs, according to rational criteria and liberal principles such as personal autonomy and egalitarianism.

In the 19th Century, radical-liberal theorist Karl Marx noted the "bourgeois obsession with reform," which he attributed to the logical workings of capitalism. More recently, enlightenment critics such as John Ralston Saul have pointed to the obsession western elites have with rational methodology, which they believe gives them the mandate to continually change and disrupt organisations, according to rational criteria, regardless of established customs, experience and common sense.

In Voltaire's Bastards, Saul argued that one result of the hubristic belief in rational methodology, is that managers tend to be rewarded according to adherence to methodology rather than actual results, both in the public and private sectors. Similarly, the word managerialism has entered the English language to identify arrogant psuedo-technocrats, who value generic qualifications and skills over specific expertise and practical experience.

Anti-managerialism has a growing intellectual following in Britain, thanks to the micro-management excesses of Nu Labour. One British blogger who writes quite frequently on managerialism is Chris Dillow, author of the blog Stumbling and Mumbling.

The liberal nature of organisational reform in western countries is clearly apparent when western organisations are compared with those in other developed nations, such as Japan and Korea, which do not share the West's cultural history. Despite the unprecedented economic and technological change which Japan has experienced since 1945, the structure and habits of Japanese corporations have undergone relatively little change in the last 6o odd years.

Highly successful firms such as Toyota and Sony continue to pay their senior managers modest salaries by western standards, and Japanese businesses still make many inexpensive, labour intensive products. By contrast, most western companies have long since shifted such manufacturing to the third world.

Japanese firms are also cautious of egalitarian reforms such as opening-up management positions to women graduates and fast-tracing intelligent and ambitious graduates at the expense of experienced workers. Indeed, whole sectors of the Japanese economy, such as distribution and farming, are still largely run along traditional lines.

Despite placing a high value on education, senior Japanese managers seem to put more emphasis on the importance of practical experience than their western counterparts.

In contrast to the way organisations are conservatively managed in Japan, western organisations are subject to a whirlwind of change, to which many workers are increasingly numb.

Diversity training, down-sizing, team-building exercises, political correctness, counseling, office-layout fads and incessantly changing business jargon are just some of the many questionable changes which today's western workforce is expected to put up with.

Even organisations which are thought of as bastions of tradition, such as long-established churches, are subject to a level of change which would be unheard of in most cultures. The Church of England, for example, has been under considerable pressure to accept gay and female clergy as well as significant changes to its traditional religious services.

The last 150 years have seen an enormous amount of change within western organisations, but the pace of change has intensified dramatically in the last 30-40 years, and an increasingly amount of that change has been of questionable practical benefit - which ties in with the intense degree of ideological social reform which has occurred in western society during this period.

Given that most other cultures are very weary of such intense and rapid organisation change, the western managerial class may well be setting unrealistic expectations about how much anti-traditional change is possible or disirable.

Whatever happened to the meritocracy?

With student debt in New Zealand rapidly rising, and students taking longer to pay back their debts, one might think more politicians would be asking whether so many students should actually be going to university.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s there was a massive surge in the numbers of students attending higher education, and a correspondingly rapid increase in student tuition fees. In keeping with overseas trends, both Labour and National claimed this increase in enrolments was essential for the country's "knowledge economy."

Whether this surge in university enrolments was really necessary is debatable, unemployment was rapidly increasing at the time and perhaps many young people didn't know what else to do, although technological changes were increasing the need for a more educated workforce.

However, that was then and this is now. Today unemployment is running at about 3 percent and there's a fair supply of jobs, often paying relatively high wages, which do not require an academic degree, and can be learned either on the job or through combined work and study courses at technical colleges.

Unfortunately though, the government and the universities are still committed to outdated principles of egalitarianism and market populism, which are failing both students and the culture/economy of the country as a whole.

In a meritocracy, access to university should be based not on ability to pay, but on ability to pass, yet this cannot be guaranteed if places are offered to students who lack the aptitude, commitment and intellectual curiosity to complete a university degree.

This is an issue that the British Conservative party is at least tentatively addressing, but which still seems to be taboo in contemporary New Zealand politics. Every student who fails a course, increases the cost of a university education for other students, yet universities continue to offer places to students who have not done sufficiently well at school to warrant access to a university.

Egalitarians claim testing is unfair on adult students who have left school some time ago, but this can be be overcome by assessing adults students using aptitude tests instead of scholastic exams.

Not only are intelligent, hard-working students from working and lower middle-class backgrounds incurring heavy debts, because they have to subsidise lazier or less intelligent students, including a few upper-middle class airheads, but they're also having to subsidise students taking academically soft subjects of little cultural or commercial value.

Dumb-downed subjects like American studies, and pseudo-academic subjects like Communications, add little to the cultural or economic vitality of the country, yet are popular with students looking for an easy pass, and subsequently tie-up valuable tax dollars that could be spent reducing fees for those taking more academically rigorous courses.

Similarly, it's not the place of publicly funded institutions to fund ideologically biased subjects like Feminist studies. If you're going to fund Feminist studies, then why not potential subjects with a right-wing bias like libertarian studies or ethno-nationalist studies. Once you open the door to this kind of post-modern market populism then where do you draw the line?

Furthermore, the market populist principle of funding institutions according to student demand, means that universities have to plough for trade and waste precious tax money on advertising, instead of restricting access and attracting students through lower fees.

Market populism and egalitarianism may have been noble or progressive ideas in the minds of Baby Boomers, but for today's students, they're leading to a future of debt and disillusionment.

Belated sense form Cameron

In a refreshingly honest admission, UK Tory leader David Cameron has stated that he supports parents who pretend to be Christians so as to get their children into faith-based schools, arguing such parents are only doing what they think is best for their children.

"I don't blame anyone who tries to get their children into a good school," he said.

Recently, the Conservative leader has attracted criticism from his fellow Conservatives for opposing the building of more grammar schools.

In New Zealand faith-based schools are also becoming more popular, with increasing numbers of non-religious parents perceiving Catholic schools as better at upholding traditional values and academic standards.

On Radio Live, talkshow host Michael Laws, who worked as a education policy advisor from 1985-91, pointed out that in the 1960s and 1970s, many of the country's Catholic schools were in serious financial difficulty, with the government having to step in and fund teachers salaries and learning materials.

Admittedly, the better performance of religious schools may be partly due to their ability to cherry-pick students from public schools, but it's also likely the decline in public sector education can at least partly be attributed to such factors as political correctness and declining standards of discipline.

Joker in the pack

Now that both Tom Tancredo and Fred Thompson have pulled out of the US primaries, things are looking pretty grim from an old-right perspective, but at least Ron Paul is providing some colour and contrast.

Paleo-libertarian Ron Paul seems to be the Republican equivalent of Obama in terms of attracting interest from younger voters, especially males in their early twenties. Libertarianism has had a strong following among young, college educated males in the US since the 1950s, and through the works of Ayn Rand its appeal has spread throughout North America and Australasia.

Hence the strong presence of libertarian blogs in the New Zealand blog scene, and the odd kiwi Ron Paul supporter ( well at least 3 anyway).

Libertarian philosophy, with its emphasis on logic, freedom, opportunity and non-interventionism, resonates strongly with the young university undergraduate who is keen to travel and hopes to influence the seemingly irrational world in a positive, rational direction.

Admittedly, the libertarian urge often quickly tries up after a few years in an insanely pricy, dysfunctional big city, or an overseas expedition to exotic lands, where laissez-faire doesn't just mean low taxes, but a hands-off policy to just about everything from road safety and law and order to water supplies. Certainly that's how I soon good fed-up with the wild idealism of the libertarian right.

Nevertheless, in these days where a challenging game of Halo III constitutes intelligent human interaction, it's nice to see some grass roots political enthusiasm from intelligent young males.

And of course, Paul's not just a libertarian but a paleo-libertarian, one of those libertarianism in one country types, who realises that social and economic freedom isn't going to last long if the country goes bankrupt or too many people flood in from those "interesting" countries.

So even seasoned older codgers like myself can get a little satisfaction from Ron sticking it to neocons.

I look forward to seeing the Ron Paul show, blimps and all, gracing the pages of the Internet for many weeks/months to come.

Technical gremlins

Due to ongoing frustrations with my lousy internet connection, and spam creeping in, I'm disabling the comments function until I can sort out why my connection is so damn slow.

I'll continue posting when I can.

J'accuse of the week!

From a comment thread on the isteve blog, regarding every conservatives favourite cultural cohort:

"...but in general, boomers are a bunch of ex-bra burning, draft dodging, child abandoning, pot smoking hedonists transformed into sanctimonious, do-gooding, dead end fiscal policy making narcissists who have allowed our country to be cratered by uninhibited immigration in order to buck up the social security pyramid scheme in hopes that things won't go to hell until the last of them bites the dust."

Ouch!

Honest atheism

"Man is by his constitution a religious animal." - Edmund Burke

As a world-weary agnostic who tries to take people as they are, rather than I would like them to be, its gets tiresome listening to the latest wave of atheists call for one final intellectual jihad to finish-off fuddy old religion. Particularly annoying is when an atheist suggests that the religious cruely brain-wash children into religion against their will, as if it's somehow possible to raise children in an ideological vacuum where they are totally free to chose what to believe in.

For the last 150 years or so atheists from Marx to Dawkins have been predicting that religion will soon be relegated to the good old dust bin of history, yet over this time the number of devoutly religious people in the world has been relentlessly increasing.

You don't need a masters in philosophy to see the arguments of anti-religious atheists are floored on multiple levels. For one thing, if religion really is useless, as the anti-religious atheists claim, then it will soon pass away of its own accord. There's no need to go on a crusade to stamp it out in the "interests of humanity." Find something else wrong with the world to get worked up about.

They claim that religion is irrational, yet if that is the case, then there's no point trying to sway the religious against religion with rational arguments.

Then their's the liberal assumption that everyone is biologically wired in favour of rational atheism. If people are mentally diverse about spiritual issues, as many Darwinian scientists claim, then why can't they consider the possibility that atheism may not work for everybody and that religion will always have an attraction for a sizeable segment of the population -particularly in light of the fact that the religious seem to be out-breeding their secular cousins.

Given that even in the most secular and scientifically advanced countries, the majority of the population claims to be religious, or at least spiritual, then it seems that religion must play some significant evolutionary role in human behaviour.

Of course some anti-religious atheists may be closet anti-Muslims who feel that all religions must be stamped out, so as not to be prejudiced against any particular race or culture, but I'm assuming most atheists aren't likely to be that devious.

In contrast to the Dawkins and Hitchens crowd, realist atheists and agnostics may not particularly like religion, but they are honest enough to admit that it isn't going to disappear anytime soon, if ever. In Straw Dogs, post-liberal thinker John Gray, declares that atheism itself is something of a has-been philosophy, which had its high water mark, in an intellectual sense, in the 19th Century, and that as its mother ship HMS enlightenment crashes onto the rocks of reality, it's taking anti-religious atheism down with it.

One thing that's noticeable about secular realists like John Gray is they tend to have a pretty negative disposition. Admittedly this tends to be a trait of most realists, including many traditional conservatives, but its particularly noticeable among honest atheists.

Life's tough, living without religion is even tougher, so don't trust an atheist who looks at the world through rose-tinted glasses.

Canadian immigraton

Most websites about non-western immigration tend to be either by immigration restrictionists or pro-immigration liberals. The Canadian site NotCanada (hat tip: Elliot Lake News) takes a different tack. It looks at immigration from the perspective of immigrants who have given up on trying to settle in Canada and have returned to their homelands, feed up with life in the over-hyped West.

Personally I find some of the claims of prejudice against immigrants a little overblown, but I do have sympathy for immigrants who have come to a western country under false promises, and have been ripped off by greedy governments, employment agencies and immigration lawyers.

Life in North America and Australasia may be better than in many less developed countries, but that doesn't mean they're lands of milk of honey. Crime, traffic congestion, living costs, and bureaucracy are all on the increase, and big business and government are not providing prospective immigrants with realistic, objective information about job opportunities (maybe we should have independent bodies to assess labour needs?).

For example, there's no point in the Canadian government allowing in more doctors from non-western countries, if it doesn't think such doctors are adequately qualified to work in a western hospital. Such a policy will inevitably anger both immigrants, who will feel exploited and deceived, and locals who will perceive it as a cynical way of bringing in cheap labour.

Diminishing returns

As the "War on Terror" enters its 8th year, and the United States government rues is inability to capture Ben Ladin, its worthwhile pondering whether the neoconservative idea of trying to fight an underground problem like terrorism with an on-going, all-out campaign is an effective strategy.

Economists have many questionable ideas, but one old economic chestnut which has a lot of relevance to real world concerns is the Law of Diminishing Returns.

The idea that there is a point beyond which additional inputs of money, labour and energy result in progressively smaller benefits, is something everyone from farmers to students can relate too. But it often seems to be overlooked by right-liberal politicians and public servants.

In the Bush led campaign against Islamic terrorism there were some spectacular early successes against the Taleban forces in Afghanistan and a large number of terrorist suspects were rounded up and detained at Guantanamo Bay.

However, the longer the war has dragged on, the more difficult it has become to sustain the progress made against Al Qaeda, and the more feed up US citizens have become with the intrusions and annoyances associated with homeland security.

A similar situation has occurred in Iraq where the easy victories of the war's opening weeks have given way to a war of attrition in which further progress has become dependent on employing large numbers of troops in risky street-fighting over an extended period of time.

The "Surge" of the last few months has lead to a lessoning of hostilities, but there is no guarantee that the situation won't deteriorate when US troops are pulled out.In the 80s and 90s, the US had its first lesson in the limitations of ongoing campaigns with the so-called "War on Drugs," which has done relatively little to reduce the amount of hard drugs coming into the United States and Canada, despite attracting considerable investment from the federal government.

One of the reason why sustained campaigns like the war on terror run into diminishing returns is because they soon become predictable, and the target organisations, which are often made up of small autonomous units, quickly learn to modify their tactics. Although Al Qaeda has scaled back its operations in the West, it has now entrenched itself in Pakistan and is focusing on conducting attacks in unstable regions where US and British influence is limited.

A partial solution for the US may be to abandon predictable, on-going campaigns and focus on random surprise attacks on discrete targets. If large-scale initiatives are no longer working then take a rest and go back to the drawing board.

In the 19th Century, a cornerstone of British Imperial success was the short-term punitive expedition, where specific opponents where intimated through gunboat diplomacy.

While the US and Israel launched effective punitive expeditions against Libya and Iran in the 1980s, the Bush regime dismissed the seemingly sensible approach of punitive air-strikes in Iraq and instead chose the far more costly strategy of regime change.

Some thoughts on the BNP

Perusing the Internet from a conservative perspective, it's clear there aren't many British conservative blogs and websites devoted to issues like immigration and the preservation of western culture, but there are an increasingly number of bloggers who are supporting the British National Party.

This support for the BNP can also be seen in the comments left on centre-right newspapers websites like the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, and the party's strong showing in local elections in many parts of England.

The lack of a "conservative scene" in Britain seems a bit puzzling, given that since the Second World War, ethno-nationalism has been struggling to shake off its associations with Hitler and Mussolini, and has therefore been seen by most Britons as unpatriotic and extremist.

Nethertheless, few Britons appear aware or interested in the kind of populist traditionalism, which is gaining increasing support in the United States.

Nor is the Conservative Party, despite its poor showing in recent elections, very interested in tapping into traditional conservative sentiment regarding issues like Islamic immigration or membership of the European Union. Instead it has decided to become even less conservative by electing it's most liberal leader ever in David Cameron.

This leaves an increasing number of British conservatives with little option but to get behind the BNP and try to mould in into a more conservative party.

While the BNP has made major strides to shake off its fascist origins by denouncing anti-Semiticism and political violence, it still clings to many unworkable ethno-nationalist policies and its antiquated economic platform just isn't going to resonate with many educated middle class voters.

One of the parties biggest stumbling blocks is its racialist policy regarding party membership. Given that races have fuzzy boundaries, and that Britain has a significant number of mixed-race citizens, such a policy can only alienate many potential supporters and provide ammunition for its numerous critics in the media.

Equally unrealistic is its advocacy of corporal punishment, which has not been used in most western countries for over a century, and would probably be strongly opposed by the legal profession. In the economic field the party needs to work out a coherent set of moderate, pragmatic policies, which will be acceptable to both its working class support base and potential middle class voters who support orthodox economic principles like balanced budgets and low inflation.

Although opposition to EU is an important part of the BNP's raison d'etre, the party shouldn't be afraid to follow economic ideas from Continental countries like Denmark and the Netherlands or the Europhile Liberal Democrats. For example, Britain's struggling rail system could arguably be improved by allowing private companies to run the stations and rolling stock while nationalising the neglected network of tracks and tunnels. Making a firm commitment to nuclear power, as France and Finland have done, would also help sent a message that the party was serious about the country's long-term development.

In education, the BNP could take the initiative by introducing IQ testing to help identify working class kids with academic potential and those who are under-performing due to learning disorders. Given that Britain is one of the few western countries where class hang-ups still have a negative affect on academic standards, such a policy could give it a useful edge over its more egalitarian rivals.

Even if the Nu Consevatives manage to scrap through in the next election, the BNP still has an opportunity to draw substantial support from the growing ranks of disaffected voters with conservative or traditional commutarian views.

Fun at the circus

As the Republican primaries move into full swing, its nice to see at least one of the more genuinely conservative candidates, Fred Thompson, starting to pick up support.

After a poor showing in Iowa, Thompson has finally started to go on the offensive and arguably came out on top in the debate in New Hampshire. A pleasing example of this was his criticism of neoconservative Rudy Giuliano for running an illegal alien "sanctuary city" as Major of New York.

I don't know much about Thompson's previous record on immigration, but he at least appears to be a man who is willing to listen to grass roots opinion and sense which way the wind is blowing. Whether Thompson can be considered a serious contender for the Presidency is debatable, he's cuts a reasonably impressive figure (he should do, he is an actor) but he lacks the political savvy of John McCain and doesn't come across as intelligent as the highly articulate Mitt Romney. Romney's only real weakness from a campaign perspective is the fact that his impressive package of good looks, curtesy, intelligence and debating skill seems a little too good to be true.

Besides Thompson, the only other other candidate who is taking a serious stance on immigration is paleo-libertarian maverick Ron Paul. Despite his poor showing in the debates, Paul's honesty and humour is at least providing some light relief from the polished cliches of more fancied contenders like Huckabee and Romney, and thanks to the wonders of satellite television he's become an unlikely hero among some kiwi libertarians (It's nice to see some political enthusiasm guys, but we don't actually get to vote in this one).

While It's unlikely Paul will ever make in into the Whitehouse, he does have the opportunity to really take the other candidates to task over US foreign policy and its connection to the country's fiscal health.

Where is an indebted America supposed to get the money to fight two ongoing wars in the Middle East, secure its southern border, and pay for pensions and Medicare? Surely something has to give?

Unfortunately though, he can't seem to resist going off on minor tangents, such as American arms sales to the Middle East, instead of asking the other candidates hard questions on spending priorities. When Paul says things like, and "in any case we haven't got the money," he seems to assume America's dire fiscal problems are already common knowledge and that most people have an intimate knowledge of the differences between Austrian and Keynesian economics.

Forget the blimps, sort out some basic bullet points that the average voter can understand and remember.

Whatever happens in the US elections, I'm hoping conservative voters don't decide to vote for one of the neoconservative candidates like Giuliano, just because he isn't a Democrat.

In politics as in sport, nothing hurts more than an own goal.

Culture chasm over treatment of animals

While I get a bit sick of the lurid, unimaginative emphasis on big carnivores on television channels like Animal Planet (whatever happened to David Attenborough and the subtler approach to nature documentaries?) I haven't seem anyone in western zoos feeding live goats to big cats, as in this story from the Daily Mail (hat tip: Audacious Epigone).

The difference in attitudes to animal rights between China and the West appears to be a lot bigger than most westerners realise. It's no wonder the New Zealand Green Party isn't too keen on a free trade deal with the People's Republic.

NZ teacher shortage still concentrated in Auckland

Although education providers frequently claim New Zealand has a shortage of qualified primary teachers, most recent South Island graduates are struggling to find work.

According to Ministry of Education figures published in the Press, the average employment rate for Christchurch graduates between 2001 and 2006 was just 34 percent, compared with 48 percent for Wellington and 68 percent for Auckland.

Teacher shortages in areas like South Auckland are nothing new. In the same way New Zealand graduates on their OE often end up teaching in the worst schools in the UK, young British teachers are snapped up by the rougher schools in Auckland and Hamilton to replace domestic graduates who would rather work somewhere else.

Teachers may profess to have liberal views, but most of them still don't appear to be too keen on living in expensive, overcrowded cities, with high crime rates and diverse classes of difficult to control students. In today's, laissez-faire, kid-centric society, it's hard enough to control a mono-cultural, high socio-economic class of kids, let alone a multi-cultural group of children from rough backgrounds.

In contrast, Canterbury has a more stable workforce because it is regarded as a decent place to live. Living costs are moderate, traffic is tolerable, schools are generally OK, and while crime is increasing, it has not yet reached the rates experienced in the Upper North Island. This high quality of life means that Canterbury tends to suffer less from skilled labour shortages than the North Island, despite the fact that its population is aging faster.

Meanwhile, Auckland's rapidly growing, multi-cultural population, is failing to generate enough of its own skilled workers, and is having to import workers from other regions to maintain basic services. Not only does Auckland have a teacher shortage, but is also has a significant shortage of tradesmen, if pay rates are anything to go by.

Since 2002 the Labour government has been trying to address Auckland's labour shortages by bringing in more British and English-speaking South Asian immigrants. However, the problem with this approach is many of the British immigrants don't want to stay in Auckland (can't really blame them), and band-aid immigration is doing nothing to alleviate accommodation costs and traffic problems.

It's increasingly clear that if Auckland expects to maintain a first world infrastructure, it's going to have to train more of its Polynesian and East Asian citizens to fill the vacancies left by a shrinking Caucasian population.

Tapping conservative sentiment

One of the ironic things about conservative politics, is that while many people still hold conservative views, of one form or another, conservatives make up only a tiny minority of the chattering classes.

I used to be of the view that many educated people with conservative views were unwilling to express their views in public, but the Internet now provides anonymity and easy accessibility for those who are concerned about personal privacy and whether expressing unfashionable views may harm their career.

Let's face it, the lack of a media voice can no longer be used as an excuse for disinterest in conservative politics.

If there were a high number of literate, educated conservatives in the 20-60 year age range (which covers the overwhelming majority of those who blog, or comment on blogs) then this would probably be reflected in a healthy number of conservative sites.

However, it's not all doom and gloom. For one thing, I suspect there may be a fair amount of untapped interest in conservative weblogs among the over 60s (ok , it's not a "sexy" demographic, but don't underestimate it).

Over the past few years there have a lot of conservative-sounding comments left on mainstream newspaper website stories about emotive issues like immigration, crime and terrorism and, as an extension of established mainstream media, these websites receive a high number of hits from retired citizens, as well as being a first port of call for many of those who are new to the Internet.

While the number of "silver surfers" is on the rise, very few retirees have any familiarity with weblogs. For a start, there's the teen-centric name "blog," which conjures up images of juvenile computer geeks talking about frivolous games and gadgets rather than serious commentary or unfashionable thinking.

Even among generation-Xers, you will get a lot of eye-rolling if you suggest that blogs can be a source of intelligent analysis of politics and current affairs.

For example, I have been regularly reading mainstream news sites for over a decade, but it is only in the last 2-3 years that I have started taking an interest in weblogs. Whenever someone mentioned blogs to me, I automatically assumed they were just teen gossip vehicles like Myspace, and never bothered to investigate further.

Identifying a market for conservative blogs among retirees is one thing, but getting them to actually start reading and writing them is another. About the only constructive thing I can suggest at the moment is conservative bloggers post comments on mainstream newspaper sites, in which they mention ideas/opinions put forward by prominent conservative bloggers.

However, I don't suppose newspaper sites will appreciate rival media trying to poach patrons, so I think we need a more a viable long-term strategy.

Any ideas?

Economists and the great unwashed

Economists hate people, people hate economists.

It's a prickly relationship, but one which both sides have learned to live with.

Unfortunately though, it seems not all economists are happy with the status quo.

In the Myth of the Rational Voter Bryan Caplan argues the ignorant masses can be turned into economic rationalists, provided they are given the necessary ideological training, and that once provided with a suitable economic education they will then become rational voters.

Yes, we're not stupid after all, just ignorant.

In a glowing review Caplan's work in the Press, ( Saturday, January 5) University of Canterbury economist Eric Crampton latches onto his findings to launch an attack on those "redneck" conservatives and populists who have the impudence to see the world a little differently from mainstream economists:

"Clustering together the differences between the public and economists on a variety of questions, Caplan concludes that the public is severely biased agianst foreigners, biased against markets, biased in favour of make-work projects, and biased towards pessimistic assessments of how well things are going."

Crampton goes on to describe teaching economics as akin to "teaching evolutionary biology to an incoming class of new-Earth creationists."The general public may be ignorant about many things, like the history of western civilisation or how to write a grammatically correct sentence (damn my English teachers!), but one thing they aren't usually ignorant about is basic economics.

Even the most ignorant skinhead in a medium security prison knows about the law of supply and demand, hence his opposition to immigrant labour. Sure, this may not be the only reason for low wages and increasing economic inequality, but no one can automatically say it is economically illogical for the unskilled and uneducated to be in favour of limited immigration.

To illustrate the public's supposed ignorance of basic economics, Crampton picks the odd example of Labour's introduction of an interest right-off for student loans prior to the last election:

"When Helen Clark in 2005 argued that students wouldn't take on more debt at a zero interest rate, folks up and down the corridor in the economics dept tore their hair out at the sheer irrationality. But the statement seemed entirely reasonable to non-economists."

Well as one of those supposed irrational "rednecks" who Crampton ridicules, I can tell you that Clarke's statement didn't strike me as entirely reasonable, nor did it to most other lay people I spoke to at the time, redneck or otherwise.

If memory serves me correctly, most people, including populist politician Winston Peters, thought it was very risking giving students a full interest right-off and that it might have been more prudent to lower the interest rate a little and reduce tuition fees.

In any case, Labour's student loan interest right-off was just one of a number of policies which may have influenced voters, and I don't think it is reasonable to assume it was the primary reason why Labour won the election.

Of course, just because voters have a basic understanding of economics does not mean they will necessarily vote for policies in the public interest. As economists themselves famously point out, people can be selfish and often like to vote for policies which benefit themselves at others' expense. The most obvious example in New Zealand of voters failing to take account the public good is in the area of pensions. Today, It's largely verboten in NZ politics to talk about means testing for pensions, after the perfectly reasonable surcharge for higher income earners was repealed in 1998.

While Crampton insults the intelligence of New Zelanders, Caplan knocks his fellow Americans for having an stingly, irrational view on foreign aid. No mention of course that the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the US maybe dampening American enthusiasm for helping out those in the third world.

Go the Chaps

As Britain descends into a egalitarian globalist hellhole, dominated by lucid chain stores selling underwear at train stations and surly hooded yufs' sifting about the place like demented Yawas off Star Wars, it is nice to see that somebody is standing up for common decency and traditional values.

Enter the "new chaps," with their suitably titled website The Chap.

"The Chap takes a wry look at the modern world through the steamed-up monocle of a more refined age, occasionally getting its sock suspenders into a twist at the unspeakable vulgarity of the twenty-first century."

Look out Chronicles, there's a new kid on the block.

Liberal illusions

One of the things which left-liberals and libertarians have a hard time grasping is the fact most people don't think like they do. I don't just mean that they don't share their ideologies, but that their thinking is influenced by a whole different set of priorities and limitations.

Most libertarians tend to be young educated, males of an introverted disposition, who believe that most people desire maximum autonomy and are capable of handling such freedom. However, contrary to right-liberal assumptions, most people tend to be extroverts who are more influenced by the world around them then their own thoughts and feelings. In other words, if other people are doing stupid things, many of them will too.

An example of this is the world of advertising. As an introvert I tend to think of advertising as a largely irrational waste of money, but it must work on some people or companies wouldn't spend so much money on it. Subsequently advertising tends to directed advertising at extroverts, particularly the status seeking, high IQ extroverts who dominate the world of business.

While intelligent extroverts are usually able to channel their impulsivity into constructive activity, underclass extroverts cannot manage their own lives without societal help.In most cases, low IQ extroverts are well aware of their poor impulse control and the fact they can be easily influenced, but are unable to control their own behaviour unless distracted by other activities and responsibilities.

Recently, I was watching a story on television about teenage pregnancy in the UK, in which a young mother was asked about her reason for having a child which she was unable to support without state help. The answer was very revealing, if a little obvious to some. She said that having a baby gave her a sense of responsibility, and that without it she would probably be out on the streets committing petty crime. According to her logic, it was cheaper for the state to pay her to stay at home and look after a baby, than have her skip school and get into trouble with the law.

Libertarians believe that such negative behaviours can be controlled through limited government. If there are no incentives for teenagers to have children, then they will rationally decide not to have children until they can afford to support them. But if members of the underclass are genuinely unable to control their impulses, then punitive punishments, which occur after the event, are unlikely to deter them. The absence of a welfare state doesn't stop millions of woman in poor countries from having children they are unable to support.

This is why it is important that social norms must take account of human nature.

If teenage mothers who had children out of wedlock were socially ostracized, as they were in the 1950s, they would have a much stronger incentive to delay having children. Nobody likes being socially ostracized, and this is especially true of those who are most strongly influenced by those around them.

Among modern liberals there also is a belief that, within the law, they should be able to do as they please, without regard to how their actions influence other sections of society. For example, if middle-class liberal woman believe solo motherhood is acceptable, and show off the fact they are capable of rising children on their own, then less capable, less intelligent women will try unsuccessfully to copy them.

One of the most ironic things about today's age of liberal individualism is that it is only differences in human preferences which are recognised. Differences in human abilities and dispositions are ignored, leaving society at large to clean up the mess created by giving too much freedom to those who are unable to handle it.

Traditionalists, realists and commutarians

As the number of conservative bloggers on the Internet increases, it's becoming necessary to distinguish between those of a secular, scientific disposition, such as Randall Parker, John Derbyshire and Steve Sailer, from those with more strongly entrenched religious beliefs such as Jim Kalb, Lawrence Auster and Patrick Buchanan.

At the same time, there is also a need to differentiate economic egalitarians, who are critical of globalisation and cultural Marxism, from those on the liberal-left with more radical, anti-western agendas. Therefore, in writing my posts, I've decided on the following labels to identify these three types of liberal skeptics: "realists," traditionalists" and "commutarians."

Among other things, traditionalists (aka traditional conservatives or "reactionaries") believe in the importance of established religious and social practices, the fragility of prosperous civilisations, and the influence of inherited traits on human behaviour. Traditionalists are skeptical of progress and respect the wisdom of previous generations. Whilst not necessarily opposed to social or economic reform, they acknowledge that civilisation does not progress in a linear manner and that human nature cannot easily be influenced by education or social engineering. In foreign policy matters, traditionalists emphasis prudence and national self-interest over ambitious policies designed to spread particular ideologies or interfere with the politics of other countries. The traditionalist position is well-articulated by Mark Richardson at the Conservative Central Website.

Realists tend to be secular conservatives who are disillusioned with the increasingly ideological nature of modern liberalism. In common with traditionalists, realists believe in the importance of inherited traits in influencing human behaviour, and share the traditionalist's skepticism of progressive social engineering. Realists see technological change as inevitable, and have a high opinion of empirical science, but do not believe scientific progress inevitably leads to human betterment, and acknowledge progress depends on having a cohesive culture to support it. Subsequently they usually advocate a piece-meal approach to social and economic reform, which takes account of human nature and genetic variation. Potential sources of conflict between realists and traditionalists are controversial scientific matters such as birth control, eugenics, and genetic engineering. On foreign policy issues realists share the traditionalist preference for prudence and self-interest. Although the realist position has not yet been explicitly articulated, realist views on various issues can be found in the posts of bloggers such as Sailer and Parker.

Various other suggested labels for realists include:

"Darwinian conservatives," "scientific conservatives," " empirical conservatives" and "post-liberals".

Commutarians tend to be traditional socialists who believe in moderating economic inequality through established institutions, such as unions and cooperatives, whilst preserving the role of the sovereign state and established social norms and religious practices. They tend to dislike modern social engineering, which they see as unnecessary and undemocratic. They tend to believe that the mainstream liberal-left have abandoned the working and lower-middle classes and now operates in the interests of special interest groups and state bureaucracies. Commutarians are skeptical of globalisation and critical of aggressive foreign policies which unnecessarily interfere in the affairs of other countries.

Right liberalism - the fool's gold of the centre-right

While the popularity of the centre-right is on the wane in many western countries, centre-right parties should not get sucked into the idea that right-liberal policies are the way to win back voters.

The decline in support for centre-right parties over the last 20 years basically comes down to three factors:

1. unmarried women are tending to support the centre-left

2. declining home ownership is having an adverse impact on support for centre-right parties

3. ethnic minorities are voting for the centre-left.

The basic strategy of mainstream conservative parties since the early 1980s has been to try and contain left-liberalism through neo-liberal economic policy, and abandon the supposedly less important social sphere to the centre-left.

Unfortunately, this has resulted in increased immigration of left-leaning minorities and an accompanying increase in property prices which has made it harder for people to get a foot on the property ladder.

Since property owners are more likely to favour low taxes and economic stability, this decline in home ownership had undermined the traditional support base of the centre-right. Making things doubly bad is the fact that, as Steve Sailer points out, property affordability is also a decisive factor in family formation.

Most potential centre-right voters are rational people who are unlikely to start a family until they have a reasonable chance of getting an affordable mortgage. While the marital or property status of men does not have a particularly big bearing on their political views, it often has a decisive impact on the voting patterns of women.

The longer women stay unmarried, the less likely they are to vote for the centre-right and the more likely they are to be swayed by the generous welfare policies of the left. This is a point highlighted by Democrat pundits Jon Judis and Ruy Teixeira in their new book The Emerging Democratic Majority. According to Judis and Teixeira, during the 2000 congressional elections, single women backed the Democrats over the Republicans by a massive 63 percent to 35 percent.

The centre-right's strategy of liberalising the financial sector, while increasing non-western immigration, may have helped it gain short-term support from big business, but it has done massive damage to its electoral base. The sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US, in which taxpayers are having to bail out bankrupt lending institutions, is likely to further undermine popular support for the centre-right.

In recent decades, centre-right parties, such as the New Zealand National Party and the Australian Liberal Party, have tended to assume they could count on the support of economically successful minorities. However, recent evidence suggests that this assumption is no longer valid. For example, in California and Australia, East Asian voters are tending to vote for centre-left candidates, which seems counter intuitive from a class interest perspective. Part of the reason for this may be that Asian immigrants support the well-funded health and education services found in many English-speaking countries, but are able to avoid paying for the full cost of these services through taxation by earning a lot of their income overseas.

The current strategy of the centre right, as typified by National leader John Key and Conservative leader Duncan Cameron, is to move further to the left on social policy, so as to attract voters away from the now dominant centre-left, whilst maintaining a neo-liberal stance on economic issues. However, since centre-left parties have already moved towards the centre on economic issues, the centre-right is effectively chosing to campaign on territory where the centre-left is already well entrenched, and in so doing is failing to provide voters with a distinct alternative.

Since the Iraq War has done serious damage to the right's reputation for handling foreign policy issues, the most promising area where centre-right parties can recover lost ground is by moving to the right on immigration. Opinion polls show that the majority of voters in western countries are in favour of immigration restrictionism, and the social and economic externalities of immigration are probably the hotest topic on talk radio.

Given big business's involvement in promoting immigration expansionism and its tarnished reputation for passing on externalities to consumers, as seen in the blundering inefficiency of many national telecoms, and the corruption of companies like Enron, centre-right parties should not be promoting neo-liberal ideologues like libertarian Ron Paul to lead the charge against the centre-left.

In 2005, the National Party went to the polls with a libertarian ideologue of its own, former reserve bank governor Don Brash ( New Zealand's answer to Alan Greenspan) and despite a reasonable showing in the provinces, failed to regain office for a third time.

Sadly though, the centre-right is still not yet learning from its mistakes. In the US primaries many conservative voters and pundits are chosing to back the neoconservative canditate Rudy Guliano over the more conservative Fred Thompson, while limited immigration advocate Tom Tancredo has already pulled out of the running.

How many more electoral defeats will the centre-right have to suffer before it swings back to conservatism?

The driver education myth

Whatever the social problem, liberals always seems to believe that education is the solution.

Take road accidents for example.

According to the liberal mind set, road accidents are caused by a lack of driver knowledge or skill, and greater driver education, in the form of longer, more expensive licenses or defensive driving courses, will solve the problem.

Meanwhile, back on planet earth, most accidents are not caused by unskilled drivers, but cocky skilled drivers.

In terms of driving skill, the most unskilled drivers are probably women and old people, yet statistics show that these groups are involved in the least serious accidents. Although many woman struggle to master parallel parking and using a manual gearbox, their greater maturity and sense of caution means that they are able to compensate for any weaknesses in natural ability and avoid serious accidents.

In contrast, it it naturally coordinated young males, with quick reactions, who constitute the majority of road fatalities - not because they lack driving skill, but because their youthful confidence and impulsiveness leads them to take risks that older drivers wouldn't. Only time and the punitive actions of the police can curb these natural tendencies.

Defensive driving courses might actually give them more confidence in their own ability, thus encouraging them to take even more risks on the road.

Another likely genetic factor in road accidents, is that liberal bogeyman, intelligence. In Australia and New Zealand, European settlers like to make jokes about the inexperience and nerdy dithering of East Asian drivers. However, Asian drivers probably have lower accident rates than their White counterparts. Again, since driving skill isn't a factor, the likely reason for the difference is the higher average IQ of East Asian immigrants.

To see what little impact driving knowledge has on driver behaviour, you only have to observe driver behaviour when a police car is spotted on the highway. Drivers who normally follow too close and attempt risky overtaking manoeuvres, suddenly become polite, model drivers who unwaveringly adhere to speed limits and recommended following distances.

It's also interesting that most liberals usually agree with the statement that "it isn't bad roads that cause accidents, it's bad drivers." However when questioned on an issue like gun control, most left-liberals vehemently disagree with the argument that "guns don't kill people, people do."

Given that a high proportion of fatal road accidents in New Zealand occur from head-on crashes, I would have thought that the fact that we don't have any inter-city highways with median crash barriers might have some bearing on our road accident statistics.

Unfortunately though, as the current debacle over broadband shows, New Zealand governments are more concerned with funding such things as funding for sex-change operations then in addressing unfashionable concerns like providing the country with a first world infrastructure.

Quiet on the Commonwealth front

Going into 2008, it's apparent that the gap in the quality and quantity of blogging output between conservative bloggers in the English-speaking Commonwealth and their counterparts in the US, is showing little sign of narrowing.

Although the population of the US dwarfs that of Britain, Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, the English-speaking Commonwealth still has a population of over 110 million from which to draw upon. However, we are still failing to produce many bloggers in the class of US traditional and scientific conservatives like Daniel Larison, Steve Sailer, Randall Parker, Jim Kalb, Lawrence Auster, John Savage, and John Press.

As well as being a regular blogger, Mr Press has also produced a substantial book Culturism, which tackles the weighty issue of western cultural survival. Steve Sailer's blog appears to attract the lions share of reader comments, although Auster and Larison also appear to be attracting significant web traffic. (Hat tip to Daniel Larison for being my best referrer, with Oz Conservative second, and mainstream NZ blogger David Farrar third).

Among many others worthy of mention include the lucid and entertaining Dennis Dale, and punchy empiricist Audacious Epigone.

The most consistent and accomplished conservative blogger in the British Commonwealth remains Mark Richardson of Oz Conservative, who is now into his 5th year of lucidly and persistently de-constructing liberalism. However, he is conspicuous for the being the only conservative blogger in Australasia to consistently produce quality commentary on a regular basis.

On this side of the Tasman I regret to report that the Internet scene continues to be dominated by libertarians who seems to think defending western civilisation goes no further than ranting about tax rates.

Canadian output is similarly limited. Immigration blogger Hogtown Front stood out for the quality and accuracy of his postings on Immigration in Ontario, but ceased blogging on a consistent basic earlier this year. Similarly, Vancouver blogger Kevin Michael Grace has been pretty quiet this year, although he is no doubt making a valuable contribution through his work with the American Conservative.

Britain is producing some good bloggers with a law and order focus, with Laban Tall of UK Commentators one of the best in this regard. Unfortunately though, there are few UK bloggers who are willing to offer serious, original analysis of the type that US writers like Kalb and Sailer deliver on a regular basis (a possible star in the making, though is teenager Sam Tarran, who is already producing some good posts at a ridiculously young age).

Although Continental conservatives appear to be preoccupied with current events concerning Islamic immigration (and who can blame them) there are a few European pundits like Fjiordman and Conservative Swede who are going the extra mile and producing some serious critiques of modern liberal thinking.

Perhaps 2007's most important site from a Conservative perspective though, was not a political blogger, but a non-partisan Internet lobbying site, Numbers USA, which played a vital contribution to the downfall of George Bush's unpopular illegal immigration amnesty.