17 Comments on Are we really in a terrible state?

Jon Hyde on Fri, 26th Aug 2011 10:56 am


I wonder whose interests are best served by the realisation of Rick Perry’s dream to make federal government as “inconsequential in your life as [he] can”.

Cristina on Fri, 26th Aug 2011 11:08 am


Hello,
When you speak about central government vs. localism, you forgot to mention the power of education. Localism can fail in the absence of education. The central government can’t provide cost effectively because it spends more and in produces too less or nothing. Bureaucracy has proven itself a historical tragedy. Central government takes the power form people and keeps the people enslaved. Beside money (cost-benefit), there also the human coordinate that the western society forgot to “teach”, because it is “unteachable”, it is natural. Being natural, it needs to be reminded (love, compassion, help).

Brinda on Fri, 26th Aug 2011 11:17 am


That’s indeed a very interesting research project! Coincidently this was in my mind for a long time. I would love to be involved if we get the funding and go forward with it!

Linda Parkinson-Hardman on Fri, 26th Aug 2011 12:44 pm


Indifference unfortunately has been bred in many ways by the state itself and is in evidence in most nations around the world, developed or otherwise. This breeding has taken place because the state has informed it’s citizens about what they can and cannot think, what they can and cannot say and as a result those self same citizens have a great opportunity to abandon their own responsibility for their lives and communities – because someone else will do everything for them. When it starts at this level, it can only filter through to all levels resulting in the effects Matthew has demonstrated at the African Union – the same will happen in other nations if we don’t require ourselves and our leaders to become ‘responsible’ citizens – that is in taking responsibility for sorting our own lives out rather than relying on others to do it for us.

henry on Fri, 26th Aug 2011 3:05 pm


interesting that governance is the word you use – given that much of what the international NGO community has taken part in over the last 20 years is part of a narrative of ‘good governance’ – that is itself partly about depoliticising (demoralising?) the idea of government, and treating questions of state building and democratic reform as primarily technocratic issues.

one thread that links your examples together is corruption – or the perception of it – which is often used to justify both non-gov provision of social services in africa (and the channeling of resources through NGOs rather than govts), and the kind of rick perry government bashing in the states.

sounds like a great research project but youre on dangerous territory linking principles to practice… ha ha

Will Sheward on Sat, 27th Aug 2011 7:18 pm


“Perry’s idea that a good country is one in which the population abandons any attempt at nationwide collective action would be seen as the nihilistic ideology that it is – an attack not on Washington but on nationhood itself.”

I have two short comments.

Firstly, an antipathy towards Federal government is not the same as abandoning nationwide collective action. It is precisely what it says it is and your assumption that the only effective collective action can be organised by central government says as much about your politics and prejudices as the original statement does about Rick Perrys.

Secondly, I was not aware that the RSA had a position on the US presidential election, let alone the Republican primaries. What next Matthew, a letter writing campaign to Republican primary voters? You may feel hostility towards what you believe is a nihilisitc ideology but do not tie my Society to your political agenda.

This may be your personal blog but as someone has contrived to make it so prominent on the front page of the RSA’s website, what you say reflects on us.

Mike M on Sun, 28th Aug 2011 6:02 am


I’m an American that follows along with all sorts of RSA doings.

A Foxnews opinion article here in the States just suggested that we do away with the National Weather Service, despite the fact that a hurricane is currently banging its way up the East Coast. They even admit that this might sound outrageous, but go on to say that “the National Hurricane Center and its parent agency, the National Weather Service, are relics from America’s past that have actually outlived their usefulness.”

Rick Perry knows no limits, and neither do certain media institutions. Meanwhile lefty-nuts are blaming global warming, even though we get a hurricane or two in this are every decade or so. Hey.. its the trendy thing to do.

Keep the hits coming Matthew. An institution that is interested in “Arts, Commerce and Manufactures” should pay close attention to the pathological miscreants that would see all three pillars of prosperity unhinged, defunded, or run amok (depending).

Yes, putting human leadership under the microscope IS playing politics no matter what side you are on. You are a Labour guy, Matthew, I get it. Don’t stop. As for the RSA, don’t stop. The biggest thing out to ruin the arts, debase commerce, and flatten industry is the “shallow narrative.” Better find that narrative and describe its weaknesses…. AND FAST. We need the help.

J Mark Dodds on Mon, 29th Aug 2011 12:12 am


Ahem, Wll Sheward. Surely RSA is not YOUR Society, any more than it is mine.

J Mark Dodds on Mon, 29th Aug 2011 2:22 am


Ahem, in MY Society it’s interesting to hear the boss speaking his mind out loud.

MY Society NEEDS to be challenging, dynamic, irritating, active, agitating, leading, pushing wider society’s agenda – which is decades behind where it must be – if we are to stop traditional capitalism from driving humanity to the brink of utter extinction which plainly is exactly what we are collectively allowing.

When Guido Fawkes’ cage is rattled and he starts nitpicking around things afoot at RSA it’s a sure sign that something right is going on here. He points out that ‘ordinary Fellows’ are unnerved by Matthew Taylor and the ‘management’ is taking it places they don’t like. Fawkes quotes Kevin Cahill, Chair of the South West Region, challenging Taylor ahead of last year’s AGM:

“We have a perfect mandate and a simple mission, there is nothing in our mandate about reforming society or changing humanity, those are the wild utopian missions of the person in charge.“

RSA’s original charter to “embolden enterprise, enlarge science, refine art, improve our manufactures and extend our commerce” is neither a mandate nor in any way a simple mission. It’s an extraordinarily wide ranging Statement of Intent which could hardly be more apt for today’s circumstances.

Try to imagine a more ambitious or demanding foundation statement for a fledgling Society to lay as the cornerstone upon which its future would be built. More than 250 years on it stands as vital and fresh as the day it was written and will, if boldly enacted now, present society with solutions that are urgently needed to prevent society from consuming itself out of existence.

SOMEONE needs to be demanding Utopia because without achieving it we will be pointless unremarked history in our universe. Overall we’ve been too busy selling family silver, building straw houses and feathering our personal nests to be bothered to notice we are leaving nothing for our future.

We HAVE to radically change the way we do EVERYTHING and it CAN be done but it won’t as long as we consider that it’s MY Society rather than OURS.

Matthew Taylor on Mon, 29th Aug 2011 3:19 pm


Thanks for these interesting comments. Linda and Christina remind us that the quality of governance depends on what we expect of citizens themselves. Henry, I agree about the importance of corruption. It thought it was alarming and depressing that during the MP expenses scandal so many people lost perspective and forget that despite this aberration our system is basically clean. There is also the question of whether the above board use of money in US politics is a form of licensed corruption. Will, I understand your point and apologise if you think I have been too partial. There are many blogs on our site and I am as likely to criticise what I see as left wing stupidity as that of the right. And – as you can see – critical comments on my posts are welcome and given prominence

Nigel Holder on Tue, 30th Aug 2011 11:41 am


TRANSFERRING WEALTH FROM THE STATE TO THE CITIZEN

In the current debate it seems that everyone has lost the will to advocate significant reductions in taxation. It is as though victory has been conceded to socialism on the battlefield of the public services. Is it not now the time for the Coalition to adumbrate the following truths?

Taxation is evil – it may in some cases be a necessary evil – but it should be minimised at all costs. Why? – because taxation involves the sequestration of wealth from the citizen by the politician so that the bureaucrat may then exercise choices, notionally on behalf of the citizenry, in how that wealth is to be disbursed. In practice, the public sector is parasitic on the public purse, as it will always feed itself before it feeds the citizen. Furthermore, in taking choice away from the citizen and exercising it by proxy, the public sector regularly commits monopsony – the denial of free and fair competition through the exercise of monopoly purchasing power within a rigged marketplace. And this amounts to an assault on the most fundamental conservative value – freedom of the individual.

Freedom is only evidenced when the individual can exercise choices in what they do and how they do it. It is true that we have much freedom in many aspects of our lives – travel, speech, diet and association to name but a few areas. But, even in those areas where the State exercises fairly loose constraints – through sensible regulation – true choices are only available to those who possess what economists call effective demand or discretionary spending power. When the State sequestrates wealth through excessive taxation it shrinks the discretionary spending power of the citizen to such an extent that the taxation itself amounts to an assault on basic freedoms. Further, when the state arrogates unto itself the right to administer the delivery of essential services, then the assault on freedom of choice is even clearer.

The has been much talk of late about the role of the State a commissioner of services, with competition being provided through a multiplicity of providers, some of whom may be in the private sector. It is important to recognise that true competition only exists when an individual citizen freely can make a value for money distinction between providers that are vying for trade in a free market place. As anyone who has seen the public sector tendering process at work will attest, bureaucrat choice is a very poor substitute for the judgement of individual citizens about those choices which are in their own parochial and immediate best interests.

Socialism has always sought to transfer wealth from rich to poor. The principle mechanism devised to achieve this has been to tax the rich and to give benefits to the poor. However, an additional mechanism, the arrogation by the State of power over the delivery of essential services, has somehow become enshrined as an essential component of wealth redistribution policies. Both of these socialist nostrums should be challenged.

First, taxing the rich and giving benefits to the poor is a “Revenue” rather than a “Capital” solution. State benefits will never enrich the poor; they just institutionalise the poverty trap. The Coalition, should seek to transfer wealth, not just benefits, to the poor. The sale of council houses to their tenants was a classical example of compassionate capitalism and we should urgently search for new ways of wealth creation for the poorest in society.

Second, if we believe that true freedom is only achieved when individuals have the wealth to exercise free choices about all the goods and services that they might wish to purchase, then the purchasing decision must be transferred from the bureaucrat to the citizen in every feasible circumstance.

Third, if we believe that capitalism is the preferred method for the delivery of goods and services – because the profit motive moderated by competition is the best mechanism for delivering quality at the lowest cost – then the Coalition have an obligation to ensure that, in every practical circumstance, public services should be delivered by profit seeking private enterprises operating freely within a competitive marketplace.

These ideas can be unified under a single policy strap-line – “Transferring Wealth from the State to the Citizen”. We should set out a programme to transfer ownership to our citizenry, of the all those state enterprises which cannot be defended as “Natural Monopolies”. Every hospital and every school should be incorporated as a limited company with share capital distributed to all in the relevant catchment area. It would be important to transfer the shares to citizens rather than sell them – millions of citizens would become capitalists at a stroke, able to trade their shares or to retain them as profitable investments.

Equitable education funding would be achieved by distributing vouchers to parents each year for the purchase of the national curriculum from any school of their choosing. By moving every school to the private sector, the damaging class-divide between the state sector and the independent sector would be removed – all schools including those in what is now called the independent sector would take these vouchers. A continuum of provision from independent schools would emerge, with some charging nothing, some charging for extra curricular activities and some charging significant top-up fees.

Healthcare, free at the point of need, would be preserved for all emergency and acute conditions, and in a highly subsidised form for all treatment of chronic conditions, by the introduction of a hypothecated tax that funded insurance payments to all patients. Citizens could choose their insurer from within a competitive marketplace. Emergency and acute care would be paid for directly by the insurer according to locally agreed schedules of rates for specified healthcare interventions. These rates would be negotiated between insurers and hospital companies within a free market. Chronic care would be subject to citizen choice of provider and basic care would be reimbursed by their insurer with “Optional Extras” paid for out of advance voluntary contributions or ad-hoc top-up fees. Thus the principle of free healthcare at the point of need would be retained for all accident and acute care, whilst a regime of differential insurance premiums would disincentivise the adverse lifestyle choices that require greater reliance on the healthcare system.

In summary, we privatise all healthcare and education, eliminate the sclerosis of state control, introduce competition into those marketplaces and thereby significantly reduce the costs of service delivery and simultaneously increase the quality of the services provided; empower the citizen with real choice rather than bureaucrat mediated choice, and give every citizen – even the very poorest in society – a first step on the capitalism ladder. Together, these policies would reduce the tax burden and more fairly distribute the benefits of taxation throughout society. Who would dare to oppose such policies? Or should I ask –who would dare to advocate them?

Margaret Bowker on Tue, 30th Aug 2011 11:45 am


Hello Matthew, Been a bit busy, but your post was very intriguing. Hands off, narrow focus government seems less workable than might be thought . I find the idea of realistic, responsible government with an activist flavour more appealing, rather than the other way around. Localism can be effective, as I know, but it bristles with agendas and it’s slow; although government can appear unfeeling and distant; sometimes because it has to do the unpopular things; and International interaction seems even more demanding. On reading your post, I couldn’t help imagining how it would have been in the autumn of 2008, if policy had been so strict that countries felt they couldn’t turn up to debate how to deal with the financial crisis. And those decisions really affected everyone. So is it better to leave most decisions to local areas, including some of the big ones? Can you turn back the clock and will it work in the global village of the twenty-first century? Should an activist lead the political scene? I tend to be apprehensive of this. Several years ago, I remembering posting that the twenty first century would be a watershed, that partly through huge media development, it would be the century of the people, and that politics would no longer be an end unto itself, but reformed and revitalised, the true servant democracy intended. It sounds ambitious now, let’s hope someone answers your call for funding for your research project. It needs to be debated. Imagine very small government. Would you have to consult a considerable number scattered everywhere to get an urgent decision?

Peter Lloyd on Tue, 30th Aug 2011 12:19 pm


” Principles and Practices for 21st century national governance” is exactly what we need. Keep talking about it loudly and a funder for such a major piece of research may well appear. How about Luke Johnson, your Chair of Trustees? He cares about this judging by the amount of time he has given up to speak at organisations such as the Institute of Ideas and to write his column in the FT.

I came to the same conclusion via a different route and identified what was needed as being a charter of principles for political life and a written constitution (for the national governance bit). We won’t get very far with the “national” versus “local” debate unlesss there is a much better idea about the role of the state, of central government and of local government for that matter. Surely it is worth trying to get a broad agreement and as the article says, we can start with “disentangling the critiques of administrative centralism”….etc. We surely have an accurate idea about what central government is good at and where it is effective and where it is not. There will always be arguments at the margin but the problem with critiquing those who are negative about too much central government is that they have plenty of evidence of its failure and not enough of its success. On top of that, there is no mechanism for preventing the mission creep of centralisation despite many attempts at adopting one. Disillusionment then understandably sets in.
A refreshing re-think of roles and governance would instil some of that much longed for “trust” in the system and in the politicians. Trusting the people in return and clearly acknowledging what they are responsible for is going to be part of the answer.

Will Sheward on Tue, 30th Aug 2011 1:16 pm


In reply to J Mark Dodds:

“Ahem, Wll Sheward. Surely RSA is not YOUR Society, any more than it is mine.”

Actually it is precisely as much your society as it is mine. The RSA *is* its Fellows (I’m assuming you’re a Fellow, my apologies if this assumption is incorrect).

“Ahem, in MY Society it’s interesting to hear the boss speaking his mind out loud.”

I’m glad you now realise it’s your society Not sure Matthew is the boss though, he’s the CEO, the bosses are the Board of Trustees.

I’m certainly not objecting to Matthew Taylor speaking his mind, I am objecting to him getting party-political while wearing his RSA hat. My problem isn’t that Matthew has personal political opinions (he’d be a strange sort of human being if he didn’t) but rather that those opinions are presented as the views of the RSA due to the prominence of his personal blog on the home page of the RSA’s website.

Surely it would be more appropriate if Matthew’s blog wasn’t linked to at all, except from his bio, and instead there was an RSA blog to which Matthew, other members of the Executive team and members of the Board of Trustees could contribute posts?

J Mark Dodds on Tue, 30th Aug 2011 7:35 pm


@Will Sheward: I managed to post the first comment by mistake. Thanks for a very good answer.

Brinda on Wed, 31st Aug 2011 4:33 pm


Sounds like a very interesting research! Coincidentally that was in my mind for couple of months now. I am up for it if we receive the funding!

Judith on Thu, 1st Sep 2011 8:20 am


While I agree with what is being discussed, how often is the diagnosis wrong and how often does the patient die from the un-necessary treatment. Or the treament is considered a success when in fact the patient didn’t have cancer in the first place. We do need to question the NHS again and again rather than assume they know what they are doing. I speak from experience of incorrect medication/diagnosis on many occasions with close family and it is us, the family, who have uncovered mistakes, and inappropriate treatment.

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