The UK Election, Liberalism and Strategic Voting
Samuel Brittan recently wrote about his intention to vote for the Lib-Dems in the forthcoming UK election, having voted for the Labour Party in 2001:
In going for the Lib-Dems I am under no illusion that they are the party of Gladstone and John Stuart Mill. But at least they are different from Labour and Conservative; and there is nothing wrong in voting for negative reasons. In the past I have shrunk from supporting them because they looked too much like the unreconstructed Old Labour of the 1980s. But since Gordon Brown’s large increases in public service spending, they have found less mileage in that direction; and the recent Orange Book from the still-too-small free market wing of the party suggests a move in the right direction, as does the appointment of the eminently sensible Vincent Cable as their shadow chancellor.
There is no avoiding tactical voting in our present electoral system; and if your main objective is to keep out either Labour or the Conservatives at all costs then there are only a few constituencies where voting Lib-Dem would make sense. But if you believe that two terms of Labour are long enough and you would not mind a hung House of Commons then feel free to go for the Lib-Dems.
It says a lot about the Tories that one of Britain’s most prominent classical liberal commentators cannot bring himself to vote for them. But the fact that he has turned his back on the Labour Party is also telling. The prediction markets are implying a Labour victory is a near certainty, but I suspect this is one election the prediction markets will get wrong. With the Tory campaign now being run by the same campaigners who made John Howard Australia’s second longest serving Prime Minister and with Tony Blair on the nose with the anti-war left, the Labour Party will have their work cut out for them.
posted on 01 April 2005 by skirchner in Politics
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Voluntary vs Compulsory Student Unionism
Andrew Norton discusses the government’s voluntary student unionism (VSU) legislation over at Catallaxy, noting that as a market liberal, he opposes the legislation as just another form of centralised control over universities (leading to the ‘Minister for Sausage Rolls,’ as he puts it in another post).
Andrew raises what I think has always been a central problem for the advocates of VSU, which is that if universities were to bundle student services with tuition fees, then they become just another form of largely unobjectionable product bundling that we routinely see in the provision of private sector goods and services. Andrew’s argument is that so long as market forces are allowed to operate in relation to the provision of higher education more generally, the problem of student unions will largely resolve itself. Universities competing on price and quality will simply not permit the excesses and inefficiencies associated with today’s student unions.
Andrew correctly argues that compulsory student union fees in Australia are a legacy of the funding model for higher education, which up until recently prevented universities charging tuition fees, giving rise to a separate ‘amenities’ fee for student services. This is why student unionism has never been a major issue in the US, unlike Australia and the UK. It is not coincidental that the Australian government is now addressing this issue in the context of wider changes to the funding model for higher education.
I have a somewhat less principled position than Andrew. Andrew has done more than anyone to highlight how far removed Australian higher education is from a market model. In the context of a highly centralised and regulated system, I think we are permitted to play favourites with the interventions we like and don’t like. Even bad legislation that forces universities to confront the consequences of their dependence on public funding and centralised control can serve as a catalyst for change. As Andrew notes, the government’s legislation will move us in the right direction by forcing universities to take direct responsibility for student services. The only unfortunate thing about the legislation is that it is symptomatic of the government’s broader agenda of centralisation across a wide range of portfolio areas that is undermining the foundations of Australia’s federal system of government.
posted on 17 March 2005 by skirchner in Politics
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The House Economics Committee Gets a New Chair
Those of us who argue for greater central bank transparency can only cringe when the Reserve Bank Governor fronts the House Economics Committee. You have to admire the patience and politeness Governor Macfarlane displays in the face of the Committee’s woeful displays of economic illiteracy and ham-fisted attempts at point scoring.
Things are not going to get much better under the Committee’s new chair, Bruce Baird, who has rather helpfully put out a press release alerting us to what is on the Committee’s collective mind. Baird says:
I’m also interested in what incentives the Reserve believes are needed to encourage greater private investment and whether there should be a diversion away from investing in private housing.
This is of course well outside the Governor’s mandate and, dare I suggest, also outside the realm of legitimate public policy concern. The implication that investment in housing is excessive is particularly galling coming from people whose own homes are, at a wild guess, a cut above average. It is fine for them to invest in housing, but a dangerous ‘bubble’ when everyone else gets in on the act.
Baird is also a coordinator of the informal government committee, the Friends of Tourism Group. This sits rather uneasily with his current efforts to deny Singapore Airlines access to the Australia-US route in order to protect Qantas jobs in his electorate, which includes Sydney Airport. The sort of ‘friend’ tourism could do without.
posted on 17 February 2005 by skirchner in Economics, Politics
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