Fantasy

Innumerable commentators attempt to give credence to the idea that Islam is ‘peaceful’ and perhaps on the verge of reformation, that thereafter ‘moderate’ Muslims will join forces with ‘moderates’ in other religions and secular ‘moderates’ to create a world of universal mutual tolerance.

Regrettably, these commentators belong to the ‘wouldn’t it be nice if’ school of ‘thought’.

Maybe it would be nice if the Islamic world abandoned the idea of converting the rest of the world to ‘God’s religion’, by force if necessary; but there are at least two good reasons for rejecting this hope as fantasy.

Firstly, fundamentalist (some say radical) Islam is growing, both in numbers and in ferocity. In other words, much as we would like to see a growing majority of ‘moderates’, we observe exactly the opposite. Once upon a time there were was the Muslim Brotherhood, a very intolerant political movement within Islam. Hardly anybody in the west had heard of them. In the last half century we have seen the increasing influence of Wahabism in Saudi Arabia – very fundamentalist and very rich. Wahabists have funded mullahs with extreme views all over the world. More recently we have experienced the fun and games of Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al-Shabab and ISIS. Everybody has heard of them. They are all closely allied to the Muslim Brotherhood, whose founders would be mightily impressed and encouraged by their emergence.

Allegedly, Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion. There seems to be no doubt that the most violent and intolerant groups within it are proliferating alarmingly and disproportionally. Complacency is less and less justified. Pious hope of the kind of reform we would like to see is not encouraged by the evidence.

Secondly, despite the supposed importance of the five pillars of Islam: Shahada (profession of faith), Salah (prayer), Sakhat (alms giving), Haj (pilgrimage) and Ramadan (fasting), the real foundations of Islam are the prophet Mohammed, the revelations he claimed to have received (the Koran) and the accounts of his doings and those of his companions (the Hadith).

The five pillars, apart from the first, are not a problem for most non-Muslims. Mohammed is a very big problem. By my standards, by the standards of the Catholic Church, by the standards of most secular westerners, Mohammed was a very bad man, a warlord, a paedophile, a murderer. And yet, he is exalted by Muslims as being the ‘excellent example’.

The Koran is another very big problem. Muslims regard the Koran as a miracle, perfect in every respect. By pretty well every objective standard the Koran is risible. It is without organisation, self-contradictory and full of nonsense, including nonsense about the physical world. It is derivative, ahistorical and absurd. Some Christians have been converted to their faith simply by reading the Bible (not my position). It is difficult to imagine a non-Muslim being startled into Islam simply by reading the Koran.

The Hadith texts are Muslim accounts of Mohammed’s behaviour. Some portray him in what we might regard as a favourable light. Many do not.

The point is this: All the vicious, violent Muslim groups causing mayhem around the world can, quite correctly, point to texts in the Koran and the Hadith which justify their activities – and they do! They cite the example of Mohammed. When someone like Robert Spencer quotes them, he is accused of hate speech.

The melancholy truth is that Islam, unlike any other faith, defines itself by hatred and contempt for other religions. An extraordinary proportion of the Koran is devoted to Allah’s hatred of non-Muslims. Moreover, and this is my opinion, the theology of Islam is surprisingly thin. Granted, Islam is fiercely monotheistic. Christianity and Judaism are also monotheistic. Christianity, I cannot speak for Judaism, is remarkably rich and textured. God’s nature is taught to be Love. Our central prayer commands us to address the Deity as Father. Central to Christianity is the doctrine of Free Will. Muslims cannot speak of the future without saying ‘inshallah’ (God willing).

Much as I would like to share the hope that Islam will be reformed and that we shall be able to leave in peace and tolerance with Muslims, some of whom are, indeed, people of good will and tolerance, I regret that, for the above reasons, the hope appears forlorn.

The Koran is divided into the Medinan suras, which contain much which is irenic, and the Meccan suras, which are alarmingly bloodthirsty. Sadly for those who urge that Islam is ‘a religion of peace’, the Meccan suras are later revelations than the Medinan and therefore, according to Muslim authorities, may abrogate them. The Koran is a miracle of perfection; but the later passages are more perfect than the earlier ones!

Production vs Everything Else

I am not an economist – no apologies. Quantum Mechanics takes us well out of the range of common sense. In QM the equations work but nobody understands Quantum Mechanics – nobody! When it comes to Economics, we have to understand the theory because we have to make economic policy. Shall I take out this mortgage? The repayment is £1000 per month and my income is £1000 per month. Logic informs me that this is not going to work. What am I going to eat?

Every human on the planet understands that unless I increase my income, I cannot commit myself to a £1000 per month mortgage.

Regrettably, when we move into public policy (as opposed to personal policy) common sense flies out of the window. The most famous economist of the 20^th century (JMK) has taught politicians (no-one else would have been stupid enough to listen) that deficit spending is OK – as a long term policy. All of us understand that an emergency loan may be necessary. All of us know that debt as a way of life leads to disaster. We are all more intelligent than Keynes and governments.

All of us know that the answer is to increase production. Get a better job, improve your skills or work longer hours. Billions of people do this every day.

All human beings are smarter than Keynes. It is true; but most of us live in societies governed by Keynesians.

Digression
The First World War (an incomparable disaster and folly) was foisted upon the people of Europe by idiotic politicians. Millions died. The consequences included WWII and the Soviet Union. For all our vaunted democracies, we were taken into a catastrophe none of us wanted.

The biggest division between right and left is: shall we increase production or shall we concern ourselves with equitable distribution? The good news is that since 1970 production has increased dramatically. A huge number of people (more than ever in history) have been raised out of desperate poverty. Some governments (China, India and many countries in Asia) have reduced regulation and have enabled their peoples to exploit their talents, thereby vastly increasing production, in the process enriching themselves and providing work for their countrymen. The leftist preoccupation with distribution has been shown to be absurd. We know how to defeat poverty – by increasing wealth. To defeat disease, increase health. What would the left recommend, redistribute health?

Economics is not normative. It doesn’t tell you what you should do. It only tells you what will happen if you act in a certain way. The central question is: and then what will happen? My favourite economists, the Austrian School, believe that the answers to this question do not depend upon collecting vast amounts of data and distilling from the data a set of laws. The Austrians do economics the way mathematicians do geometry. Mathematicians do not measure the angles of an equilateral triangle and then announce that each of them is equal to 60^o. They may demonstrate the validity of their conclusions by inviting you to confirm them by measurement. You can waste the next thousand years trying to disprove them; but it isn’t going to happen. Geometrical truths are axiomatic. For Austrians, economic truths are likewise axiomatic. Therefore, all other things being equal, if supply increases, prices will fall – axiomatic!

Production is the key. A poor farmer knows this: if he produces more, his children will be better fed. He may increase production by working harder, by using fertilisers or by investing in a donkey – or better still, a tractor.

Mrs Thatcher was our greatest Prime Minister of the twentieth century. She brought to politics the common sense of a housewife, of a grocer's daughter.

Fairness – Social Justice

Here are two terms which encapsulate political divisions. The left bangs on about fairness without defining it. Obama and Corbyn and the other intellectual pigmies have a manufactured conception of ‘fairness’. What it boils down to in political terms is that if John has more and Jim has less, that is unfair and the situation needs to be redressed. This does not arise from any underlying principle. It is simply conjured out of fresh air. It bears no relation to our intuitions about the real world.

The Real World

John and Jim play tennis. When they compete against each other, John always (or usually) prevails. There may be many reasons for this. We may note that John is taller (which augments his serve). We may note that John’s mother was a formidable player in her youth and introduced the boy to the game when he was very young and did her best to pass on skills. Perhaps his dad had some success in another field but passed on a singular, but general, determination to succeed. With these advantages John has a better than average chance of becoming a club, a county, a national or even an international champion. John happens to be a Czech or a Swede. What do our intuitions tell us about the morality of John’s acquisition of silverware? Not a lot.

There was a case a few years ago of a successful female skater being physically assaulted by a rival and prevented from competing. We were all outraged. It was a moral issue. Our intuition told us so. It is unfair to resort to violence, unless, of course, the arena of competition is violence (as in boxing). Even boxers, though, don’t get to sneak up upon their rivals with a cosh.

We are talking fairness. It’s unfair for Jim to cosh John or for Jill to break Jane’s leg in pursuit of sporting success.

If John has superior skills, a better coach or trains more energetically it is not unfair that he should beat Jim. I would rather be John.

Karl’s dad ran a successful small business. Karl grew up to believe that, with hard work and initiative, he could emulate or surpass his father. His Aunty Gladys died and left Karl a few quid. He used the funds and became a billionaire.

Kevin’s father was a drunk. Young Kevin had no useful role model. He lived in slum, went to a crappy school and failed his exams. Yes, I would rather be Karl. Indeed, I would wish there to more Karls than Kevins.

John had advantages and made the most of them; so did Karl. The essence of fairness is that it is OK to make the most of what you have, provided that you do not sabotage others in making the most of what they have.

This happens all the time. Suppose that Karl’s business was a taxi firm. Suppose that Karl’s uncle was the mayor and Karl persuaded him that anyone wanting to start a new taxi firm should be obliged to get a government license, costing £100,000. Kevin is stuffed. This would be the essence of unfairness, the equivalent of breaking Kevin’s legs.

Social Justice

I hate this phrase. Justice is justice. We have looked at various instances of it. The concept of a level playing field is a commonplace. And we understand it. It is part of our intuition. To qualify ‘justice’ is obscene.

A popular use of qualified justice is ‘climate justice’. To somewhat simplify the situation, there are those who maintain that developed countries use more than their share of the earth’s resources. If you could, indeed, show that this was so (a big ‘if’), you might have a case for saying that underdeveloped countries could use natural resources (as we have done) but that we should use correspondingly less. Have you ever heard this recommended?

Be magnanimous! Rejoice in success. If you are successful, share you good fortune.

The Duellists

I may have mentioned this in a previous post, at least in passing.

Is there a greatest poem, a greatest novel, a greatest painting? There will never be consensus; but there will always be contenders.

I think that Ridley Scott’s The Duellists is a contender for the greatest movie. I can think of others.

The film is based on a story by Joseph Conrad, a Polish contender for the title of greatest novelist writing in the English language.  Apocalypse Now is also based upon a work by Conrad.

I have just watched The Duellists for, possibly, the tenth time. It didn’t disappoint. It is stunningly beautiful. The French countryside is beautiful. Keith Carradine is beautiful. Diana Quick is beautiful.

The acting is impeccable. Harvey Keitel is better than impeccable. When I first encountered him, in this movie, in the 1980s, I was sure that he was a contender for ‘best actor of his generation’. Aside from Keitel, there are masterpieces from James Fox, Albert Finney, Tom Conti and half a dozen others. Nobody puts a foot wrong. Scott must have thought he had died and gone to heaven, to have a cast like this.

I once showed this film to someone I hoped would like it. She didn’t. She thought that the ‘honour code’, which obliged DuBarre to submit to Ferraud’s notion of honour, was stupid. Duh? That is what the film is about.

I hope you will watch it, if you haven’t already. Perhaps you will contend for another movie. Pulp Fiction (for me another contender) happens to feature Harvey Keitel.

Inequality

Obama has described this as the defining issue of our age. I thought the chattering classes believed it was anthropogenic global warming.

Suppose you were to inform me about some major problem in the world, say Malaria. You give me statistics about incidence of the disease, about mortality rates, about the nastiness of Malaria and I shrug and smirk, “I don’t care”. You would have reason to think that you were dealing with a pretty unpleasant person. You would be right. Likewise, if you were telling me about suicide bombings or beheadings or about people whose diet was life-threateningly bad. Your contempt for me would be entirely justified.

This isn’t going to happen – because I do care about these things.

OK, start again. Suppose you had written a best-selling book about the iniquity of inequality or even won a Nobel Prize for researching the pernicious effects of income inequality. I shrug and smirk and say, “I don’t care.” You tell me that some bosses earn more than 100 times as much as people they employ. “Don’t care.”

If you tell me that A does not earn enough to keep body and soul together, I will want to know if he is to blame, if he is too indolent to look after himself. If not, I will care. I will want a state safety net or private charity to provide for him or to help him get on his feet.

Another example: walking down Deansgate, I encounter a stunningly beautiful young woman. A few yards later I encounter another young woman; she is decidedly plain. Do I start hyperventilating about the injustice? Do I throw battery acid in the face of the beauty? Of course not. I wouldn’t do anything. I might approve of the plain girl losing some weight or being given some tips about skincare.

In other words, provided B has not robbed C, it is never right to disadvantage B simply to reduce the inequality between him and C.

Joseph Stiglitz has written a book about inequality and has won a Nobel Prize for his ‘thinking’. Wilkinson and Pickett have written a really nasty book, The Spirit Level purporting to show that more ‘equal’ societies are ‘better’ in every way than less ‘equal’ societies. And there is Thomas Picketty who also obsesses on this theme.

X and Y are unequal in some way. X is better, luckier, prettier, richer, brighter, happier, more talented than Y. It is almost always more difficult to bring Y up to X’s level than to bring X down: battery acid, a bang on the head, progressive taxation, which is always what the ‘equalists’ choose.

I am ugly and you are handsome. I am poor and you are rich. Let’s tax and mutilate you. Voila!

Leftists bang on incessantly about fairness. They have a definition of fairness which I do not understand.

In most democracies we have ‘progressive’ income tax. For me all taxes are iffy. But a tax which takes proportionately more from one group than from another is, by definition, unfair. 10% from everyone might be justified (it has scriptural support); but 10% from poor people and 40% from rich people is self-evidently wicked. Even more wicked was the ancient regime whereby the poor paid all the tax.

Income tax is bad enough but many leftists want ‘wealth’ taxes, which simply siphon money from those who have.

These nasty equalists base their political economy upon flouting the commandment against covetousness. If I have sufficient (and let’s face it, most English people have more than a sufficiency) why should it matter that my neighbour has more, even much more?

  

Executive Pay – And Then What Will Happen?

The news is full of the differential between CEOs’ remuneration and average salaries. Apparently, the best paid bosses of the biggest companies earn in the region of 180 times the average salaries of workers in these companies. It is a big difference. Perhaps Charles Murray would regard it as unseemly.

However, wages, salaries and, for that matter, all prices are simply a signal of what the market will bear. Shareholders cheerfully award what you might think are excessively generous packages to executives who, in their opinion, massively increase the value of their holdings. And who is to say that they are wrong to do so? Not you! In fact there is no defensible principle on which you can say that they are wrong. None!

Presumably, these shareholders (like all purchasers) would like to pay less than the £4.9M which the top bosses get. But they reckon that without these fabulous salaries they would not get the top bosses. They reckon that for a lower salary they would only get executives of the second, third, or fourth rank – someone who could increase the bottom line by only millions, rather than billions.

They are acting in what they perceive to be their own best interests. We all expect to be allowed to do that. They actually believe that by paying less they would be worse off. Who can say they should be forced to do so?

Suppose you took it into your head to build a house. One consideration would be the market value of the completed edifice. Your resources make it possible for you to choose between hundreds of architects. A quotes you a fee of £X pounds. His reputation and track record suggest that the value of your house would be very substantial. His nearest competitor (B) quotes you a lesser figure of £Y but his reputation and track record suggest that the value of your house would be much less substantial. By what principle should you be compelled to prefer B over A? The question answers itself.

What will guide you is not a moral principle but your subjective (perhaps educated) estimated reading of the market. Every price is based on subjective estimates. Sometimes we agree to a price and subsequently regret having done so. Sometimes we rejoice in the purchase and even make a killing. The future is notoriously hard to predict.

To drag in the wages of bricklayers, carpenters and labourers is clearly an irrelevance when considering the architects fee. They have nothing to do with it. What you agree with the architect is not a moral question, provided that you do not rob or defraud third parties to acquire the means to pay him.

This brings us to a fundamental question: is Economics about morality? No. Economics is about consequences. The question can be framed thus: And then what will happen?

Sickeningly, governments are all too eager to get involved with citizens’ economic decisions. Governmental interference distorts markets. Tax something and you will get less of it; subsidise something and you will get more of it. That is the sort of lesson that Economics teaches. Incidentally, taxing and subsidising both involve government interference, sometimes simultaneously – tax work and people will work less (axiomatic); subsidise bastardy and you will get more of it (axiomatic).

Why are the BBC and Co making such a song and dance about Executive pay? Because they find the differentials distasteful. In their pusillanimous view, something should be done. We have shown (definitively) that their distaste is an irrelevance. Shareholders must be allowed to agree whatever packages seem best to them. They must be allowed to act in what they perceive to be their own interests. The salary of a secretary or the wage of a cleaner is not the benchmark for the remuneration of a CEO. On the contrary, a hugely successful CEO, who grows the company, may well thereby increase the provision of jobs for secretaries and cleaners.

Lest you should think that I am not interested in moral questions, let me remind you that the 10 commandments are very clear about covetousness: do not do it!

In the 60s or 70s there was a character known as ‘super hod’. He was a hod carrier who went to work in a Rolls Royce. Though unskilled, but very energetic, he could supply a more than usually large number of bricklayers with the bricks and mortar they needed to do their job. Imagine the outcry if his employers had been forced to pay him no more than ordinary hod carriers.

Been Thinking about Global Warming Hysteria – Again

The Earth is about 4 billion years old. A lot has happened. Continents have slid around. Mountain ranges have emerged. Sheets of ice miles thick have periodically covered vast areas and then retreated. The atmosphere has fluctuated: sometimes more carbon dioxide, sometimes less. Whole phyla of animals have emerged. Many species of plants and animals have appeared and disappeared. It has been a turbulent 4 billion years. Every change has had a cause. Some causes can be guessed at. When it comes to long past events, we can speculate. We do have evidence of cyclical variations of temperature and atmosphere. Sometimes high concentrations of CO₂ have coincided with high temperatures, sometimes with ice ages. The rest of the solar system affects our earth. The moon drags the oceans around and gives us tides. The activity of the sun (in the form of sun spots) correlates with weather, crop yields and stock market prices. Lots of things change. One change affects other phenomenon.

A series of causes (about which we can speculate) rendered the Earth in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries relatively colder than it had been. This was BAD news for people at the time. Food was harder to grow and fuel to maintain life became more expensive. History tells us that during the ‘Roman Warm Period’ and the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ European civilisation flourished. Food was relatively plentiful. Winters were lethal to relatively few.

A few decades ago some scientists speculated that we were due for another cold period. This was, indeed, a cause for some alarm. The prospect of ice fairs on the Thames did not compensate for the prospect of rising food prices. Fears of another ice age were credible – ice ages had happened before.

All of a sudden two things happened. We observed that the average temperature of the Earth had risen since the eighteenth century by a fraction of a degree Centigrade – what a relief. We also remembered that scientists had told us that certain elements of the atmosphere (most notably water vapour) had the effect of trapping heat. One of these elements was CO₂, a tiny proportion of our atmosphere (0.04%). It was/is true that human beings contribute to the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, perhaps as much as 3% – the rest comes from volcanoes and other natural causes.

A third thing happened. Governments around the world took it into their heads that because human beings contribute some carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and that there had been some warming since the Little Ice Age of the eighteenth century, we were frying the Earth. This conclusion is unwarranted. The Earth would eventually resemble Venus, whose atmospheric temperature is more than 100^o C. In the meantime oceans would rise and engulf low lying regions.

Al Gore’s absurd movie, An Inconvenient Truth, contained a graphic demonstrating a correlation between CO₂ and temperature. It exists but the graphic also demonstrated that increases in temperature characteristically preceded rises in CO₂.

In view of the fact that weather is so fantastically complex that forecasts about winds and rain and sunshine and temperature more than a few days in the future are impossible, the policy recommendations of these politicians were reckless in the extreme. We were to cut back on the exploitation of hydrocarbons, whose cheapness and abundance had enabled the western world to achieve unprecedented levels of prosperity and wellbeing, and to deny these benefits to the underdeveloped nations.

We may compare the alarmist ‘scientists’ with an astronomer whose preferred tool is a microscope.

If it were the case that temperatures were rising dramatically and that the effects in terms of sea levels were causing havoc and loss of life, we would have serious reasons for investigating the causes and for contemplating policies (if any were available) to mitigate the problem. The fact is that the increase has been on the order of 0.6^o C over the past century or so – an increase which would have been regarded as benign (if niggardly) by those alive in the eighteenth century. In the real world, climate changes as a result of the sun’s behaviour, about which we can do nothing. When, as is virtually certain, the global average temperature takes another dip, we want our economies to be as robust as possible, to facilitate adaptation. Shutting down industrial civilisation is the very last thing we should be doing – suicidal, in fact.