Apparently Bernie Ecclestone, on being accused of a dictatorial approach to his business, made the reasonable point that democracy isn’t as good as it’s cracked up to be, and followed with a rather ill-considered defence of Hitler.
I suspect the comments were off the top of his head, as they show signs of not having been thought through. Politicians are too worried about elections, it is true, but modern dictators generally come to power on the same basis of mass support as democratic politicians, and hold on to power by maintaining mass support. Ecclestone acknowledged that, even going much further than I would in claiming that Hitler had been “pushed to do things he didn’t want to do”, but he didn’t draw the relevant conclusions about the similar natures of populist dictatorships and democracies.I think the difference between a democratic leader and a dictator is not so much whether elections are held, as whether the normal expectation of the society is that the leader will remain in power. If that is the norm, such that opposition is unrespectable, then elections can be held and even be reasonably fair, but the government will still be considered a dictatorship. I would put Putin, for instance, somewhere in that category.Ecclestone said that Max Moseley would make a competent dictator for Britain, based on his experience of working with him. That may be true, but a struggle for political power does not in general promote competent managers such as Ecclestone assures us Mosely is. It promotes the likes of Hitler, who I suspect would have done a poor job of managing a motor racing competition. A dictator Moseley would have to spend all his attention and skills on hanging onto power, and would not be able to manage the country like a profitable entertainment business. Politics is the problem, and a dictatorship is not an alternative to politics. It is merely a rearrangement of who the ruler has to do politics with. Because the dictator can be deposed by a rival at any time, he does not even have the secure truce period of a democrat’s term of office. Every year is election year. This is one reason why dictators tend to be even more tyrannical than democratic governments.This is also the reason why attempting to make government better by making it more responsive to the population only makes things worse. The contradictions show through in every attempt at reform, such as have been put forward by Douglas Carswell. Yes, politicians would be more accountable if they could be recalled. That would indeed be more democratic. And if every year was election year, would government be better, or worse? The opposing forces of democratic ideology and realism result in an equilibrium, which is as much democracy as we can get without producing government so drastically bad that people start to realise that democracy is the problem, not the solution. And switching to a new Moselyism would cause just the same problems as would “fixing” the undemocratic elements of the status quo.
Secrets and non-secrets
Very silly story in the Mail – shock, horror, the head of MI6’s wife is on facebook!
There’s very little revealed in the story that wasn’t in the press-release-driven reports when his appointment was announced.
The head of MI6 is not a secret agent. He is a government administrator.
Secrecy used to surround the intelligence service, but that’s not because it was intelligence, it was because the British government was secretive about everything. There was a move to more openness under the Major government, and the government is now genuinely slightly more open than before.
Honduras
You say “Military Coup” like it’s a bad thing.
The constitution of Honduras has an article 239 which specifically prohibits not only the reelection of a president, but also proposing to reform it. It’s a neat idea – remember I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Thomas Paine had recommended something along the same lines with respect to monetary policy.
President Zelaya proposed a referendum to overrule (without legal justification) this article of the constitution, and was told by the Supreme Court that he couldn’t. He then had the ballots printed abroad and attempted to carry out the referendum illegally, and, after votes by both the Congress and the Supreme Court, the army was ordered to arrest him. Which they did.
Hat tip to Half Sigma, whose line is that this is no coup, but a simple exercise of law.
Assuming ½σ has the legalities straight (since Honduran constitutional law is one of those odd gaps in my knowledge) I would still say that whether this is a coup is merely a question of definition. The question matters to many people because they have an unjustified prejudice against military coups. I’ve been thinking sympathetically about the concept of the army removing the government for a while, so the idea that a coup might be legal strikes me not as a paradox but as a ray of sunshine – if nothing else, it allows me to post some of my thinking about the future of Britain without being a terrorist.
The advantage of a definition of coup that ignores the legality is that it allows me to describe what happened even in situations, like this one, where I don’t know what the law precisely is. There has been a military coup in Honduras, which I think was probably a legal one. There, isn’t that an efficient description of the situation?
The thing about constitutional legalities, as I suggested in my recent post on Iran, is that they never ultimately matter because there’s no forum where they can reliably be resolved, the competent court always being in effect one player in the political game. Some of the participants may be influenced by their perception of the legal situation, but that’s the only importance of law.
The court made the legal decision to have the president arrested, then the army made the political decision to obey the court rather than the president.
As I said in a comment at UR, For law to be preserved, law and government have to be two different things. If the law overrules the government, then it is not law, it is government. If the government can decide what the law is, then similarly, it is not law but government.
Anonymous Blogging
All the discussion I’ve seen about the unmasking of Night Jack, the award-winning blogger who told us about life in the police, seems to stand on dangerously bad assumptions.
Many, like Hopi Sen, argue on the basis that anonymous blogging is in the public interest. Some, like the always reasonable chris dillow, dispute that claim. All of them scare me.
For what it’s worth, I think that anonymous blogging is in the public interest. But that’s an awfully flimsy ground on which to build the shocking restriction on freedom which Night Jack’s victory would have produced.
The case wasn’t about whether Night Jack could blog anonymously — whether he could blog without telling anyone his identity. What was at issue was whether The Times, having found out his identity, would be allowed to tell anybody. The only possible answer to that question is yes, of course. Isn’t it enough that this country has the most oppressive libel laws in the world, without putting still more restrictions on what the press is allowed to tell us? Even the Max Moseley case based its verdict in favour of Moseley’s privacy on the basis of a breach of his confidence — that the information came from somebody who had a duty to keep it private. Night Jack originally made a similar claim, but dropped it, claiming only that it was in the public interest that we not find out who he was.
I would like to see a right to blog anonymously, but all I would expect that to encompass is to be allowed to publish without having to identify myself, not to prevent anyone who happens to know who I am from telling anybody else. I want to be permitted to have a secret, but not assisted by the power of the law in keeping it a secret — that’s my job.
The frightening assumption is that if anonymous blogging is in the public interest, anonymity should be protected with the power of the state, and if it is not, then it should be broken with the power of the state. Everything that is not compulsory is forbidden.
Fusion power
What we need to solve energy problems, or so I have heard, is a “Manhattan Project” for fusion
In the original Manhattan Project (aka MED for Manhattan Engineer District), vast scientific and engineering resources were employed in developing an atomic bomb. Examples of huge successful government projects are sufficiently rare that it continues to serve as an example that such a thing is in fact possible.
The major research project into fusion is the ITER development, in the news today because estimates of its cost have increased from the original USD6bn to USD16bn. At that level, this one project costs, in inflation-adjusted terms, two-thirds of the total cost of the Manhattan project, which took multiple design approaches in parallel, and included successful production of working devices. Leaders of the Iter project agree that fusion energy production will not happen in
the next 40 years.
The management problems of a programme of this length (and research into tokamaks has been going on since the 1960s) are quite different from those of a one-off war “project” like MED. Nobody expected to spend their entire career in MED, and the top management were senior army officers who would certainly be going onto something very different. Also, the Manhattan Project, because it was part of the effort of fighting a particular war, could have failed. The programme of developing tokamak fusion energy cannot fail. Either it will succeed, or it will carry on for ever. The constraints of war gave the management of the MED the most important capability a manager can have – the ability to shut down something that isn’t working. In an unconstrained programme, doing that is both an admission of error and a sacrifice of power, and just doesn’t happen without very strong outside pressure.
At least according to the BBC article, the success of tokamak fusion depends on the invention of materials which do not currently exist: something strong enough to hold a vacuum but transparent to neutrons so as not to be vapourised by the activity inside. The real situation is presumably more complicated, but the upshot is that the whole approach of generating power by confining a plasma with magnetic fields to the point where it fuses might never work. If IEC/Whiffleball fusion is possible (which is even more doubtful) then it will be generating power long before ITER produces any useful results.
What the BBC story really represents is various scientist/bureaucrats squabbling over the goodies.
The reason science and bureaucracy don’t mix is that getting things wrong and then publicising the fact is the way science advances, but avoiding and, most importantly, never admitting mistakes is the way bureacrats advance.
Working fusion power would be great, but one has to ask what the point is since we already have the science we need to generate electricity more cheaply and with less pollution, and we’re not using it. If ITER succeeds, then in fifty years we will be able to build fusion power plants, but will they really be cheaper than building fission plants? What would fifty years of massive research into safer, more efficient fission power give us? It’s as if we invented planes, got them working, then stopped using them and threw all our resources into trying to develop teleporters. I’m not saying fission power is the answer to everything. If we were still building plants, that wouldn’t mean there was no reason to look for something better, but if we’re not using what we’ve got, what are we looking for?
Iran Elections
Here’s what I believe about Iran:
First, I support the concept of national sovereignty. There should be no interference in the internal affairs of Iran that fall short of invading it and declaring it a protectorate. This is not so much a moral principle as a practical one – attempting to change a country’s government, with or without local allies, is an act of war.
I don’t know whether the election of Ahmedinejad was legitimate. Very possibly it wasn’t. Quite possibly it was – our view of the national mood both before and after the vote was skewed by the greater visibility of the Tehran population relative to the rural population.
The rural population is much more conservative than the city population. If we assume for the sake of argument that the vote was counted fairly, then what we are seeing resembles in some respects the situation that arose recently in Thailand. There, Thaksin Shinawatra had the support of the countryside, but was deposed by the capital city.
The difference in that case was that the Bangkok middle classes controlled the armed forces, and were able to take power through them. In Tehran, the questions appear to be whether the government is prepared to put down the revolt violently, and if so, whether the security forces will follow orders to do so.
Ultimately, the conclusion is that a government cannot survive on the support simply of a backward rural population, even if that population constitutes a majority. Note that the Islamic Republic was originally installed by the city population.
Of course, the protesters are not calling for an end to the Islamic Republic, only for the change of government they claim the election should have produced. That means they could win without the country falling into chaos (unlike, for example, the Chinese protesters of 20 years ago). If it becomes accepted that the election was rigged, there could be a very peaceful transition. Even so, if that were to happen, the proof that the Tehran mob can overrule the election result (honest or not) will not go away.
Maybe the more important conclusion to draw is that a truly national election is a very bad thing. The last few US presidential elections have produced great criticism of the “Electoral College” system, but that system is essential for producing an uncontested result. If the election is decided by the total number of votes over the nation, then it becomes too easy to add extra votes in areas where one site dominates. If you only count constituencies, then both sides can closely observe the process in the areas which are close, and in the areas which aren’t, it doesn’t matter, because the side which has the ability to rig the vote has no reason to. In Iran, suggestions that ballot boxes were stuffed with fake votes in parts of the country are plausible because the side that make the claims are not well-enough represented there to stop it.
The great advantage of democracy is that it gives the government enough legitimacy to stay in power without the massive intrusive social control that modern dictatorships normally require. Doubts over the count undermine that legitimacy, so it is essential that counts are visible enough to be trusted. That is much more important than that the system used is perfectly “fair”. I am quite disturbed that, where we have grown to trust the fairness of elections, we are throwing away their verifiability in exchange for better fairness.
Euro Elections
Great result for UKIP, obviously, but the rejoicing slightly tempered by disgust at two seats going to the Greens (again).
It can’t be said that the UKIP vote was a fluke, but though they may keep many of the votes in a general election, those votes won’t do them as much good. The drop in turnout from 2004 to 2009 was close to the total UKIP vote. Even supporters of the EU now realise that it doesn’t make any difference who sits in the European Parliament. The only thing at stake in a Euro election is the salary and expenses package. This is immensely valuable to a small party, so supporters of small parties are motivated to vote. Also there’s a kind of poetry in electing anti-EU MEPs, so UKIP do much better than other small parties.
As an aside, I was amused by the delay in counting the results in order to wait for other member states who voted at the weekend. Pretending that there was a single Europe-wide election simply drew attention to the fact that there wasn’t. The BBC’s web coverage was particularly annoying, as results in other countries were reported only in terms of the EP “groups” – so for instance if you look at the Ireland results, you’re left trying to guess which parties won seats – “Left” got two and “Socialists” got two – what are they (I think its Labour and Sinn Fein, but I don’t know which are which). “Liberal” gained three and “UEN” lost four – quite a shakeup there! I suspect that’s Fianna Fail changing groups, but if I want to know for sure I have to look somewhere other than the BBC.
Because elections happen so rarely, it takes many years for people to learn how to use them. It wasn’t until the 1980s or even 90s that tactical voting really got going, and voters are still learning that in EU elections, they can vote for whoever they want. The tactical voting will really make itself felt in the next general election, and any prediction based on “swing” will be completely off, as the measured swing will go to Conservatives or Lib Dems depending on which one is more likely to beat Labour.
Thomas Paine
Nice point here – Thomas Paine was one of those weirdos pushing “democracy” back in the 18th. Sensible people pointed out that that would lead to disasters such as paper money. Paine responded that that could be avoided even in a democracy – and that any legislator voting for it should be executed. Somehow his solution was never put into practice, however, and, in this as in other respects, the gloomy predictions of the anti-democrats were fulfilled.
BNP Failure
The BNP didn’t do nearly as well in the Euro elections as I thought they might – there was no sudden tipping into a situation where a large group of supporters realised how large they really are. I suppose with hindsight an election just isn’t a mechanism for that to happen – my comparison with the fall of Eastern bloc single-party machines was invalid, because the self-discovery process requires that people openly show their support for the opposition, and, whatever happens to the Labour Party, the wider establishment is still strong enough for that sort of public display to be highly inadvisable.
Of course, it is only a suspicion of mine that such a group really exists, and the outcome is equally well explained by the theory that in fact only a few percent of the electorate supports the BNP’s ideals and policies. The larger number of people who, like Peter Hitchens, oppose immigration on the basis of economic and social issues rather than on the basis of race, are still reluctant to associate themselves with the shunned racists.
Presidential Government
Tony Blair (remember him?) was long accused of a “presidential” style of government. His ministers were completely under his authority, and always replaceable. This may be part of Gordon Brown’s problem – he is attempting to govern in Blair’s style, and running out of MPs who can complete his cabinet. The problem is that Blair had three things enabling his presidential government, which Brown doesn’t have:
1. The authority with the party that came from being a proven election winner
2. People skills
3. Gordon Brown
Number 3 is the punchline, of course; but the Blair regime was a double act from beginning to end. No other minister had the power to overrule the prime minister.
The real point was that the sidelining of the cabinet under Blair was not so much part of the general centralising trend as an aspect of Blair’s particular personality and situation.