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Like this bulletin? Tell your friends. Don’t like it? Tell me. — E
IN THIS ADAM SMITH INSTITUTE E-BULLETIN:
Capitalism after Covid: Ditch all this state control and corporate wokery, and just grow!
Events, events: Yes, real ones!
Superblog: Hurrah for Polly! M&M MMadness! And more!
BUT FIRST...
Well, here we are in an unprecedented third year of 2020. MPs are back and getting themselves into lots of trouble. (I think they’ve spent so much time on Zoom recently that they’ve forgotten real life doesn’t have a “leave meeting" button.) Boris, in particular, must feel like a mother wishing goodbye to birthday-party kids: “I hope you all had a lot of fun, because, for me, it’s been a huge amount of trouble.” Could he be the first PM forced to resign by a cake?
Meanwhile, minister Nusrat Ghani claims she was reshuffled by Conservative whips because she was displaying too much ‘Muslimness’. (In which case, they should tell Boris Johnson to resign for not showing enough ‘Conservativeness’.) And snowflake MPs who’re complaining of bullying by the whips have been invited in to talk to the Metropolitan Police (who I hope will provide them with soft lighting, fluffy cushions, soothing music and a nice cup of cocoa.)
Parliament has been debating a new free speech law. (These parliamentary debates are all fine and well, but they really only work if you can get people to stop talking.) They’re also debating the Online Safety Bill, designed to prevent the child population accessing smut. (Though it’s hardly online safety, as half the adult population will be handing their IDs over to some pretty dodgy websites.)
In other news, it looks like The BBC will become a subscription service. (I hope this becomes a more general principle: the Inland Revenue want me to pay them £££ by 31 January and I’d like to tell them I’m cancelling my subscription to Government because it’s such poor value.) Red faces at the Scottish Government, which sent out a message in Gaelic wishing everyone "Happy Burns Night". (Sadly they must have used Google Translate, because instead of invoking the name of the Ploughman-Poet, their message wished everyone a happy night of heat-related injuries.) And Tony Blair has become a Garter Knight (but promises to retain his humility).
But I digress…
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Capitalism after Covid
We’re fed up with the ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’ adulation of central planning. The Covid crisis, says Matthew Lesh in this new report, does not show the need for a bigger state. In fact, state capacity was pretty rubbish, with schools closing down and doctors refusing to see patients. But the supermarkets and other private businesses quickly worked out how to control the risks and keep going. Thank goodness we don’t have a National Food Service, we’d all be starving. Anyway, don’t listen to my ranting, read the report. It’s really pretty good.
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Splice of Life
Matthew Lesh, the one-man global content producer, was in report-producing overdrive just before he left us for the IEA, and here’s another, The Splice of Life, (Geddit?—Ed.) extolling the life-giving benefits of genetically modified thingies and gene editing, whatever that is. GM thingies, it turns out, save consumers about $24bn a year (tick), cut pesticide use (tick), are safe (tick), add to biodiversity (tick, tick) and save 34m kg of carbon dioxide (tick, tick, tick). Oh, and loony Greens (boo) have scared governments (boo) into banning them just about everywhere (boo). But now we’ve shed the apron strings of Nanny EU (boo, boo), it’s time to unleash our inner biotech industry (huzzah!).
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Singapore on Thames
Let’s not get dewy-eyed about it, but for all its faults, Singapore is a pretty good post-Brexit model for the UK to follow, says Dr Bryan Cheang of King’s College London. It has only minimal state intervention and is one of the fastest-growing economies on the planet. (Not saying that’s cause and effect, but makes ya think, don’t it?) It encourages savings for retirement, healthcare and housing, has a workfare system that focuses on curing poverty by getting people into work, and abandoned it’s NHS-style health system when it went independent in 1965. Now its health outcomes are much better than ours. I could go on. But just read the report.
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With the start of a new year, we’ve got so many exciting opportunities ahead. There are endless ways we can teach the next generation, educate the masses, and be a thorn in the side of government - just think of the possibilities! If you’d like to help us achieve our goals for 2022 - expanded student outreach, more events, blockbuster reports, and more, please consider donating. We rely entirely on support from friends like yourself. It’s easy, just click the button below!
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I don’t know why we call our popular podcast The Pin Factory rather than The Adam Smith Institute Podcast, but if you scramble the letters you can get the word preachify out of it. Not that preachifying is what it’s about (OK, well, maybe a bit). Rather, each week we sit down with special guests to delve behind the headlines and tell you what’s really going on inside the zany game-show of politics. So you’ll find topics like ‘The UK and China’ and ‘Hong Kong BN(O)s’, ‘Energy Bills and Net Zero’, ‘Partygate’ (natch), ‘Cannabis in the Capital’ (Featuring our Vice Specialist Dan Pryor) and much more. Click, listen, rebel!
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Johnny Patterson on the UK-China relationship
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Morgan Schondelmeier on the energy price cap
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Applications are still open for our annual Freedom Week summer school in Cambridge, which runs from August 22nd to 27th. If you’re starting your degree this year or already at university, Freedom Week gives you the opportunity to meet like-minded students and deepen your understanding of free markets. Join leading classical liberal academics for talks, debates, discussion groups and a lively programme of social activities by applying here.
As we return to a semblance of normality, we’re back to our usual programme of school and university visits to educate the next generation about economics. Our Head of Research is currently up t’North speaking to undergraduates in Durham on the perils of the sugar tax, as well as Sixth Formers of Royal Grammar School Newcastle on the economics of migration. We’ve also got our first ISOS (Independent Seminar on the Open Society) taking place early next month at Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School and several more school visits lined up in the coming weeks. If you want us to give a talk or hold a day-long economics conference at your school, get in touch at [email protected]
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Resource depletion? Don’t Worry!
You can’t turn on the news without hearing about overpopulation and resource depletion. (I never turn on the news anyway, it’s so depressing—Ed.). We’re told that if we keep having children and don’t outlaw consumerism (£1,000 fine for buying a second pair of shoes?) our natural resources will run out and we’ll all bake to death in the desert sun. Well, Prof Gale Pooley thinks that’s a load of baloney and in his upcoming talk at ASI, he’ll explain why our resources have actually become more abundant over time, thanks to — who’d have guessed? — human inventiveness and market-based efficiency.
Thursday 3 March, 6pm — email [email protected] for invites.
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Agreeing with Polly Toynbee. Like a stopped clock, she has to be right sometimes, though probably not twice a day. Still, good to see the great journalist blowing a raspberry to the latest government ‘flagship housing policy’ which is to inflate house prices even further by subsidising home ownership. Actually, says superblogger Tim Worstall, the solution to nose-bleedingly-high property prices is to blow up the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act (Bang! Kablooie!) which Polly (did you know you can get the word potbelly out of her name?) wouldn’t agree with, but we might yet convince her, who knows?
Woke M&Ms. Madsen has got 96bn views or something for his pungent commentary on M&M cartoon characters being updated to ‘commit to gender-balanced leadership’ and a ‘diversity audit’ of the candy company’s advertising. Read it and weep, with an odd mixture of despair and laughter.
And there is much more: Why the regulatory state is killing property ownership; Stop hounding the self-employed, you rotten IR-35; Why HS2 is one of the daftest project known to humanity; Making users pay for state services; Free speech — and much else. Visit now.
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Our report, Capitalism after Covid, featured in The Telegraph, Daily Mail, Mail+, WiredUK, GB News. Historian and commentator Dominic Sandbrook featured our report in his latest Daily Mail column and Daniel Pryor wrote for CapX. Report author (formerly of these shores––Ed.) Matthew Lesh will be in ConservativeHome tomorrow and Madsen will feature in CityAM on Monday (we're giving you enough notice to grab a copy!––Ed.).
ASI Fellow James Lawson appeared in the Daily Mail (x2 and x3) on reducing self isolation to 5 days, and again to comment on lack of recognition of jabs delivered across the four nations. You can also find him making the case for winning the peace following Covid in The Telegraph.
John Macdonald spoke to the Express about the economics behind the energy price cap and the struggles ahead while Morgan Schondelmeier addressed that and more in a GB News paper review.
Meanwhile, our comment on CEO pay made its way into almost every local newspaper (there’s always a local angle… –– Ed.), Daniel Pryor wrote for CapX on the trial cannabis diversion scheme, and Madsen also featured in CapX, highlighting the flaws with the Beeb and how we ought to go about funding her while John spoke to BBC Radio 5 Live on the same topic.
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KNOW SOMEONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN OUR E-BULLETIN?
SEND THEM THE LINK BELOW!
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AND I QUOTE...
Oscar Wilde had some simple advice on how to keep yourself out of trouble:
“Hear no evil, speak no evil, and you won’t be invited to parties.”
Bye,
e
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