It is a sin to fly says the church. "Making selfish choices such as flying on holiday or buying a large car are a symptom of sin. Sin is not just a restricted list of moral mistakes. It is living a life turned in on itself where people ignore the consequences of their actions."
This has attracted a lot of ridicule from people who'd rather not know. Iain Dale, and some of the responses pile on the ridicule. Sin to fly? Ridiculous! I like flying!
Tim Worstall finds the idea is so absurd, he doesn't even need to comment.
Here's the thing. I agree that flying and driving are not sins, and that it would be counterproductive if we really did treat them as sins. But for reasons that should be explained, not just because I don't want to know.
The church's argument is, presumably, that carbon emissions cause global warming, and that this will, to the best of our knowledge, cause considerable harm to a great many people. The moral principle to be applied is "don't do harm to other people". So far so good.
Now I would argue that choosing not to fly or not to drive is superogatory, that is, it a morally good choice above and beyond one's duty. Emitting carbon is not the best moral choice, but is not so bad as to be morally prohibited.
Emitting carbon is one of those things that does some harm, but not so much harm that we would be better off doing without carbon-based energy altogether. Furthermore we are not in a position to judge whether other people's uses of carbon are going to do more harm, in general, than good, largely to them. Doubtless there are sacrifices that, if everybody made them, the net effect would be good. But make the sacrifices bigger, and the net effect will be bad - people will lose out more than they gain from a cooler world. (The right policy, of course, is to correct the externalised cost of carbon emissions with a carbon levy. Then we wouldn't, as individuals, have to worry about carbon emissions.)
Central control (whether by force, or by convincing moral injunction) can serve single specific objectives reasonably well, such as winning a war, or perhaps tackling global warming. The freer economy does much better at fulfilling the enormous diversity of needs that exist in reality - food, shelter, medical research, school trips, etc. This is like capitalism versus communism all over again. One day, perhaps, global warming will be the only significant challenge we face. Today it is merely a biggie among many, and we should still be wary of tackling it in such a way as to do more harm in other areas.
These are not the arguments we hear. Instead it is the spurious "I am supporting the tourist economy of ..." So what? Whatever you spend your money on, you will support some economy of some sort. Leave it in the bank and it gets borrowed and spent, or possibly invested. Put it under the floorboards and it is effectively a free loan to the state. It is hard to do "economic" wrong with your money.
So why has the church hit carbon with the S-word? Is it that the language of morality doesn't always have room for the idea that people are the best judges of their own needs and desires? And not just religious morality: Kant's categorical imperative - "Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it would become a universal law" - seems also to underpin a lot of environmental moral argument, and suffers from a similar flaw. We aren't all the same, we don't all have the same needs and desires, and it would be quite awful if we all did the same things.
Is it that the church is uncomfortable with a capitalist rationale for relaxing? Modern capitalism was largely invented in the protestant world. Previously restrictions on usury, theories of fair prices and so on were among the factors holding it back. But I am reminded of historian RH Tawney's comment that it was not initally a difference of doctrine that allowed this, so much as reduced influence on civil authorities resulting from the schism.
After finding that link to Tawney on Wikipedia, I read it, and found a second relevant point of his. That "...such an attitude [equating the invisible hand with God's plan] precluded a critical examination of institutions, and left as the sphere of Christian charity only those parts of life which could be reserved for philanthropy, precisely because they fell outside that larger area of normal human relations, in which the promptings of self-interest provided an all-sufficient motive and rule of conduct."
I agree with Tawney again. No institutions should be exempt from critical examination. Compartmentalisation leads to ignorance. By failing to reconcile your moral framework with good progress achieved, errors in the framework can go unnoticed. Does the church's error in deeming carbon emissions sinful result from this failure to critically examine and accept capitalism?
Tags: sin, carbon emissions, church of england
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Supermarkets and symbolism
Richard Huzzey reminds me of the discussion at Stephen Tall's blog on the subject of supermarkets.
Stephen and Richard are both right, although they seem to disagree with each other. We shop at supermarkets. We find them convenient. Their prices are sometimes lower than small shops and sometimes higher, which is unremarkable.
But we are wary of the power that they have, we fear encroaching monopolies. I worry that they have worked out, using my loyalty card, exactly what sort of 2 for 1 deals I am a sucker for, and how best to distract me from paying attention to the price of something.
By all accounts suppliers get a rawer deal than we customers. This is called "driving down prices for the benefit of customers", which is true up to a point. But sellers as well as buyers have to be able to go somewhere else for competition to work properly.
Green councillor Matt Sellwood calls supermarkets an ethical and environmental disaster zone.
A rare admission perhaps from a green that competition is ethical, since excessive power in the marketplace is a problem. And of course, environmentally, their impact is enormous, as is their throughput of goods.
What I'm not so clear about is if the same amount of goods were sold through smaller shops, whether that would be any better for the environment. Smaller shops would, presumably, need more deliveries. And to visit the number of shops needed to carry the range of a supermarket would presumably require more transport of the customer. Or perhaps some of our small shops could expand, becoming, er, supershops?
What I'm hoping to illustrate here is that it is a mistake to think along the lines "X is doing something we don't like - we should fight against X" as Matt is doing. This is treating supermarkets as a symbol of all that is wrong with the world. And yet that I can fill the fridge without even having to leave the house is something that is right with the world. If X, supermarkets, were stopped from doing this thing we don't like, others may still do it, and we may find that they have also been prevented from doing things we do like - letting us get groceries after a late council meeting for example.
Rather than attacking the symbol, we should focus on the behaviour. A supermarket using a million carrier bags is no different from a thousand small shops using a million carrier bags. (Although my last Tesco online came in 25 bags for fewer than 75 items. They offered to take them back after I complained but who knows if they will get used again.) Overpackaged junk food is the same wherever it is sold. Driving to the shops is the same whatever kind of shop it is. Corner shops are not exactly trade union fiefdoms either.
Monopolistic and monopsonistic power is tackled through competition authorities. Such authorities need to weigh up carefully the costs and benefits of intervention. This is economic rocket science. I see no way for a little blog to give a convincing argument either way on whether more intervention is necessary. I hope the authorities are getting it right, and I am powerless to help them.
Although supermarkets are often more expensive than small shops, particularly when we ignore special offers and Known Value Items, this does not mean that they are not exerting a general downward pressure on prices. If there were no supermarkets, other shops would charge more. And let me be clear: low prices for food and goods in general is a good thing. If you think JSA of £57.45 a week is hard to live on now, think what a price hike would do. If you want to put benefits up because prices have gone up, you will be worsening the poverty trap. And also for the rest of us, having lower prices is like being richer. (Richer is better - if you don't agree, send me a cheque.)
Tag: supermarkets
Stephen and Richard are both right, although they seem to disagree with each other. We shop at supermarkets. We find them convenient. Their prices are sometimes lower than small shops and sometimes higher, which is unremarkable.
But we are wary of the power that they have, we fear encroaching monopolies. I worry that they have worked out, using my loyalty card, exactly what sort of 2 for 1 deals I am a sucker for, and how best to distract me from paying attention to the price of something.
By all accounts suppliers get a rawer deal than we customers. This is called "driving down prices for the benefit of customers", which is true up to a point. But sellers as well as buyers have to be able to go somewhere else for competition to work properly.
Green councillor Matt Sellwood calls supermarkets an ethical and environmental disaster zone.
A rare admission perhaps from a green that competition is ethical, since excessive power in the marketplace is a problem. And of course, environmentally, their impact is enormous, as is their throughput of goods.
What I'm not so clear about is if the same amount of goods were sold through smaller shops, whether that would be any better for the environment. Smaller shops would, presumably, need more deliveries. And to visit the number of shops needed to carry the range of a supermarket would presumably require more transport of the customer. Or perhaps some of our small shops could expand, becoming, er, supershops?
What I'm hoping to illustrate here is that it is a mistake to think along the lines "X is doing something we don't like - we should fight against X" as Matt is doing. This is treating supermarkets as a symbol of all that is wrong with the world. And yet that I can fill the fridge without even having to leave the house is something that is right with the world. If X, supermarkets, were stopped from doing this thing we don't like, others may still do it, and we may find that they have also been prevented from doing things we do like - letting us get groceries after a late council meeting for example.
Rather than attacking the symbol, we should focus on the behaviour. A supermarket using a million carrier bags is no different from a thousand small shops using a million carrier bags. (Although my last Tesco online came in 25 bags for fewer than 75 items. They offered to take them back after I complained but who knows if they will get used again.) Overpackaged junk food is the same wherever it is sold. Driving to the shops is the same whatever kind of shop it is. Corner shops are not exactly trade union fiefdoms either.
Monopolistic and monopsonistic power is tackled through competition authorities. Such authorities need to weigh up carefully the costs and benefits of intervention. This is economic rocket science. I see no way for a little blog to give a convincing argument either way on whether more intervention is necessary. I hope the authorities are getting it right, and I am powerless to help them.
Although supermarkets are often more expensive than small shops, particularly when we ignore special offers and Known Value Items, this does not mean that they are not exerting a general downward pressure on prices. If there were no supermarkets, other shops would charge more. And let me be clear: low prices for food and goods in general is a good thing. If you think JSA of £57.45 a week is hard to live on now, think what a price hike would do. If you want to put benefits up because prices have gone up, you will be worsening the poverty trap. And also for the rest of us, having lower prices is like being richer. (Richer is better - if you don't agree, send me a cheque.)
Tag: supermarkets
Friday, June 09, 2006
If Green Taxes work
...won't they raise less over time?
This question is on many lips. Those of Nick Robinson for example.
Here's my answer: No they won't.
Demand for energy is fairly inelastic. Most users do not think much about the cost when switching on a light or driving to the shops. This means that we are a long way from the peak of the Laffer Curve in the eco-tax rates we're proposing to apply.
Prosperity is increasing, demand for energy is increasing, so the potential for eco-tax revenues is increasing and will go on increasing. The threat to prosperity is minimal or negative because we are reducing other taxes at the same time. So society will be richer in future and therefore willing to pay even more for energy.
This does not mean that eco-taxes fail. They succeed in reducing demand a little from what it would have been otherwise, and they succeed in raising revenue, allowing other taxes to be cut. These are both big positives.
Now perhaps there is a case for i) much bigger eco-taxes, that cause significant reductions in consumption, and ii) bigger still that lead to reductions in eco-tax revenues. And then we could have a lot more than 2p off income tax. Or perhaps that policy would be disproprotionate to the problem. But it is laughable to consider the hypothetical spectres of that policy to apply to this policy of only £8bn in eco taxes.
Tags: ecotaxes, Green taxes
This question is on many lips. Those of Nick Robinson for example.
Here's my answer: No they won't.
Demand for energy is fairly inelastic. Most users do not think much about the cost when switching on a light or driving to the shops. This means that we are a long way from the peak of the Laffer Curve in the eco-tax rates we're proposing to apply.
Prosperity is increasing, demand for energy is increasing, so the potential for eco-tax revenues is increasing and will go on increasing. The threat to prosperity is minimal or negative because we are reducing other taxes at the same time. So society will be richer in future and therefore willing to pay even more for energy.
This does not mean that eco-taxes fail. They succeed in reducing demand a little from what it would have been otherwise, and they succeed in raising revenue, allowing other taxes to be cut. These are both big positives.
Now perhaps there is a case for i) much bigger eco-taxes, that cause significant reductions in consumption, and ii) bigger still that lead to reductions in eco-tax revenues. And then we could have a lot more than 2p off income tax. Or perhaps that policy would be disproprotionate to the problem. But it is laughable to consider the hypothetical spectres of that policy to apply to this policy of only £8bn in eco taxes.
Tags: ecotaxes, Green taxes
Thursday, May 18, 2006
The Green Switch
Chris Huhne has put the flesh (pdf) on his eco-tax bones. I discussed this at the time here and here.
Of course this paper doesn't commit us to any particular totals - that would be treading too much on the toes of the tax commission. But I hope it makes a clear impression on that process.
We can see from the appendix that of £35bn eco-taxes levied in 2004, £32bn are taxes on motoring. (The climate change levy and air passenger duty are each less than £1bn.) Motoring is of course a significant environmental problem, but this seems disproportionate. What about industrial and domestic uses of energy? There is a perception that industry=jobs=good, domestic=pensioners not freezing=good, motoring=shopping sprees and school runs in chelsea tractors=bad. And of course there is a good dollop of truth to this, but it is not a balanced picture, and it distorts incentives to place almost the whole burden on motoring.
On the other hand we should probably subtract spending on roads, when considering how much of the £32bn is in fact an eco-tax, rather than a charge for the infrastructre that makes motoring possible. And we should also bear in mind that motoring imposes some specific externalities such as poor air quality that industrial and domestic uses of energy do not, to the same extent.
And before long people may well be charging batteries in their hybrid/electric cars from the mains. This will cause a dent in revenues and eco-taxes even if we go a long way to rectifying the imbalance.
So, it is a little disappointing that the nettle of domestic energy use has not been firmly grasped. The problem, I guess, is that it can't be done in a revenue-neutral way, without cuts elsewhere, if, as would be necessary, we want to compensate the pensioners who might otherwise freeze and various other needy groups. It would still be a good policy: it would promote efficiency and microgeneration more effectively than all the regulations we have (having just had a loft conversion I have immediate experience of this). But it would pour mud on the clarity of the "Green Switch" policy, so it doesn't belong in this paper. One for the following election perhaps.
Tags: Green Switch eco-taxes
Update: The carbon tax will include household emissions, with "provision" for the less well off. So my disappointment was due to not reading carefully enough. And of course if the "provision" amounts to a rebate on the carbon tax, then it needn't comporomise revenue neutrality despite what I said above.
1. An increase In Green Taxes As A Share Of National Income. Green taxes have fallen from 3.6 per cent of GDP in 1999 to just 3 per cent of GDP, and we are committed to reversing this trend. Revenue would be used to cut taxes elsewhere so that this is a green tax switch, not a rise in taxes.Excellent. This is a very powerful statstic, and worth shouting about.
2. Reform The Climate Change Levy: The Climate Change Levy is a positive step forward but is too complex and bureaucratic. It should be restructured as a tax on carbon across the economy, but we support the Government’s intention for the first time to raise it in line with inflation. That should be the norm, not the exception.This is good - it is simplest and least distorting to treat all carbon emissions the same. And as the package is to be revenue neutral, there will be direct benefits to low-carbon parts of the economy.
3. Raise Vehicle Excise Duty On Polluting Cars: The Chancellor has increased Vehicle Excise Duty on high polluting vehicles by less than the cost of half a tank of fuel. If it is to be effective as a measure to reduce emissions and encourage greener transport, VED will have to be radically redrawn to penalise emissions and reward clean cars. The top-rate of VED should be significantly higher than at present at £2000 a year for high emission cars.This is a good measure. Fuel demand is not very elastic, but the choice of large inefficient vehicles is one that can be made to pay its way without hammering those who try to motor efficiently.
4. Keep Fuel Duty In Line With Inflation: Incentives to save fuel depend in part on developments in the oil market, but duty on fuel should normally keep track with inflation rather than decline in real terms. The failure to raise fuel duty since 1999 has led to a rise in emissions, and we support the Chancellor’s intention to raise fuel duty in line with prices in September.Right, better than real terms cuts. And in my view aviation, industry, and domestic uses are higher priorities for real terms increases in eco-taxes.
This may sound a bit dull, but it amounts to putting the cost of carbon up, and generating some more revenue.
5. Tighten Allocations in The EU Emissions Trading Scheme, And Auction 10 Per Cent Of The Permits. The recent fall in the price of carbon for industrial users reflects the unambitious overall cap set by the EU, together with the failure to allow national governments to hold back a part of the national allocation for sale to the highest bidder at auction. We will press for both reforms and for auctioning the maximum 10 per cent of permits currently allowed for 2011.
6. Tax Emissions Not Passengers: We have led the way in calling for reform of the way air travel is taxed. Instead of Air Passenger Duty on each passenger, airlines should pay an emissions charge per flight. This would reward flights that were full and penalise those wasting a full tank on a few passengers.This is a good step, and it is a framework that would allow us to move towards treating motoring and aviation more consistently.
7. Provide Help Where Cars Are Essential. In sparsely populated rural areas, cars are essential due to the lack of public transport. To reflect this need, we proposed an amendment to the Finance Bill introducing a 50 per cent discount on all but the top rate of VED for one car registered in such rural households.I'm not a particularly rural-friendly person: I don't see why the rural lifestyle deserves subsidy any more than any other expensive lifestyle. But the promise was made and this is a good way of delivering on it. It is important that this sort of compensation should be in the form of tax cuts because otherwise you have to find money from elsewhere or lose the revenue neutrality of the package.
Of course this paper doesn't commit us to any particular totals - that would be treading too much on the toes of the tax commission. But I hope it makes a clear impression on that process.
We can see from the appendix that of £35bn eco-taxes levied in 2004, £32bn are taxes on motoring. (The climate change levy and air passenger duty are each less than £1bn.) Motoring is of course a significant environmental problem, but this seems disproportionate. What about industrial and domestic uses of energy? There is a perception that industry=jobs=good, domestic=pensioners not freezing=good, motoring=shopping sprees and school runs in chelsea tractors=bad. And of course there is a good dollop of truth to this, but it is not a balanced picture, and it distorts incentives to place almost the whole burden on motoring.
On the other hand we should probably subtract spending on roads, when considering how much of the £32bn is in fact an eco-tax, rather than a charge for the infrastructre that makes motoring possible. And we should also bear in mind that motoring imposes some specific externalities such as poor air quality that industrial and domestic uses of energy do not, to the same extent.
And before long people may well be charging batteries in their hybrid/electric cars from the mains. This will cause a dent in revenues and eco-taxes even if we go a long way to rectifying the imbalance.
So, it is a little disappointing that the nettle of domestic energy use has not been firmly grasped. The problem, I guess, is that it can't be done in a revenue-neutral way, without cuts elsewhere, if, as would be necessary, we want to compensate the pensioners who might otherwise freeze and various other needy groups. It would still be a good policy: it would promote efficiency and microgeneration more effectively than all the regulations we have (having just had a loft conversion I have immediate experience of this). But it would pour mud on the clarity of the "Green Switch" policy, so it doesn't belong in this paper. One for the following election perhaps.
Tags: Green Switch eco-taxes
Update: The carbon tax will include household emissions, with "provision" for the less well off. So my disappointment was due to not reading carefully enough. And of course if the "provision" amounts to a rebate on the carbon tax, then it needn't comporomise revenue neutrality despite what I said above.
No zealot like the convert
Got a bit of a dialogue going with Matt Sellwood here
Lets take his points a little out of order...
Are you admitting the 'communist' or not? Of course we are in a sense around 40% communist already - that much is taxed and spent by the state, as it should be. Do you think the state/community should be directing more, or all of the nation's wealth? If it is more, say 60%, that's not really a different system, a "radical change", just a change of priorities. If it is all, then that is more or less communism, isn't it?
Capitalism doesn't "need" growth, it generates growth, and that is good, it means people are richer, live longer, are able to do more of the things they want to do, and governments can spend more on health and education, and so on. Stopping growth is easy - whack up taxes, pile on the regulation, no problem. If this is what the environment needs, the Green Party should say so, and we will all understand. It's still not really a change of system, just a change of objectives - rejecting prosperity in favour of the environment. A clear and legitimate political option to offer. (Whether it would work is another question of course.)
Of course there are flaws with the market system, and there are no pure market economies anywhere, it wouldn't be possible. So we have, as we should, things like the welfare state, and environmental regulations and so on. And it requires constant political vigilance to keep it working well. Does the clean air act, or the end of leaded petrol represent a "complete inability to deal with environmental ... externalities"? Of course not.
OK so scenario A: Government builds 100GW of wind turbines (other countries do similarly). Global warming averted. Scenario B: Government whacks a whopping tax on carbon emissions and the private energy industry builds 100GW of wind turbines. Global warming averted. What is the difference? Why are you so keen on problems being unsolvable? How exactly would economic planning, if that is what you are advocating, make them solvable?
Growth of what? Growth is a statistic. It adds together lots of different things as if they were the same. And they don't all involve despoiling the planet, mostly it is about how much we value the services we provide each other. So if there is anything at all that people do for each other that you regard as good, then good growth is possible. If not, then your values are so warped that we ought to all drop dead.
Of course Green Party policies are not consistently anti-capitalist. Sure, there are coded references to economic planning like:
(From http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/mfss/economy.html)
Alongside sugar-coated support for free enterprise like
The paper as a whole is a breathtakingly inconsistent mixture of the utopian and the banal. But it is clearly a state-driven reshaping and contracting of economic activity, and restraints on trade, which will further reduce efficiency. Redistribution is generous, so the better off will lose more in relative terms, making it a triple whammy against incentives to work.
But even with all that, it is clear that there would be capitalism at work. The roads may have been dug up to make trading difficult, but investment is actually encouraged! (EC512) Encouraging investment more or less directly implies some form of capitalism.
So is this the radical change? Make it hard to do business but "encourage" people to do business anyway?
And what is it intrinsically about this sort of economy, that it doesn't, say, contribute to global warming? The inefficiencies of central planning and autarchy will make us much poorer, but I don't see why they would intrinsically reduce environmental impacts. Building 100GW of wind turbines would only cost us a little in comparison, and seems rather better focussed on an actual problem.
I don't mean to sneer at the whole paper, there are some good ideas there. But the vision is not consistent, and it hardly relates to the reality of environmental problems.
Why is a clear consistent policy so difficult for the Green Party to express? I suspect because it can't quite stomach trying to sell the idea of being much poorer on the doorstep as a solution to anything. Especially when in many ways prosperity is associated with environmental improvements.
Tag: Green Party
Lets take his points a little out of order...
Renewables can go *some* of the way towards solving climate change, but not all of it - what is needed (and what Blair cannot, under any circumstances mention - hence nuclear) is a reduction in demand. Which, under capitalism, leads to a recession.You would be against a recession Matt? OK. Anyway, what is the limit, do you think, of the generating capacity of renewables? The answer of course is that they could generate all our energy many times over (thousands or millions of times over). So why couldn't they go all the way to solving climate change? Of course they could. A better practical solution would doubtless include some fossils and some efficiency measures. But there is no denying that this problem is solvable at a cost.
We live on a finite planet. Capitalism needs infinite growth. You can shout 'communist' all you like, but unless you address the serious flaws within the market system (a complete inability to deal with environmental or justice externalities, a dependence on growth, a tendency towards monopoly etc) then you will have your head stuck as far into the sand as the proverbial ostrich. Just because a system is the status quo doesn't make it right.
Are you admitting the 'communist' or not? Of course we are in a sense around 40% communist already - that much is taxed and spent by the state, as it should be. Do you think the state/community should be directing more, or all of the nation's wealth? If it is more, say 60%, that's not really a different system, a "radical change", just a change of priorities. If it is all, then that is more or less communism, isn't it?
Capitalism doesn't "need" growth, it generates growth, and that is good, it means people are richer, live longer, are able to do more of the things they want to do, and governments can spend more on health and education, and so on. Stopping growth is easy - whack up taxes, pile on the regulation, no problem. If this is what the environment needs, the Green Party should say so, and we will all understand. It's still not really a change of system, just a change of objectives - rejecting prosperity in favour of the environment. A clear and legitimate political option to offer. (Whether it would work is another question of course.)
Of course there are flaws with the market system, and there are no pure market economies anywhere, it wouldn't be possible. So we have, as we should, things like the welfare state, and environmental regulations and so on. And it requires constant political vigilance to keep it working well. Does the clean air act, or the end of leaded petrol represent a "complete inability to deal with environmental ... externalities"? Of course not.
The environmental crises we face *cannot* be solved simply by a few more pieces of regulation here and there and an absurd faith in the market.
OK so scenario A: Government builds 100GW of wind turbines (other countries do similarly). Global warming averted. Scenario B: Government whacks a whopping tax on carbon emissions and the private energy industry builds 100GW of wind turbines. Global warming averted. What is the difference? Why are you so keen on problems being unsolvable? How exactly would economic planning, if that is what you are advocating, make them solvable?
Capitalism is based on the growth principle. We cannot KEEP growing our way out of environmental problems.
Growth of what? Growth is a statistic. It adds together lots of different things as if they were the same. And they don't all involve despoiling the planet, mostly it is about how much we value the services we provide each other. So if there is anything at all that people do for each other that you regard as good, then good growth is possible. If not, then your values are so warped that we ought to all drop dead.
Of course Green Party policies are not consistently anti-capitalist. Sure, there are coded references to economic planning like:
EC511 Policies to promote local economic management and planning include creating Partnership Bodies to enable a wide range of local people to participate in the development of policy, strategy, projects and enterprise; undertaking a wide ranging audit of local social, economic and environmental affairs and concerns; drafting appropriate sustainable economic development strategies for the locality.
(From http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/mfss/economy.html)
Alongside sugar-coated support for free enterprise like
EC404 ...changing planning and building regulations to encourage home based enterprises, providing grants for re-skilling, and for the necessary tools and technology necessary for home-based enterprises.
The paper as a whole is a breathtakingly inconsistent mixture of the utopian and the banal. But it is clearly a state-driven reshaping and contracting of economic activity, and restraints on trade, which will further reduce efficiency. Redistribution is generous, so the better off will lose more in relative terms, making it a triple whammy against incentives to work.
But even with all that, it is clear that there would be capitalism at work. The roads may have been dug up to make trading difficult, but investment is actually encouraged! (EC512) Encouraging investment more or less directly implies some form of capitalism.
So is this the radical change? Make it hard to do business but "encourage" people to do business anyway?
And what is it intrinsically about this sort of economy, that it doesn't, say, contribute to global warming? The inefficiencies of central planning and autarchy will make us much poorer, but I don't see why they would intrinsically reduce environmental impacts. Building 100GW of wind turbines would only cost us a little in comparison, and seems rather better focussed on an actual problem.
I don't mean to sneer at the whole paper, there are some good ideas there. But the vision is not consistent, and it hardly relates to the reality of environmental problems.
Why is a clear consistent policy so difficult for the Green Party to express? I suspect because it can't quite stomach trying to sell the idea of being much poorer on the doorstep as a solution to anything. Especially when in many ways prosperity is associated with environmental improvements.
Tag: Green Party
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