The Filter^

Tales from Bath III: Death

Steve has previously lauded the virtues of biography, and it’s a passion we share. As a vehicle for illuminating history, and for sheer anecdotal entertainment, the biography has an underrated presence in economics. Almost all books are a form of biography, and a condensed form of biography is an obituary. It’s my favourite part of The Economist, and I recently bought a collection of Telegraph obituaries edited by Hugh Massingberd.

As we traipsed through Bath city centre, Faith and I got into a routine – she’d disappear behind changing room curtains for half an hour to try on various wardrobes, whilst I’d sit patiently and read an obituary of Michael Oakeshott, the ‘Conservative’ philosopher.

Oakeshott is an interesting contrast to many Austrian philosophers, and having written what I have done in the first two parts of this trilogy, the wisdom of age counteracts: he saw life as a “predicament, not a journey” and that

what opened before us was not a road but a boundless sea

Whilst I ponder if such appealing words can be aligned with Austrian processes, and De Soto and Hayeks paths, I’ll draw on the points of similarity.

Oakeshott studied rules: in “Human Conduct” he

elaborated the distinction between enterprise associations (which are devoted to some specific purpose) and civil associations (which share a common set of rules)

Says Ferdinand Mount:

What does Oakeshott teach us then? Well, I think that as a general rule there are no general rules, and therefore that we should pay close attention to the particular rule of the game we happen to be playing

Oakeshott enjoyed the company of conversation, and would sooner speak to youth than address a conference. He made many administrative triumphs at the LSE, and was known as a Tory dandy.
He said

Our predicament is not the difficulty of attaining happiness, but the difficulty of avoiding the misery to which the pursuit of happiness exposes us. Government has a qualified but important part to play in extricating us form this predicament: its role is not to civilise but to maintain that peace and order without which civilisation is impossible.

Consequently, he votes for the party likely to do least harm – political activity was not to provide wealth, but to keep the State afloat.

I love his respect for the past: ”when… a schoolboy unpacked his satchel to do his homework he unpacked three thousand years of the fortunes and misfortunes of human intellectual adventure”

And finally, in life and in his works, Peregrine Worsthorne says

Oakeshott’s style was enchanting. Here was a man who taught my generation how Conservatism could be combined with Bohemianism, convention with eccentricity, orderliness with wild abandon, pleasure with responsibility.

Michael Oakeshott, 1901-1990

Nicholas Archer, Tales from Bath II: Life

Maybe I was a little sickly in rejoicing over the news of so much balderdash Britart being burnt in a blaze but what made it even sweeter was a sense of replacement: two inspiring displays in Bath. Firstly, Kurt Jackson’s “Two Woods” at the Victoria Gallery. I’m all for merging boundaries between the gallery and life (I still have photos sat out on the three seat sofa in Greenbank Park) but am offended by artists who force the issue. Recreating a branch of Tesco in Tate Liverpool just doesn’t cut it – it’s patronising to claim credit for the lesson that art lies all around us. Jackson truly does blur life and art; his natural landscapes are created on location, the giant canvass laid out on the ground as he strolls barefoot across the page, treading in the seasons. The forest scenes painted directly onto local newspapers demonstrate rawness, and technical accomplishment triumphs over farce.

More unexpectedly, I paid my first visit to the charming and unpretentious Beaux Arts Gallery, hosting an exhibition by Nicholas Archer. Archer won the prestigious Hunting Prize in 2002, and according to the press release his paintings:

are in part a reaction to the notion that England is somehow ‘grey’.

His equestrian works are bold and vivid – the one pictured caught my attention for its motion and palette. Aside from haunting portraits, and horseracing, he uses a fascinating technique of Gold dust on sandpaper to depict grand buildings. Again, the press release:

The sepia-like monochromatic quality evokes nostalgia, whilst the materials themselves hint at the decadence and excess of the subject matter.

The images here are photos I took thanks to the kind permission of Beaux Arts, so please credit them, and the artist, if you wish to borrow.

Tales from Bath: Birth

Having spent the last few days helping my brother and sister-in-law look after their first child, I’ve marvelled at several new experiences. An example, occurred at the new mothers group in Midsomer Norton, where I had the fortune to be the sole gentleman amongst more than twenty mums and babies. A forum to share experience, offer support, and put 50p in a tin can for some coffee and chocolate digestives. I glanced across the hall, trying not to mistakenly eye a boob, or view a nappy change, and considered the social implications of our meeting.
One of the best arguments against idealistic socialists, and indeed naïve libertarians, is the vacuous notion of a desired utopia. One of the greatest lessons I’ve learnt from Coase, has been that instead of comparing reality to a hypothetical alternative, we must think firmly in the real.

That being said, it is right to assess the direction we’re heading, and decide whether we wish to proceed. Choosing the right path involves detachment, and supposition. Therefore, the furthest I’m willing to go toward a utopian ideal, is the following quote from FA Hayek:

"we should regard as the most desirable order of society one which we would choose if we knew that our initial position in it would be decided purely by chance"

Of course the circumstance of your birth is entirely decided by chance, and to think beyond this delves into philosophy and genetics beyond our present depths. However once born, people tend to forget this: the winners seek to retain their privilege, and the losers face constraints to their ability to communicate.

Childbirth is perhaps the greatest leveller, and with a national health service there’s no escaping society. The village hall of this rural town near Bath contained a thorough cross section of society, and it was interesting to see how within a few minutes ‘groups’ had formed: the 20 something young professionals, the ‘older’ mums, the “too posh to push” set, the chavs etc….
And acutely conscious of the fact that I was the only man, with tits flying out everywhere, I thought of dear old Friedrich Hayek. Surely, the optimal society would be the one where we’re most willing to put names into a hat, and each take a different child home. Alternatively, the one where such a deal would be the least horrendous.

That is my barometer for social policy.

Singed Saatchi

Poor old Charles Saatchi. A fire in East London has probably destroyed millions of pounds worth of his art collection, including some of his more famous ones: Emin's 'tent', Hirst's 'dots', and The Chapman Brothers' 'Hell'. Shame.

I recollect a tale regarding Marc Quinn's 'Self' (pictured) which Saatchi bought, and kept at home. The sculpture, filled with Quinn's own blood required an icey temperature, and was housed in it's own freezer, in the kitchen. Rumour has it that house staff unplugged it, thinking it was a normal freezer, and the blood defrosted over the kitchen floor.

One wonders what Nigella thought of that!

I keep waiting for the inevitable saturation point of Britart, or "Sensation", or "SaatchiArt", or whatever it's called.... and the time when things artists like Birtwhistle and Stuart Pearson Wright are as famous as Emin and Hirst. Perhaps Hirst's new bar will be his bridge too far, or maybe Saatchi's latest glitch will convince him to pack it in. Make no mistake, the only reason we're aware of these works of tedium is because of one man's dubious judgement and paternal ego.

Correction I've just been told that "Self" was on display in County Hall when it opened, in 2003. Therefore, the rumour seems to be false.

All the Useless Processing Cycles, again

Check out WebSE. It's a web-based, Flash simulation of the classic Macintosh. You can't actually do that much with it, and it's all in German, but you can run MacWrite and a few games.

A Fantasy Economy

Please print out this article, find a quiet 10 minutes, and read it.
Economics is full of sophisms (common errors) and several notable ones are straightened out by the Walrus Magazine.
It tells the tale of down and out economist Edward Castronova, who was visited by genius. A seasoned player of online fantasy games, his insight came from discovering that players sold items which they'd earnt within the game, over eBay, for real money US dollars.
Here we go: what is "real money"!
And another: how can we keep creating wealth?

Castronova soon calculated the Ever Quest exchange rate, it's GDP (making it the 77th largest "country" in the world - further: what is a "country" - an economic entity defined by arbitary political boundaries?)

He'd done what mortals can but dream of, he'd stumbled across a research field, and created a "real" study where economic activity can be measured in an experimental setting. A functioning laboratory, ripe for analysis.

He also looked at Ultima Online and Lineage 2, to name but two similar games.

And how did the economic community respond? Rejection after rejection.

One reviewer wrote a snippy note saying he preferred "to stick with things that are real rather than virtual.... One can appreciate the economists' confusion. Even the most highly valued virtual goods do not seem, in some essential way, real. An Axe of the Heavens may be great for killing virtual orcs, but it cannot be enjoyed in the physical world. You can't eat virtual food to stay alive. But that distinction shouldn't matter — at least not in economics, which is, as Castronova never tires of pointing out, the study of the entirely arbitrary values that people ascribe to things. "Most of a diamond's value is virtual, too," he adds

The article draws on Adam Smith, and Marx, and if teaches you anything let it be this: economics is not only more curious than we think, but more curious than we can possibly think.

Thank you to Faith for sending me the article, and to Nick Schandler for alerting me to Alex Tabarrok's prior treatment of the issue.

Rules and norms

I was at the Ashville Football Club awards evening last night, celebrating the hard-work of players, coaches and and the commitee. Most of the teams were wearing their Ashville t-shirts, and a squad of under 9s with matching uniforms looked very professional.
I remember going to a parent teachers evening at school once, and noticing how we'd all changed from blazers to a similarly homogenous attire of jeans and shirts. My teacher laughed at how pupils vociferously complain about the 'rule' of uniform, yet conform to the 'norm' of uniform.

One of the managers told me that they'd told their team to wear their Ashville tops to look good, and to avoid the daunting pressures some kids feel when permitted to choose.
One of the reasons why my school had a uniform was as a social leveller - to rescue us from the anxiety of fashion.

People often like to be coerced; there's the classic tale of slaves employing a whipper to prevent free-riding. The kids didn't seem to mind not having a choice, and i'm sure the ones who can't afford the latest Liverpool kits were secretly pleased. An outdated footie shirt is prime fodder for the teasers.

So i'm not surprised that the current debate on public bans on smoking exists within a rules vs norms framework. I've heard many smokers who approve the ban as a means to help them quit. Undoubtedly, coersion had potential to benefit some people. But I am saddened by the lack of people who argue for a natural property-rights solution. Instead of developing a rule to promote our views on smoking, why not lets our views on smoking create a norm. Let landlords choose what policy to envoke.

It seems utterly straightforward to me: give the publican, footie coach, or individual the freedom to choose.

When Paxman met Chomsky

The interview of Noam Chomsky by Jeremy Paxman was broadcast on Wednesday night on BBC2. Here's one of the exchanges:

Paxman: What was the United States supposed to do after 9/11? It had been the victim of a grotesque, intentional attack, what was it supposed to do but try...?

Chomsky: Why pick 9/11? Why not pick 1993. Actually the fact that the terrorist act succeeded in September 11th did not alter the risk analysis. In 1993, similar groups, US trained Jihadi's came very close to blowing up the World Trade Center, with better planning, they probably would have killed tens of thousands of people. Since then it was known that this is very likely. In fact right through the 90's there was technical literature predicting it, and we know what to do. What you do is police work. Police work is the way to stop terrorist acts and it succeeded.

The full transcript along with the video stream can be found here. Chomsky will lecture at Liverpool University on Saturday evening.

Dr. Patel/Czyzewski/Wang/Shirazi or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Immigrants

Convincing people that immigration is beneficial to all parties concerned is quite a difficult task. The usual concerns come from the "receiving" countries, where naive racism combined with media hysteria means that the public often views asylum seeks and economic migrants as leeches draining the social welfare system. When reminded that many economic migrants are professionals that are highly-skilled, their stance softens a little, only to revert back to their usual point-of-view when the next Daily Fascist Mail front page paints a grim picture of the strange and dirty immigrants.

Another aspect of migration is the problem of "brain drain". Anthony reckons there are only 10 English-born PhD students specialising in Economics in England at the moment. Assuming the other capable minds have gone abroad to study their Phds, England, at first glance, must be suffering from "brain drain". The issue is not seen as a problem because of the high level of "returnees" (most of the Kennedy Scholars return to the UK after their times at MIT and Harvard) - one conclusion that can be drawn from this is that the economic prosperity of England is high enough so that people do return.

On the other hand, professionals from developing world might never return to their home countries. A paper written for the Copenhagen Consensus discusses the need to compensate migrant-sending countries for the brain-drain losses in the short-term, but trade liberalisation will be the answer in the long-term.

The Copenhagen Consensus is a conference that has attracted some of the best economists around the world to discuss the ten "biggest challenges in the world". The paper on migration written by Philip Martin of UC Davis can be found (in PDF) here.

BTW, for the people who are sceptical about the Copenhagen Consensus - sorry you haven't been invited, better luck next time!

'Photography is crumbling'

Yesterday's Daily Telegraph (not linked out of spite for their registration policy) contained a hospitable interview with David Hockney, regarding the role of photography as a medium of truth.

"People don't know how to look at pictures anymore..... Piers Morgan... argued that these may be reconstructions, but they are still showing you something true.
Well, you can't actually quite take that line. You might as well say that Piero della Francesca's 15th-century fresco of the risen Christ is evidence of the Resurrection"

Hockney sees photographs as even less reliable than paintings, and uses evidence from his popular thesis to explain why he thought the Mirror ones were false

"the photographer is so close to whatever is going on that he has to have been a participant."

As the interviewer points out, the photos showed evidence of a dramatic device used since Caravaggio - to go in close.

The Filter^ has previously questioned the media's fetish for using a photo for every story (it started here and was majestically continued here), and it strikes me as remarkable how this entire war is being decided by one or two photographs. As an ironic gesture, I've included a portrait of Hockney by Adam Birtwistle.

Back to the Telegraph, and Hockney also expressed interesting opinions on Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ, (note: it's not "The Passion", which is registered by Jeanette Winterson for a coming project), and the representation of pain.

"There are lots and lots of pictures of the Crucifixion. But it was an unusual form of execution. There's no action in it. In fact, you die becasue you can't move.... Gibson's is a movie, not a still picture, so it has to have movement, which makes it even more difficult."

His reputation as a creator and a theorist means that Hockney will always be listened to, and the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition, which he co-organises, will be popular and successful. It is true, however, that by exposing and discussing truth Hockney can't escape from the judgements and scrutiny he advocates on others.

David Storks comment on Steve's "Caravaggio's Leica" underline this point, and demonstrate why I believe Hockney is a great man - for prompting the debate. Ultimately, the truth will out, and art will be in a better place having had the debate, no matter who wins.