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Perception of Value

The most revealing aspect of the row over Prince’s release of his album in the Mail on Sunday is the choice of words by the co-chairman of the Entertainment Retailers’ Association: “It would be yet another example of the damaging covermount culture which is destroying any perception of value around recorded music”.

The “perception of value around recorded music” is the music industry’s main asset – one it spent billions creating. New, fashionable recordings are sold at a very high markup. However, this does not mean that the industry is reaping huge profits, because the cost of making new recordings fashionable is very high.

That is not a criticism of the industry – there is no reason why they should not market their product in that way. However, it is does mean that, should new technology make their current strategy impossible, we should not conclude that no other strategy is possible. Without the “perception of value” and the high gross margins it produces, the heavy promotion of popular music would not be feasible, but its production and distribution would be.

The main thread of the Prince story – the dispute between the producer and the high-street retailers – is not interesting. In any industry which sells its products through shops, the retailer performs a double function of physical distribution and advertising. The extra benefit that the producer receives from the retailer’s advertising is usually paid for in one way or another, and keeping “the channel” happy is a concern across industries. Disputes such as this between a producer and a retailer are commonplace.

Unqualified Reservations

Via Arnold Kling, I find Unqualified Reservations. What a rollicking good read. The key insight is one which I have accepted but never managed to make so vivid – that the supernatural component of any religion is relatively unimportant and malleable. One point I did make earlier is that modern dominant “secularism” is rather different from 19th-Century underdog “freethinking”, but this blogger “Mencius Moldbug” not only makes it but explains it.

If there’s a criticism, it’s “so what”. That’s not a strong criticism: describing the world accurately is worthwhile even if it doesn’t lead to obvious courses of action, but we must remember the “why do we care” test to distinguish real meaning from word games.

Note for Terrorists

High explosive – it’s not an optional extra.

Dammit, killing people isn’t a new idea. There’s been a lot of thought and work put into it these last few millenia, and there’s a good bit of prior art. The experts in large-scale homicide all agree: high explosives are the thing. Messing about with propane and petrol isn’t even amateur – it’s childish. Grow up and get some bombs.

How many people could they have killed if they’d thrown the silly toys out of the car and just started running people over? Cars kill 3-4 thousand people a year in Britain, and they use two whole cars up without killing anyone. They’re embarrassing.

In seriousness, the police do seem to have succeeded in making it very difficult for the bad guys to get their hands on the good stuff, and deserve a lot of credit.

Human Rights

The European Court of Human Rights yesterday ruled that Human Rights aren’t really rules as such, more sort of guidelines towards the sort of policies that governments might like to consider following, if convenient. (Judgement in O’Halloran and Francis vs United Kingdom [word document {blech}])

Those who choose to keep and drive motor cars can be taken to have accepted certain responsibilities and obligations as part of the regulatory regime relating to motor vehicles, and in the legal framework of the United Kingdom, these responsibilities include the obligation, in the event of suspected commission of road traffic offences, to inform the authorities of the identity of the driver on that occasion.

I did intend to rant enthusiastically about the evil of this decision, calling for all right-thinking freedom-loving folk to take up their pitchforks and march on Strasbourg or wherever the damn thing is.

But at the end of the week, having got to my keyboard, I find I’m not really feeling up to that kind of hypocrisy. I’m just not that into human rights myself. Not that I deny that the individual needs protection from the state — far from it — but a laundry-list of absolute “rights” doesn’t really provide much protection, while at the same time throwing confusion onto the normal functioning of the law. See for instance my old favourite case of Begum vs Denbigh High School, and others.

Viewed in isolation, there is nothing unusually obnoxious about the rule that the keeper of a vehicle must identify (to the best of his knowledge) the driver of the vehicle at the time it was being used to infringe a traffic law. Anyone with a view of freedom that is offended by that must agree that there are many hundreds of equally undesirable laws that have no similar close connection with an alleged human right. The only sensible reason for taking a stand against this law is that Rights once enumerated must be defended even in unimportant cases, so that they remain unarguable in the important cases. Reasonable as that argument sounds, it is a lost cause once your “Rights” include such windbaggery as “Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life.” (ECHR 8.1)

So, no ranting. Although, to be fair, whatever I think of human rights, there is some question as to what the point is of a Court of Human Rights that doesn’t believe in human rights.

Anyway, without absolute rights, how are we to be protected from the state? It’s not an easy thing — indeed history tells us that it’s about the most difficult thing of all. I would concentrate on limiting the size and scope of the state, rather than micromanaging what techniques it is allowed to use. Define domains that are to be considered none of the state’s business, and discourage it from growing. If it is kept small and weak, then the people will be able to prevent abuses without need of fiddly rules. If it is large and strong, then no piece of paper will restrain it.

If the roads, the railways, the banks, the insurance offices, the great joint-stock companies, the universities, and the public charities, were all of them branches of the government; if, in addition, the municipal corporations and local boards, with all that now devolves on them, became departments of the central administration; if the employees of all these different enterprises were appointed and paid by the government, and looked to the government for every rise in life; not all the freedom of the press and popular constitution of the legislature would make this or any other country free otherwise than in name.

J. S. Mill, On Liberty

Joseph Corre

When first seeing that Joseph Corre had refused his MBE because, he said, Tony Blair’s government was too morally bankrupt to award it, my first reaction was strongly favourable. The more people realise that the government is not “our leader” with moral authority to label things as good or bad, and to decide who is and isn’t worthy of our admiration, the better.

On reading his statement, however, my cheerfulness declined to familiar doubt and disappointment. He picked on just a couple of points – the “organised lying” relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the erosion of our civil liberties. The likely implication is that without these two things, Corre would consider the government sufficiently honourable to assign MBEs to whoever. Robin Cook, for example, who in 2003 wanted Iraq to be merely blockaded and occasionally bombed, as was the policy for the preceding 12 years, rather than invaded — would be a sufficiently “honourable man” to hand out medals.

To declare that one has standards for how a government must behave to be considered a moral authority, and then to set those standards so low, is almost more alarming than to grant the government authority blindly. “My country right or wrong” is more defensible than “My country, providing its crimes are not too gross and blatant.”

I have the same reaction whenever some pensioner makes a stand on principle against paying taxes. At first its “Yes! the government rules by consent of the governed, and that consent can be withdrawn”, and then it emerges that the hero is only objecting to one particular war, or one hospital closure or something, and seems to be implying that everything else the government does is worthy of being funded — a position which makes the “protester” appear one of the government’s strongest supporters.

I may be wronging Mr Corre — it may be that on reflection he would agree that no previous or alternative government was significantly more qualified to dispense “honour” than this one — but his statement would be immeasurably better for making that explicit. (And, of course, making things explicit is his claim to fame and honour in the first place).

Murder in George Street

The conclusions will come after all the facts are available, but here are some early thoughts:

First, quibble with the headlines. For the benefit of Times readers, half past seven is not rush hour in Luton town centre. The only people around are those few of us with early starts in London (I aim to reach Canary Wharf for 08:30), and preparation for the business day: cleaning windows, stocking shops, etc. The most coherent account of what happened was that a window cleaner who had been working at M&S was attacked while using the ATM at the Town Hall end of George Street.

The (premature) conclusion is that this was a freak. It’s extremely rare for a police officer to be fatally stabbed while dealing with day-to-day street crime. I wouldn’t like them to go into life-or-death mode every time there’s a fight in the high street. If firearms are around they go into full combat mode and that’s a different matter – it’s a whole lot more dangerous for them and they have to be extremely cautious, which is unpleasant but reasonable. But I would hate to see them acting more “militarily” and less humanly whenever someone has a knife. It would cut them off further from the population and perhaps in net even make them more at risk.

Of course, if I in my comfortable safe job say that the risk of this happening is so small that the police ought to continue to run it – that is, that there should be no reaction of a general kind (changes to procedures, etc.), I must – and do – accept that the specific reaction to this death can be large. After all, if it’s so rare, then we can afford it. I will make sure I remember the name of Jonathan Henry, and remember that he left a family who deserve special respect in Luton, for years to come. Attacks on the police are more serious crimes because they threaten to separate the police from the public in the way I discussed above.

I don’t know whether the large-scale investigation taking place of what seems a straightforward event is just overkill, or a routine response to the use of the baton round, or a routine investigation into how an officer came to be killed. In any case, it is OK. The figure I saw on the ground at 7:35 looked pretty comprehensively disabled, but having been under-cautious the police would have had to jump to being over-cautious.

If the figure on the ground was PC Henry, then there was a screw-up, because one ambulance was already leaving, and another waiting. But I’m over-speculating now. I’ll continue to follow the story as the facts come out.

Air Power, Mithril and National Self-Confidence

ekr asks why the fellowship (in The Lord of the Rings) is not better equipped for the job.

A commenter correctly points out that the mithril coat worn secretly by Frodo is actually incredibly scarce and valuable – more than Frodo himself realises. (It came from the hoard of Smaug in The Hobbit).

As to the fellowship, I think an important point in considering the geopolitical situation of Third-Age Middle Earth is that the elves, after previous catastrophes, are in a kind of Vietnam Syndrome. They do not believe that any good can come of military action. The Fellowship includes nobody from Rivendell. Aragon was a ward of Elrond but is engaging in the operation as part of his project of uniting the Northern and Southern kingdoms of Men. Legolas is a visitor from Mirkwood. Elrond explicitly considers and rejects the idea of sending elvish warriors.

Rivendell is not a city-state or city, but a house – “The last homely house West of the mountains”, as it is described in The Hobbit. It is something like a medieval manor house, inhabited by the Lord’s extended family and a few guests and retainers. It is not adequate as a base for military operations.

As for importing supplies from Lothlórien, as suggested by ekr, that is absurd. Not only was there no Fed-ex, long journeys were extremely rare and dangerous. Elrond’s wife Celebrían (Galadriel’s daughter) was captured by Orcs on a journey from Rivendell to Lórien, and the wilderness only became more dangerous since. There is no mention of merchants in LOTR (the gathering of supplies to Isengard is the only trade I can think of), and the idea that the roads will be used by “messengers of the King, not bandits…” is a prediction made by Frodo after the fall of Mordor, in contrast to the past.

Possibly ekr was confused by the film, where Elrond and Arwen apparently teleport around Middle-Earth at random, and a mysterious Elvish army arrives from nowhere at Helm’s Deep. This was due to the filmmakers writing and rewriting the story, and having to use already-filmed scenes after changing their minds about the plot.

The only plot difficulty I saw along the lines of ekr’s objections was the low profile of the eagles. In both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the eagles appear as Deus ex Machina at the end to save the day: first in the Battle of the Five Armies, and then to rescue Frodo and Sam after the fall of Barad-dûr. In both cases it appears that they could have done a lot more good by getting involved earlier.

Even this problem I am no longer too worried by. Just because there is no air-to-air combat in Tolkien, one should not assume that air superiority is not a consideration. For most of the period of The Hobbit, there is a dragon in the Lonely Mountain, and the eagles only show up after it is killed by Bard. It seems highly probable that eagles would not wish to hang around where there was a dragon flying about. Similarly, they only approach Mordor after Sauron, and with him the Nazgûl, have been defeated. An air defence system consisting of a Palantír-based DEW line plus winged nazgûl would probably be impenetrable. True, the winged nazgûl are only introduced once the fellowship have already sent out, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that Sauron had other airborne assets, and that the air at least in Eastern Middle-Earth was as dangerous as the ground.

It is explained by Gandalf, in The Quest of Erebor, that his involvement with Thorin’s expedition in The Hobbit was motivated by concerns over air-power — specifically that in a war, Smaug could be used to attack Lórien.

If you have a life and therefore are ignorant of these matters, Wikipedia is staggeringly comprehensive.

What's a Website?

thelondonpaper today ridicules Judge Peter Openshaw, who “stunned a London court by admitting he did not know what a website was.”

Judge Openshaw was hearing a trial of three men accused of “internet terror offences”, whatever they are, and told Woolwich Crown Court “The trouble is I don’t understand the language. I don’t really understand what a website is.”

I would like to hear the journalist John Dunne give his definition.

“Website” is a pretty vague term. What website are you reading this on? Is it Blogger? Is it blogspot.com? Is it Anomaly UK? Is it bloglines or some other aggregator?

Let’s say it’s Anomaly UK — not on the basis of any technical definition, but because that’s what it says at the top of the page.

Whose website is it? I guess it’s mine, because I “created” it, although that (fortunately) did not involve supplying any physical material, paying a penny, or interacting with any human being. Most of the content came from me, but some of it from Google, some of it from various unidentifiable commenters, some bits from Sitemeter or technorati or whoever “NZ Bear” actually is. The content actually resides and reaches you from Google, except for the bits that don’t, or the bits that are put in or changed by some system I know nothing of between you and it. (“Bits” in the non-jargon sense, that is.)

A judge – or a legislator – who thinks he knows what “a website” is, but in fact only knows what the average web user knows, could make some horribly bad decisions: think about the Danish court that ruled that deep linking is illegal, for example. No politician who had thought to ask the question “what is an email address” (and got an accurate answer) would have planned to require sex offenders to register their email addresses, as John Reid did.

Since the “internet terror” cases in question involves an “extremist web forum” (and perhaps nothing else), making sure lawyers and witnesses are very precise about what was “on the internet” is probably essential to reaching a correct verdict. Judge Openshaw’s question was penetrating and important.

Quote of the Day

“it is true that there are Frenchmen coming here because their bureaucracy prevents them getting jobs but they are matched by Brits going there because our bureaucracy prevents us building houses.”
– Neil Craig

It reminded me slightly of Gavin Lyall in The Secret Servant: “The French let their buildings flourish but keep the trees very much pruned and in their place. In Britain it’s the other way round: it’s an offence to enlarge your house or cut down your trees. What a basis for entente.”

Insane Whackos

Tim has a go at some creationist.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t like being so rude or dismissive of creationists. Not because there is any truth in their conclusions, but because their arguments, while incorrect, are not actually stupid or insane.

What are the arguments for evolution? The primary evidence is the widespread existence of signs of relationship between different species, existing and extinct. But that evidence is spread pretty widely. It takes considerable time and research to find enough of it, or considerable experience of the workings of science as an occupation to see it in the literature. It is not reasonable to expect everyone to be able to make certain of themselves that evolution happens, when most people couldn’t explain how a fridge or CD player works.

So that leaves the secondary evidence, that just about everyone who has studied biology seriously for the last hundred years is in no doubt. To be sure, that’s a strong argument. But it does mean, more or less, that most people are being asked to take evolution on trust. Given that, the more we pressure people to accept what we tell them about natural history, the more they will reasonably suspect an ulterior motive.

Labelling creationists and ID’ers as “insane whackos” is therefore not just counterproductive, but wrong. More precisely they are ignorant, but no more ignorant than the many who “take our word for it” about natural history because they don’t have sufficient knowledge of the subject to make themselves sure. Creationists may be ill-educated, but they are not exceptionally ill-educated, just exceptionally disobedient to academic authority. I am not prepared to condemn their disobedience.

My sympathy with their disobedience has been enhanced by the global warming issue, where I have found myself in disagreement with the scientific mainstream, in a debate which appears to me more political than scientific. Possibly the two questions are similar, and if I knew more about climatology I would agree that global warming is almost certainly anthropogenic, and the dirty tricks, bad arguments and dogmatism of the other side would be beside the point. Conversely, if I am right about AGW, then when the whole IPCC steam train goes off the rails, any other politically significant scientific “fact” which is aggressively asserted on the basis of “we’re the experts” is going to take a popular battering.

Of course the difficult question is how to handle education. Should we permit children to be taught things which we are sure are not true? I’ve gone on too long so I’ll come back to this later.