Internet Commentator

Maybe there's something to this "Blank Slate Ideology" after all

David B points to a study on Social Mobility which demonstrates significantly higher social mobility in Scandinavian countries than in the US or UK and offers this curious hypothesis:

It would be interesting to know more about the reasons for high social mobility in the Scandinavian countries. The thought just crossed my mind that social mobility may be positively related to the size of the public sector, since the public sector, whatever else may be said about it, does tend to recruit and promote people on the basis of IQ and academic qualifications, rather than family connections. Social mobility may be low in countries where much of the economy is in family businesses.

This sounds suspiciously like post-rationalisation to me. I've never heard anyone claim that the public sector is a better, harsher judge of merit than the private sector. The market offers no exceptions to "family businesses" which, if they operate on a nepotistic basis, will soon find themeselves outcompeted by merit-driven businesses. The public sector, by contrast, though it might reward merit, frequently finds itself also rewarding "demerit" due to fixed pay scales and the fact that - as a former secretary of mine described one of the advantages of her new public sector job - "let's face it, you'd have to be an eejit to get sacked".

Might the answer to this conundrum, however unpalatable it might be to several of David's co-bloggers, that the very "Blank Slate Ideology" of official Scandinavian policy regularly decried by gnxp's "dobeln" acts to discourage prejudice based on received wisdom? It might be incorrect to think that we are born with a blank slate, just as it might be incorrect to think that morality was handed to Moses by God in the shape of the ten commandments. But, such "incorrect" beliefs might lead to happy consequences such as a general willingness to treat people as one finds them and a widely accepted notion of right and wrong.

Gratuitous cute kids picture

While I'm uploading photographs...

It's been a while since I posted any pictures of my mini-brood and they were looking so cute this morning that I thought I'd share:

Almost finished

Our house is finally nearing completion so I thought I'd post a few pics. Plans already posted here.

It looks a bit more complete inside...

Gotham Bound

Off to New York, en famille, for a couple of days from Thursday and then onto Florida for a week to visit Mother-in-law. If anyone has any must-see suggestions for NY, I'd be delighted to receive them...

The worse, the better

Sir Alex Ferguson claims " There's still life in me yet" but regrettably I am going to endorse United Rant's plea - Fergie please go, now - as, I suspect, will most United fans. The defeat to Everton was the last straw, the team and the manager looked bereft of ideas and United are now destined to finish up in third place for the third time in four seasons which is simply not good enough. During a successful period, there is always the nagging worry about the manner in which it will end. If you look at the dominant teams prior to United's decade, Arsenal (champions 1989 and 1991) and Liverpool (champions 1988 and 1990). Arsenal's is obviously the model to emulate: after Bruce Rioch's indifferent reign he ws promptly sacked, Wenger was hired and by 1998 they had won the premiership. Famously sentimental Liverpool, by contrast, retained several managers long after they should have been sacked, a decade of decline ensued and despite Rafa Benitez's impressive run in the Champions' League, still look no closer to regaining the league title. All of this, and the fact that Chelsea's wealth and quality have raised the bar even higher, suggests that the only prospect United have of competing for serious honours is if Ferguson is replaced, probably by Martin O'Neill.

I believe that there is still a strong squad at United, particularly so for the first eleven and the youth team, if not the immediate stand-ins and there are plenty of exciting young players at United for the future, not only Rooney and Ronaldo, but also Rossi, Pique and Spector. But I am no longer confident that Ferguson will either buy well in the summer or get the best out of the players we already have.

So it is a curious quandary in which I find myself. I obviously want United to win the FA cup, especially as it is against Arsenal, and I would also love if United could leapfrog over Arsenal into second place. But, such trivial consolations would merely paper over the cracks. It might be better for United in the medium term if we didn't.

More on Voice

Oliver Kamm, on pressure groups, does a good job of explaining why it's not such prudent policy to oil the squeakiest wheels:

What is wrong with these campaigns is not that their policies are necessarily bad, but that they lack any conception of how to reconcile competing claims to scarce resources. The weakness at the heart of pressure-group politics is that, as Isaiah Berlin observed, “the very idea of the perfect world in which all good things are realised is incomprehensible, is in fact conceptually incoherent”.

The party leaders could assist the health of our democracy by asserting collectively that the election manifestos of pressure groups will not be read, let alone heeded. So far from being an act of arrogance, it would indicate genuine humility: an awareness that politics is a second-order activity, with inherent limits on what it can deliver.

White smoke..

..Bell ringing. Breaking news: New pope elected. BBC has a live "Vaticam". No word on the identity of the new pope yet. Of course everyone now knows Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI.

Exit and Voice

Great post by Jonathan Wilde which picks up on a (throwaway?) Insta-pinion on public schooling. Glenn Reynold's remark is depressingly familiar and aired by many in relation to education, public healthcare and, defending deception, social "insurance":

I wonder, though, if the increasing availability of private education and homeschooling doesn’t make things worse, by draining off some of the parents whose complaints would otherwise force the system to behave better. At some point, I suppose, the effects of competition will shift things the other way, but that dynamic doesn’t seem to be taking hold, yet.

According to this view, it would be preferable to force or cajole the more querulous parents into public education in order that their "voice" helps to improve the system for all parents. Yet as Jonathan explains, Exit works better:

Voice - having the opportunity to influence an entrenched organization - results in the parents of a child having $4,000 taken from them in exchange for the ability to cast a vote for a new school board every few years and go to a PTA meeting once a month to voice a complaint. This complaint is in competition with perhaps hundreds of other complaints and opinions of how the school system should be run. While compromise can lend expression to several of these viewpoints, only a single final product results.

Exit - having the power to escape entrenched organizations - results in the parents of a child being able to take those $4,000 to give to other service providers of their choosing. Compromise is largely unnecessary as the game is not fixed-sum. The number of potential final products is unlimited.

Evil fun

Brilliant stuff. Found at Coming Anarchy: The Perry Bible Fellowship comic strip for the amoral cynic.

Successful soccer strategies

So, United's season rests on this weekend's FA cup semi-final. I wouldn't be surprised if Newcastle, having already knocked out champions-elect and champions' league favourites Chelsea, managed to knock out United, the holders. Meanwhile Arsenal look to have a lock on second place, thus qualifying directly for next season's champions' league and Liverpool have made it to the semi-finals of that competition. It occurs to me that there are two different strategies a top Premiership team could adopt.

I'd describe that of Arsenal, as the "Flat-track bully" strategy - steamroll over inferior opposition, meekly surrender to your peers or betters. Defeats by Chelsea, United, Liverpool and Bayern Munich have prevented them from making a serious challenge for major domestic or european honours, but thumping victories over most of the bottom half of the table have gifted them enough points and goals to edge past United into second place.

Liverpool's is the "Big time Charlie" strategy - fail to muster up enough enthusiasm for inferior opposition, saving yourself for the big games. Incredibly for a top 5 team, they have already lost a dozen times, yet carved out victories over Arsenal and rivals Everton and managed to see off mighty Juventus to set up a semi-final clash with Chelsea.

Of course what you really want is the right combination of Flat-track bully and Big time Charlie: Raise your game for the "big boys" and roll over the "minnows" which is more or less what Chelsea do. Unfortunately, United this season, though capable of rolling over inferior opposition and vanquishing their rivals, also proved capable of meekly surrendering to big teams and displaying insufficient effort against weaker sides.