UK General election, regulation, process, libertarian

The UK general election takes place soon.

In years gone by I used to follow every twist and turn of the elections process. Now? Not so much.

Some sort of strange fragmentation is happening, so that our trusty mainly two-party system erodes into something that might well be more ‘democratic’ on one way of looking at things, but creates intellectual incoherence and incentivises trivial opportunism. The likely result is a new coalition, in which every party and politician has a perfect excuse for not doing what they promised in the election campaign and instead indulges in faux cooperation tempered with faux back-stabbing. Awful.

If Labour come first and end up leading the coalition every ghastly progressive force in the UK can heave a sigh of relief. Huge armies of people and organisations who depend on unaffordable public funded support will confidently expect to get bungs from the state in return for promoting pro-Labour propaganda. The absurdly expensive ‘international development’ industry will have nothing to fear as our foreign policy and defence capabilities decline. Nothing will happen to clarify the UK’s unhappy relationship with the European Union. We’ll have more strategically damaging policies on ‘climate change’. Stupid rent-control policies will be tried and fail. Feminist and other fanatics wanting to curb free speech will gloat as they insinuate themselves unchecked into smirky positions of influence in our universities. More and more laws and regulations will gush forth in a madcap race towards post-democratic state micro-management of pretty much everything.

Wait? Most of this has been going on for five years under the existing Conservative/LibDem coalition? So what’s the point of voting?

Ah. Not much. Got it.

Feeling like a few gasps of fresh air?

Over in Canada they have passed a new law that tries to set practical limits on regulatory reach:

Canada is now the first country in the world to require that for every new regulation introduced one of equivalent burden must be removed … the costs of new rules must be quantified and equal or greater costs removed. It essentially caps the cost of rules coming directly from regulations. Government rules can also come from legislation and policy so the one-for-one rule is not a cap on the cost of all government rules. Still, it is a very good start.

… Red tape’s most destructive impact is that it undermines the relationship between government and its citizens. Struggling with confusing language, getting put on hold for excessive periods of time, getting bad compliance advice from government agents or running up against a dumb, costly rule shakes one’s faith that the taxes we pay are working for us not against us. Small businesses often comment on CFIB’s surveys that they “feel like the enemy” when dealing with government.

The government recently published a 36-department inventory of 129,860 regulatory requirements that will be tracked annually. This inventory will allow for an overall assessment of whether regulatory activity is increasing or decreasing in the same way we can currently track whether government spending and taxes are increasing or decreasing.

Well, I suppose that we should be grateful that Canada is now tracking some 130,000 regulatory requirements, although we purists might want to see that number reduced by several orders of magnitude. Quick! We need more regulations on monitoring regulations! Still, the idea that you get a new regulation only if you dump an old one seems better than nothing. Who knows, in a few decades it may reach the EU.

The whole point about the mountains of rules and laws and regulations thrown out by the modern state is that they start with the inhuman assumption that people will behave ‘well’ only if coerced. The apparent risk of bad or unwise behaviour by a small minority means that everyone is deemed to be a threat and so must be controlled. The state does not trust citizens, so citizens end up not trusting the state. See airport security passim.

Take the simple task of my delivering a course on public speaking for an Embassy in London.

One way of doing this is for the Embassy to spend several weeks preparing a long written contract that covers every conceivable and inconceivable contingency. The other way means the Embassy telling me in a short email what it wants and when, then I deliver the course and they pay me an agreed sum if they are happy. No formal written contracts cleared round the departments and then served up in duplicate and multiple languages. Just simple trust and good manners.

Wait, hoot the suspicious public. Why is the Embassy not putting these things out for tender? Why should Crawford and not Jones or Gilowska get that cushy job? Where’s the guarantee of fair process and diversity in the use of taxpayers’ money?

Wait, hoot the liberal fascists.What if Crawford turns up half an hour late and does not deliver the full course as he promised? What if the course is cancelled because of a tube-strike and Crawford demands compensation for all the work he has done preparing the course? Why have no diversity anti-racist declarations been made obligatory to ensure that Embassy employees are not going to be subject to harmful Crawford propaganda? Above all, has a full risk-management audit been done and circulated to all stakeholders for their input? How can Embassy employees feel safe without all this being laid down in a full efficient contract?

The sheer stridency of the clamour from all sides for process of different shapes and sizes wears down the resistance of even the steeliest leaders. They default to retreating into regulatory process, as it is ‘safer’ for them. No-one can complain if exhaustive rules are followed meticulously, even if the results are wretched. Everything political devolves into a self-pitying excuse: “we did our very best and brought in strong new regulations as you asked for – what more can you expect from us?“

Over in the USA ideas still count. Read this short account of the hugely impressive Carly Fiorina, who gets it (my emphasis):

Fiorina takes her critique further, saying the country needs a new tax code. “It’s not just enough to lower tax rates,” she told me. “You have to simplify the 26,000-page tax code and take away the power to grant special favors.”

Hearkening back to her corporate career, she believes technology can play a “transformative” role because it allows citizens to play a greater watchdog role and keep a check on spending, taxes, and government abuses. “We need to do what Obama talked about in 2008 but backtracked on: more transparency and accountability, putting budgets and legislation online,” she told me.

Some of her ideas may sound fanciful but are worth discussing. “People think I’m joking, but maybe we ought to put every one of those regulations out on the Internet . . . and ask the American people to vote on them,” she told the Heritage Foundation last week. “Five stars, we keep you, one star, you’re gone. Wouldn’t that put interesting pressure on the political process?”

If something dramatic isn’t done, the notion of government “of, by, and for the people” will be lost. “What happens when a system is so complicated and so powerful that only the powerful, the wealthy, the well connected can deal with all that?” she asked.

That last question is indeed the key question of our times. Who in the UK election asks it? No-one.

Last word with Penn Jillette, a US magician and creative genius with a generous libertarian humanist democratic streak. Watch the whole thing, as he explains why the USA’s mainstream political tendencies are each asking the wrong questions – and drifting to expensive irrelevance: