Degrees, Money and the Future

For a long time, it was politically incorrect to protest the huge increase in university/college attendance across developed nations in Europe and North America. University attendance went from approximately 14% in the 1970s to over 40% today. Tony Blair famously wanted 50% of youngsters to attend university. A degree was lauded as a springboard to socio-economic mobility, and graduates were supposed to boost GDP growth and tax revenues by taking up high-skilled jobs.

But the reality is turning the dream into a nightmare. The sad truth is that the number of graduates exceeds the number of graduate jobs, and many graduates—particularly from some of the humanities and social sciences—end up under-employed. Furthermore, the burden of college debt acts like a vice on the economy. It doesn’t matter whether the debt is private debt (like in the US) or public debt (like in most European countries). Most obviously, debt harms consumption. It has knock-on social effects on fertility and demographics; young people burdened with debt start a family later (or don’t start it at all), and struggle to afford a house. Moreover, from a macroeconomic perspective, the loans are dangerous, since a lot of them are bad—that is to say, many debtors won’t repay the full amount, or the interest, or repay within the expected maturity period.

The hard truth, that young people, parents, and policymakers don’t want to hear, is that high-skilled, university-level jobs make up at best 20% of the available jobs. I am also highly skeptical that this will increase in the future. The percentage may increase, but only because the total number of jobs will decrease as more jobs are destroyed by automation (high-skilled jobs are much more resistant to the effect of automation). The jobs that require a degree are highly technical and/or vocational: medicine, pharma, nursing, dentistry; programming; engineering; data science; and so on.

Automation, AI and the post-scarcity economy are things that have been discussed elsewhere in more detail than I will go into here. The long and short of it is: we are heading towards are a post-scarcity economy. We are not there yet, and the process will take time. Also, let me be clear that a post-scarcity economy does not mean the end of scarcity; some goods and services will remain scarce, but the majority will be available in abundance. To give you an idea: food, energy and consumer goods will be abundant. Heck, they are already pretty abundant right now. Have you ever seen a shortage of nails? Nails, like many other goods, can be mass-produced for a very low price, and they require almost no human input in their creation. Other things will remain more scarce, especially things that require a lot of high-skill human labour.

That’s the key, the salient point of this little essay: labour. Historically, we have regarded labour, work, as something valuable and worthy. An entire religion, Protestantism, revolves around the value of work. Work means steady payment; a livelihood. But labour is inherently tied to scarcity. Humans have to labour because things are scarce: food, shelter, medicine and so on. So what happens when all the work is done by robots and software? Let’s assume that everything could be done by robots or computers, just for the purposes of this thought experiment.

Ideally, we would live in a utopia; humanity would never want for anything. In reality, the barrier lying between us and this utopian vision is capitalism. We admire capitalism because it has worked well for the last two centuries or so—with government regulation and the managing of natural monopolies, of course. Adam Smith was more or less right. He was misunderstood by the braying free market neoliberals; Adam Smith never argued that the “invisible hand” would make markets self-regulating in general (only if a very specific set of criteria were fulfilled). A mixed market+command economy is the way to go. This is something that France, the UK, Scandinavia and Germany understood, but which the US and Soviet Union did not.

Unfortunately, I think the economic model of the past century may no longer function in this post-scarcity future, because it is still predicated on the idea of renumeration for labour. To put it bluntly: in the future, many, perhaps most, of the population will be unemployed. They will be unemployed for no other reason than that they will have nothing to do.

I believe that we will need a Universal Basic Income at some point in the not-too-distant future. Moreover, I think a successful economic model of the future will still have capitalism (i.e. capital, companies, competition etc.) but in a far more diminished way. Capitalism will be limited to areas of rapid innovation, scarcity, and high differentiation. Everything else will be administrated by organs of the state, be it local, regional or national governments. Money will still exist, so this will be socialism, not communism. The state already administers 40–50% of the economy measured by GDP, so this should not be a big pill to swallow (newsflash, Americans). Why will it be adminstered by the state, you ask?

This leads onto the next point. Capitalism is unstable and destructive. It creates a small number of winners and a large number of losers. (Sorry, right-wing Americans.) In the future, this tendency will be exaggerated until society will fray apart. An industrial reserve army of the unemployed—an army of losers—will be created. There are only three possible scenarios. One, capitalism tries to maintain itself through coercion. Two, socialism prevails. Or three, massive social unrest results in anarchy, and the post-scarcity economy is destroyed, bringing us back to the status quo ante… by which I mean something before 1770: the medieval world. This scenario seems more likely in third world countries that are politically unstable.

Let’s go back to square one, and the original point of this essay. More university degrees will not lead to better pay or employment. There are powerful economic and technological forces at play that are leading us to a world with high unemployment. Instead of creating more debt and broken dreams, policymakers need to focus on managing the transition to a post-scarcity economy based on UBI, the provision of basic goods, and reduced inequality.

What does this look like, in practical terms? Well, it won’t be a world of perfect equality. I don’t believe such a thing is possible or even desirable—and I say this as a staunch socialist. Natural inequality is the reality of the world we live in. Some humans are smarter than others, or more talented, or hardworking; they should be rewarded. So the economic situation will look like this. Everyone will be guaranteed a basic income of, say, 2000 euro a month. They can earn extra by participating in the labour market when possible. Some people will earn high salaries, like 3K, 4K, 5K a month because they do something difficult (and they will pay taxes on their income). And there will be a few millionaires or billionaires, but fewer than there are today. The state’s revenues will shift from being predominantly taxation funded to being funded more by the sale of goods, e.g. food and housing. This is because there won’t be enough taxpayers to fund public goods like healthcare and (obviously) UBI itself otherwise.

Money is hard to understand for the layperson. Money is not scarce; it can be created at will. But scarce things do have a higher price. This is why creating more money causes inflation: there is more money, but the number of goods does not increase.

How can the state fund UBI? It’s not through taxation: you can tax UBI, but since that money comes from the government, there is no mathematical way to fund UBI with itself. Rather, the state can simply print money and ensure that the supply of goods (which it controls) matches up. The state will also tax corporations that make large amounts of money through the sale of goods and services. This system will ensure that basic goods are provided, but also that people have disposable income to spend on more whimsical things—art, fine dining, holidays, whatever—at their discretion. Remember that this will not be a truly post-scarcity society, just a “mostly” post-scarcity one. Provided that the money supply is managed sensibly, this system will work very well.

Now that I think about it, this system could already be partially implemented in the world we live in today, since we are already approaching post-scarcity in some ways. But to accomplish this, we have to have political awareness. We cannot allow our politicians to further the interests of the rich, and pull the wool over our eyes. People are not unemployed because they are lazy, or because they don’t have a degree, or because they don’t know how to code. Only 1% of the population knows how to code, and demand is at most 2 or 3%. People are unemployed because of technological growth.

Some people will not like what I am saying about degrees. Humanities people in particular think that humanities degrees are being devalued in favour of STEM. But actually my argument has nothing to do with funding one or the other. It is true that humanities degrees do not pay as well as (most) STEM degrees, so that is a good argument to avoid going into debt for one. But I would very much be in favour of subsiding degrees so that the best humanities students can study for free. The real problem—which I want you, the reader, to understand—is when we make 1 in 2 youngsters get a degree just for the sake of it. Believe me, all those psychology students (psychology is one of the most popular majors) don’t really want to be doing a degree; they just want to party. Them getting a degree, however, prejudices bright students who are genuinely interested in learning. It strains financial resources and devalues the worth of a degree.

Thanks for reading this far. If you have some thoughts to share, please comment below.

My Experience at AUC: A Review

As promised, I am writing a review of my experience at AUC—including the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. I have given similar feedback in the evaluation form I was sent, so the information presented here has already been communicated via the official channel. Instead, this blog post is written partly as an introspective essay, and partly as a guidebook to future AUC students.

The Good

The best thing about AUC is the student community. The environment is co-operative: think MIT rather than investment bank. Some students are academically gifted and help other students, but even the weakest AUC students possess something uncommon—initiative. Entrepreneurialism is cliché, and it’s not the best description here; we AUC students don’t start companies (this is not a thing in the Netherlands) but we do organise events, sing, write, go to festivals, and chair lots of committees.

The curriculum is interdisciplinary, at least much more so than at comparable universities. The course is demanding and hard, but also intellectually satisfying. The AUC faculty teachers are really good—I studied under a lawyer who is foremost in his field of environmental law, for example. One of my teachers is a prominent climate scientist in the Netherlands; another is a best-selling writer and human rights advocate. All of them are good teachers as well as academics; they’re obviously passionate about interacting with the students, and the students are happy to ask questions or pose criticisms.

We have graduates from Stanford, Cornell and Leiden in the faculty. The number of AUC students that obtain master’s degrees from the likes of Oxford, Cambridge or HEC is remarkable given that AUC only graduates about 300 students a year.

The Bad

Academically, the programme suffers from two problems: there’s too much work (and stress), and the quality of courses offered by outside professors is too variable. I won’t name courses or professors here, but one course I took at AUC was more like a high school class than a university-level class at one of the country’s most prestigious schools.

The workload is a well-known issue—AUC themselves basically admit it—and the stress takes its toll on many students. A survey reported by our student newspaper indicates that mental health issues are probably pretty common, and stress is the foremost issue in student life. Speaking personally, it’s not just the amount or the difficulty of assignments that’s stressful—though some exams and assignments were difficult, and sometimes I did have an awful lot of assignments. It’s also the way the assignments and exams are structured: the assignments are usually due at midnight. Not infrequently, on weekends. Exams can be early in the morning (I had one at 8:30am) or as late as 6–7:30pm.

The AUC experience is chaotic, in other words. It also doesn’t help that university’s administration is likewise chaotic and disorganised: the rules are many, important information is not always communicated on time, and some very bizarre decisions are taken with respect to retakes or grade equivalencies from semesters studied abroad. I myself contested an economics paper grade, and ended up having to write a new paper over the summer. Not fun.

The Downright Ugly

The ugliest thing about AUC is not actually AUC, but rather, DUWO—the company responsible for student accommodation. All AUC students have to live in the dorms, so there is no way to avoid dealing with this bunch of losers. Their incompetence verges on the comical, and I could write a long litany of all the things I hate about them. This is but a brief list, covering the greatest iniquities:

• Repeated breakdowns in the hot water system. Sometimes this lasted a couple of hours in a localised part of the dorms, but once, all of the dorms didn’t have hot water for 2 or 3 days.

• Repeated breakdowns of the lift: good luck getting your bike to the 3rd or 5th floor.

• Lack of communication, and stubborn idiocy on the other end of the line.

• Electronic keys that stopped working.

• Poor quality washing machines. They didn’t allow us to use our own washing machines, either.

• A bathroom with no light fixtures or ventillation; a linoleum floor that was always dirty even if you just cleaned it.

If I had to pick one ugly thing about AUC, however, it would be the way they deal with struggling students. As of 2020, students who need an extra semester to graduate need to move out of the dorms and find housing on their own. Retakes are officially forbidden, so hope you don’t screw up an exam.

Conclusion

I ultimately enjoyed my time AUC, and survived the more difficult periods. I have just graduated cum laude with a high GPA—enough to meet the minimum requirements for Oxford. Nevertheless, I cannot recommend AUC to just anyone. It’s obvious that academic ability is required (any good university requires this), but the experience is also unnecessarily stressful. By the end of my studies, I was exhausted.

Publishing Woes, and other news

Hello readers!

It has been a while (over a month, in fact) since I last wrote on the Magical Realm. Alas, this is inevitable: there was too much work to do in June—the final month of my studies—and after July 1st, when I graduated. The wonderful housing corporation, which every single AUC student is obliged to rent from, made me move out on July 15th. That’s barely two weeks since I graduated.

After I managed to sell my furniture—or rather, a single piece, the rest of which I simply dumped—I travelled with my parents to Romania, and visited beautiful places in Austria along the way. The journey is about 2300km in length, and we were in no hurry, so we stayed 2 weeks on the road. You can check out my album here.

In Romania, I hoped for some peace and quiet, but naturally, got neither. Part of it is because of my family. Part of is it also because of a medical problem: I have developed foliculitis decanavans on my scalp and hair, thanks to years of antibiotics and reclacitrant acne. The good news is that I have convinced a local dermatologist to put me on isotretinoin (also known as “Accutane”). This is a Vitamin-A derivative that drastically reduces sebum production—sebum being a fatty secretion on the skin. Acne like mine has a variety of causes, but a huge overproduction of sebum is the main cause.

(The above is still a very simplified explanation: you can read more about it online, if you are interested.)

The medicine is, unfortunately, known for its side-effects, and I will need monthly medical supervision during the 6-month treatment course. But it’s the only permanent treatment available for both my acne and foliculitis.

You, dear reader, are probably interested to know more about my new novel—Fallen Love—as well as my experience at AUC. The latter is a topic I will be addressing in an upcoming blog post, entitled “My Experience at AUC: A Review”. I will be posting that shortly.

As for my new book, progress has once again stalled. I have queried another batch of agents, receiving one rejection and no replies after 1 month. The situation is so bad that I’ve seriously started considering how I will self-publish. Self-publishing requires three things: knowledge, time, and money. Naturally, money is the most difficult of the three. One good thing about AUC is cost; the cost of living in Amsterdam was manageable thanks to student housing and subsidies, and the tuition was mostly covered by loans. The loans have 0% interest and a 15-year repayment period starting in 2021. This means that I am not broke.

Even so, I have divided the self-publishing option into two plans: the cheap plan, and the expensive one. It is impossible to self-publish effectively without a good cover and a solid marketing strategy; and since editing is expensive, it must face the financial guillotine.

The two plans cost as follows:

• The cheap plan costs €2500. This includes cover design (in the region of €500); the services of a marketing professional (€1000); miscellaneous expenses including a self-publishing course, for around €200; and the remaining €800 is budgeted for ads.

• The expensive plan costs €5000. It budgets €2250 for editing (developmental + a proof read) and €750 for cover design, just to make sure I get the best cover I can.

The cheap plan is feasible for me right now; the expensive plan is predicated on getting some sort of job.

Right now, I’m honestly still uncertain as to what to do. I have applied for a master’s degree and a scholarship at Strathclyde University in Glasgow, where I can save rent living with my parents. If that doesn’t pan out—and there’s no guarantee it will, financially—I will look for a job or start a master’s degree in the winter.

Now you understand my quandary. I will leave you now, dear reader, for I need review the quality of my university’s education, on which I shall be writing again soon!

My Review of Capital in the 21st Century, Part Two

Hail readers!

I am at last back to civilisation, and will remain here for the next week or so. Although I am very busy—I need to pay my tuition fee to Amsterdam, I need to procure various documents, and of course there’s work to be done on the Ark—I have taken the effort to continue writing here on the Magical Realm. As part of these efforts, here is the second part of my review of Thomas Piketty’s Capital. (For the first part, look here.)

My review of Capital in the 21st Century, part two.

Previously, I wrote a review on the first third or so of Capital that I had read. As you may be able to guess, this review will concern the theses presented in the next third of the book—as well as to elaborate further on some of the initial theses, which reoccur throughout the book.

In Capital, Piketty presents a number of new topics. He moves away from the definition of the capital income ratio, its evolution throughout time, and other abstract macroeconomic indicators; instead he treats inequality in a more visceral, recognisable sense: he talks about what kind of incomes and wealth the upper and lower deciles possess.

For example, the top 1% of a nation’s earners get anything from a couple of percent of national economy (equating to a wage of about 5 or 6 times the average)—as was the case in 1970s Sweden, the most egalitarian nation on record—to as much as 20% (as is the case in the United States presently).

In terms of capital, the picture is more stark and has always been so. In the heyday of inegalitarianism—such as in Belle Epoque France or, worse, 1900s Britain—the top 1% held about 60% of all the nation’s wealth. Note also that the yields of this capital was potentially even more unequal—as Piketty shows, those with large fortunes get better returns than those with more modest ones.

Piketty goes on to detail at least three more very important features of inequality. Firstly, capital income is much more significant than wage income the higher up the social strata you go. For the lower class—about half the population—capital income is insignificant. For the middle class (the top 40% or so) capital income is more significant but still small.

But go up to the 1%, and capital income is significant—though a minority. By the time you get to the top 0.1%, capital income makes up the majority of that class’s income.

Secondly, Picketty reveals that the ‘middle class’ phenomenon was very real and relatively recent. Up to the turn of the twentieth century, the top 10% of society owned as much as 90% of the nation’s wealth—as was the case in Britain. But by the middle of the century, the top 40% of society owned about 35% of the nation’s wealth. The bottom half of society still owns close to nothing—not much has changed in that regard—but it is interesting to note that a middle class does exist.

Thirdly, Piketty links inequality of capital directly to the macroeconomic metrics of the capital/income ratio, the rate of return on capital, and the rate of growth of the economy. He explains why inequality became noticeably less pronounced after the war—in no small part because of the political consensus that developed, but also because of the high growth and large shocks to capital that the period saw—and why the 21st century, with its slower growth and higher capital ratio, is becoming more unequal.

Anyway, the point of all this is that Capital in the 21st Century is an extremely relevant and very persuasive work of non-fiction. Piketty’s vast reams of detailed, long-term (think 200+ years) and highly considered data are a masterpiece. Other economists—such as Kuznets—are like pygmies in the presence of a giant like Piketty.

Nevertheless, I do have one or two nitpicks with Piketty—most notably when it comes to the role education plays in inequality, and more so, on the public policy that has been the norm for the past couple of decades where it concerns education.

Is Education Unequal? And if so, what?

Piketty believes unequal access to education—and, in particular, university education—is an important driver of inequality. However, I disagree with this, for two reasons. On a first point of order, I think that university education in most European countries is as equal as it’s ever going to be. (I will elaborate on this shortly.) And on a second point of order, I think Piketty—like most of the political class—is wrong to focus on education as the remedy.

But firstly, allow me to clarify what I mean when I say that university education in Europe is as equal as it’s ever going to be. Piketty, when arguing that university education is unequal, focuses on the usual metrics: the parent’s income and education as predictors of the child’s education and future income. The fact that the two are correlated—as most of us know, kids from well-educated and rich families are more likely to end up in university than other kids—is something Piketty doesn’t like.

But two things need to be clarified. Firstly, the philosopher in me needs to point out that this may be an inequality of outcomes and not necessarily an inequality of opportunity. Throughout most of Europe, there are negligible tuition fees. There also grants, loans, and scholarships to help disadvantaged pupils. In Denmark, they even pay students to attend university.

(Note that I do not include Britain when I say ‘most of Europe’. Here, the government has abolished grants, there are very few scholarships, and tuition fees are very high. Going to university involves accruing large amounts of debt if you’re not from a well-off family, and that debt disproportionately affects poorer students.)

The fact that university education in Europe is available to all is enough to make many centre-right minded people happy. If there is equality of opportunity, it is reasoned that any inequality of outcomes is because the poorer students don’t want to go to university and don’t want to work as hard.

I for one am skeptical of such an argument, which is why my disagreement with Piketty is of a different sort. I fully agree that poorer students are disadvantaged in going to university—for the simple fact that their parents don’t value university education. If you’re from a poorer, manual-labour background, it is hard to understand why university education is valuable.

So yes; we can certainly complain about this, and formulate policy to try and encourage students from poorer backgrounds to go to university—to inculcate that sense that education is valuable.

But ultimately, none of this is as important as Piketty makes out. Such a scheme may increase social mobility, but it will not change inequality—and indeed, it may have unintended consequences.

This is because of the very simple fact that while well-paying professional jobs—like engineers, doctors, programmers, what have you—do indeed require university-level education, they are ultimately finite. We can’t all be engineers and doctors. Making millions of young people go to university is therefore a waste of valuable time and money.

As many young graduates are discovering, going to university only to end up doing a job you could have done without a degree is the ultimate disappointment. It is grossly wasteful, too: going to university for three years costs the graduate and the taxpayer around £30,000—and the figure is rising. Going for four or five years to do a Master’s (as many increasingly are) adds another £20,000 onto that. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Going for four or five years to do a useless degree followed by a useless master also stops you being in the labour market for four or five years. Once more, this means tens of thousands of pounds of lost earnings. It means thousands of pounds of lost tax revenue. And it means less experience doing a job.

I’m not even done yet! This in turn has social externalities. It means getting a mortgage later; it means less money to pay for pensions. It frequently means waiting longer to have a child—hence the lower fertility rate of many European countries. (Caveat: this is of course just one factor of many.)

So you see, I think Piketty is deeply mistaken to place so much faith on university education. University is increasingly becoming a tool for social disunity rather than progression.

So What Should Be Done, Instead?

Although I disagree with Piketty on the issue of education, he is right about two other things. For one, capital: its tendency to grow increasingly concentrated and bring increasingly large returns is a major force for ‘economic divergence’ (i.e. rampant inequality). Therefore, Piketty is absolutely right that an important way to reduce inequality would be through the taxation of income from capital, and—also—the taxation of inheritance.

Piketty also uses that data to reveal that inequality is also, of course, from wages as well as from capital. Indeed, the reason that current day Europe is more egalitarian than the present day US is not because of capital—which in any case is larger in Europe—but because incomes are more compressed. Since income from wages makes up about three quarters to two-thirds of all income, a more compressed wage restructure results in a much more equal country (even if capital incomes are very unequal).

So, it logically follows that we also need to compress the wage structure. In fact, I propose that is a far more important goal than putting students in university.

How can this be done, you might wonder? Piketty has one obvious answer: fight against the supermanager. Piketty shows than in the Anglo-Saxon countries, increasingly large CEO compensation—directly in the form of pay-packets, but even more so through stocks and bonuses—is an important reason for why inequality of wages has increased since the 1980s in Britain and the United States.

CEO compensation is an issue of the complex social structures and institutions that exist in firms. One way to reduce CEO compensation would be to change the structures of corporate governance: to give workers and unions more say in management’s pay (to move to a ‘stakeholder model’ as in Germany, in other words) and to give shareholders more say in CEO salaries. (The latter, albeit, will tend to increase CEO compensation in times of strong stock market performance, but it will at least prevent CEOs from increasing their pay packets when firms are actually doing badly.)

Another way would be to change social norms. Firms, like everything else, operate in the social structures that exist in that country. If huge CEO pay-packets are frowned upon—as they are in Switzerland and Sweden, for example—then it is the case that supersalaries are less common.

A final, and simpler way to reduce CEO salaries would be to tax them. Piketty shows that when the Anglo-Saxon nations had high rates of marginal taxation—as high as 98%, which was the case for Britain in the 70s—CEO pay-packets were a lot smaller. (Why? Because the firm’s management aren’t going to give their money away to the government.)

Personally, I think we could go even further. Of course lowering the insane CEO compensation would leave more money for the rest of us, but who will get that money? The middle-management lower down? Or the workers—the janitors, the people at the tills, the rank and file?

That’s why I think Piketty needs one more ingredient in his egalitarian soup: unionisation. This also ties in with my point regarding education. We can’t make everyone a doctor or a lawyer. But what we can do is make sure that even the burger-flippers at McDonald’s get paid a decent wage.

Indeed, the Scandinavian countries do this, and with considerable success. Unionisation is why the Danish McDonald’s workers gets paid around 240,000 Danish Kroner—that’s €30,000 or $40,000—instead of $20,000, as they do in the US. Double the workers’ wages and you’ll find greater social cohesion. And nor will you have to obsess over who goes to university: you won’t need a degree to live a reasonably comfortable life.

The International Element

Another aspect that Piketty makes clear is that any means to reduce inequality—through taxation especially—will have to contend with the global reality of capital and highly-paid workers. Piketty believes that a tax on capital should be Europe-wide, or even global.

Can this be achieved? I believe so. The EU can certainly mandate minimum taxes—it already does so, in fact: every EU country must have a primary VAT rate of at least 15%. They have to apply fuel duty at a minimum level. It doesn’t seem implausible that the EU could, say, mandate a minimum 15% rate of corporate tax, or require a minimum tax on income from capital.

And the EU might even strong-arm other countries into doing the same. Tasty trade deals for the US might come with strings attached—minimum rates of tax. I’m sure the EU could also negotiate deals with the South American countries, Japan, and possibly India—with which it has very good relations.

Final Words

As I’ve said: Piketty’s Capital is a fantastic work of non-fiction. It approaches the issue of income inequality with a rigorousness, nuance and intellectualism that few can manage. It turns abstract and misinformed public debate into concrete data.

I do disagree with some of Piketty’s conclusions, but so far I am keen on reading more.

Mr Stargazer and his Exams...

Previously, I wrote of two things. First there was my essay on the EU referendum; that I have published, and it seems to have garnered some attention. But secondly, I spoke of my exams, my interview, and my writing. This relatively brief update will address these.

Exams

I have had two exams thus far: AS math (Core 1) and AS philosophy (a three hour exam). I felt well prepared for both, but the C1 paper was the most difficult C1 exam I’ve ever seen—all of my colleagues agreed, and many were borderline hysterical. The Internet is full of ire. This video, although liberal with the profanity, is nonetheless an excellent satire:

How well have I done? Obviously, I can’t be sure. I completed all the questions. I got answers for all but one. I think I did reasonably well; with the likely exception of the last question, and the 3-mark question on gradient algebra (which I have never seen on a C1 paper) I think I did well.

The last question was unfortunately worth 10% of the paper. I may have gotten the right answer, or I may not have. However: the question was rock hard. Everyone agreed. Many others got no answer at all. I can at least reasonably hope that OCR will lower the grade boundaries—if not, then universities will be able to see that everyone has unusually low maths grades.

As for the philosophy? I have done a lot of preparation for it, and I think it was preparation well served. The day before I revised the most little known and obscure parts of the syllabus with my teacher. (Example: Leibniz and direct realism.) I’m glad to say the 15-marker on the epistemology course was, surprise surprise, on direct realism.

I personally think I did well on that philosophy exam. In fact, I would honestly be shocked if I didn’t get an A.

However, most of the other students who did the exam thought it was fairly difficult. And it was: like the exam last year, the wonderful people from AQA took the most little known and minor parts of the (very substantial) syllabus and asked very specific questions on them. For example: the book for AS philosophy is a large volume totalling close to 400 pages. Leibniz’s direct realism gets a paragraph.

Our teacher taught us and made us revise extensively Berkeley’s idealism, and the indirect realism of Hume, Descartes, Locke, and much more. He made us write essays on criticising indirect realism from an idealist perspective, and vice versa. I do not believe we did anything on Leibniz’s direct realism—perhaps because it’s so unconvincing.

Anyway: exams so far have been alright. But the trends that have been set are disturbing. The exam boards don’t seem to be learning from their mistakes; on the contrary: they’re accelerating their mistakes. The exams are becoming increasingly difficult compared to the exams that came before them—and marking is increasingly losing credibility, as students are marked on topics they have very little knowledge and teaching of. How well you do depends increasingly on chance; the size of the syllabi and the the specificity of the questions, combined with the fact that for these two exams there was literally no way to prepare (I’ve never seen C1 questions like that) ensures that.

My Interview with Amsterdam

Today I was interviewed for my application to Amsterdam university. I believe it went well (but of course I cannot be certain). Apparently, I have an A on my application file; this means I have a high chance of being admitted.

The tutor whom I talked with seemed quite amused. I don’t quite know what to make of that.

The interview was mostly about the course; we discussed what I wanted to do, the way the course was structured, and the workload involved. I thought the course was a good match for me, although I get the impression that a lot of work will be involved...

There is also this to consider:

.@David_Cameron is planning to increase tuition fees AGAIN - after trebling them in 2012 #ToryPriceTag #QueensSpeechhttps://t.co/KGQFEqELlk

— Jeremy Corbyn MP (@jeremycorbyn) May 18, 2016

Writing

Now finally: about my writing.

Obviously, I still have exams; the next one is on Wednesday, and it is maths C2 (I wonder what that will be like). Nonetheless, I shall use this afternoon of opportunity to do some more work with my editor.

Speaking of which: my editor has gotten back to me with an assessment of the book! She has also made a number of comments inline. I have already read through them; today I will re-read them, and formulate an action plan. Then I will go over it with the editor. After the exams, I will put words into action.

Very well! Onto work...

Conservatism: A Critique

Hello readers! As promised, here is my essay on Conservatism. Note that while Oli, unfortunately, has been unable to contribute this time—his work at university likely having proven all-encompassing—he may chime in at a later date. Now! Read on.

Firstly, we must clarify what we mean by Conservatism. As is often the case with political ideologies, the term is used to mean many things: it can mean the policies enacted by David Cameron’s government; it can mean the policies in the Tory manifesto (not one and the same thing!); and it can mean the ideals purported by Cameron and co., though these often are very vague and even in contradiction with his policies.

To help answer this question, consider the old adage: it is easier to define a political ideology by what it is not than by what it actually is. This holds true for Conservatism especially. I’ll tell you one thing Conservatism ain’t: conservative. Conservatives, just like Socialists and Liberals, do want change; they just want different types of change.

It is true that Conservatism doesn’t like drastic social changes; partly this is because they view our society as being generally a Good Thing (albeit flawed), and because—in the case of the Conservatism promoted by Cameron & co.—the status quo benefits them. That said, even Socialism and Liberalism aren’t too fond of grand ideological projects. This is because all three ideologies are pragmatic at a fairly fundamental level. Communism, for example, is an ideology many Socialists like in theory if not in practice (although there are exceptions—Socialists consider private property a human right).

Conservatism is distinct from other right ideologies—like Libertarianism or Anarchism—in a much more substantive way, however, than is Socialism distinct from Communism. Whereas Socialists generally find the Communist ideology palatable (if implausible) Conservatives are typically horrified by Libertarians. This is because Conservatives view the world in a way fundamentally different from other rightwing ideologies. Conservatives are moderate in their nature, yes, but there’s more to it than that.

Conservatives are actually proponents of government, in ways Libertarians and Anarchists certainly are not. They view the State as being crucial for a civil and successful society—life without government would, in the words of Hobbes, be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’. Where Conservatives differ from Socialists is in the functions and role of the State.

Certainly, Conservatives do want the State to uphold law and order (in fact they’re usually very keen on this—likely because law and order keeps their property safe from the proletariat), and to fight wars, and—in the case of pre-Thatcherite Conservatism at least—to build housing and nationalise industries if it is in the overall interests of the country.

Now: Cameron’s Conservatives have no such interests these days. This is because their Conservatism is a bastardised Conservatism—while this ideology has always been supported by the wealthy, the comfortable and the would-be bourgeoisie, it never went as far as to continue with obviously pernicious policies (like inflating house prices) because it benefits a tiny few. The modern Tory party is essentially a cult of the rich.

But what, you may ask, do Conservatives believe that is different from Socialism—if Cameron’s party is indeed bastardised?

In truth, Conservatism and Socialism are not really all that different. Even things traditionally attributed to Conservatism—i.e. bigotry: opposition to gay marriage, racist language (‘if you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour’) etc.—are unnecessary additions to Conservatism, and indeed not even exclusive to the right. (Many cabinet ministers in Atlee’s government were none too happy about Caribbean immigrants, for example).

But there are perhaps three things that distinguish the two ideologies more than anything, in practice. Firstly, Conservatives have an enduring belief in the virtues of Capitalism; and, especially these days, lightly-regulated market capitalism and financialism. Socialists understand the benefits of Capitalism, and employ it to some degree; but they’re much more skeptical, particularly when it comes to banking, climate change, and the goodwill of the bourgeois class.

Secondly, Conservatives place less of an emphasis on equality (of outcomes especially). While they actually tend to like equality, and especially equality of opportunity—the example of the poor man who worked hard, went to university, and became wealthy is one they’re especially fond of—they are not concerned with the struggles of the working classes like Socialists are.

And finally, Conservatives have very different ideas about the causes of wealth and poverty than do Socialists. For a Socialist, wealth and poverty have a number of causes; most pertinently they are: an economic system that, by its nature, empowers the already powerful and weakens the already weak; and social power, allowing the wealthy a bigger slice of the pie. But most of all, Socialists view poverty as the product of disenfranchisement, insecurity, and a lack of education; this then leads to comorbid problems like obesity and alcoholism.

For a Conservative, wealth and poverty have more to do with virtuousness. They sometimes view the poor as uneducated, bad with money, or (perhaps) a little bit unfortunate—but often they view them as feckless scroungers. The wealthy they view as paragons of society.

For the three reasons that Conservatism differs most greatly from Socialism, so too does Conservatism fail intellectually. Here’s why.

Capitalism and the Proclaimed Virtues Thereof

The first key flaw with Conservatism, I think, is its faith in Capitalism. This is not to say that we should all be Marxists—for pure-command economies are almost as bad as pure market economies. But I do believe Conservatives have a faith in the market and in business that is rarely warranted.

Allow me to employ some examples. The Tories in the early 90s thought it a good idea to privatise rail. After all: the market will be more efficient than the big, bureaucratic British state—right?

Wrong. To quote from my polemic on Jeremy Corbyn:

The case is overwhelming: since privatisation, railway ticket prices have increased 22% (adjusted for inflation); subsidies have increased, but most of the money has gone directly into shareholder’s pockets; and the UK has rail prices that are as much as double those of nationalised European nations. (We Own It)

Furthermore, it is estimated that simply by not having to pay shareholders, the government could chop off 18% from ticket prices. (ibid.)

Nor can it be argued that the railway companies provide better service: the average age of the trains has gone up; and to add insult to injury—they are more overcrowded, too, with only a 3% increase in carriage capacity to meet a 60% rise in demand. (ibid.)

So how did the Big Bureaucratic British state (and all those Eurocracies like France and Germany over the Channel) manage to run trains better than corporations?

The answers are not simple, but nor are they that complicated. The companies that took over from the state were oligopolistic and continue to be oligopolistic; they rarely compete directly, and employ predatory pricing to keep out competition (the latter has been reduced due to regulation). The Conservative vision of free choice and successful competition did not materialise. Railways do not have many alternative routes and they cannot easily be replaced by other modes of transport.

Then there’s economies of scale. One big state can do things more efficiently than a lot of little companies—it benefits from technical advantages, in managing railways and trains en masse; it can buy things en-masse; and the state benefits from very low interest rates.

But more than anything, the case of nationalisation—in rail, and even more obviously in the NHS—proves the Conservative spiel wrong. Markets do not tend to equilibrium; often they are not efficient, and not run in the interests of the many. This is because markets, rather than being like gyroscopes, are more like a complex interacting web of varying, often contradictory human interests. Furthermore, consumers are often irrational (buying goods on the basis of marketing and social pressure) and lack the information and available time to make rational decisions if they even wanted to.

Consider a supermarket. Suppose you want to buy detergent. You, in the belief of the free market economists, must—from the dozens of brands and products available on the shelf—know which detergent does the best job, consider the externalities of detergents (like their effect on aquatic life), and then select the exact product which maximises your utility.

Want a phone? Better not be swayed by those shiny iPhones that all the cool people seem to have. Want food? Best know exactly how each product on the shelf tastes. Want fashion? Best know how the workers in Bangladesh are treated. And so on.

And so not only are Conservative beliefs in the market suspect, but so too are their arguments against the state. As Germany shows us—heck, as our own NHS shows us—states can run companies than not only act in the interests of broader society, but that are also managed efficiently. Why? Because it is in everyone’s interest to have well-run public services.

Of course public services are not always well-run. Bad relationships with unions, racial and class-based antagonisms, and incompetent politicians (both lower down and higher up) can derail good public services. But there is one key difference between this and a badly-run corporation: we can do something about it. It’s under our control. The corporation, on the other hand, is run by the CEO, Board, and Shareholders. Our ability to influence it is far reduced.

However, an even more unwarranted Conservative belief is in the virtues of Financialism. To quote from the Tory’s ‘Freeing Britain to Compete’ report (published 2007!):

The (Labour) government claims that this regulation is all necessary. They seem to believe that without it banks could steal our money ……………

We need to make it more difficult for ministers to regulate, and we need to give the critics of regulation more opportunity to make their case against specific new proposals………

We recommend deregulating venture capital fund raising, and investment for professional investors………

A Conservative government should relax banking regulation, allowing a new breed of venture/micro-credit institutions…………….

(Quotes courtesy of Pride’s Purge)

As we all know, the big crash of 2007 proved all the above to be pure fantasy.

I won’t go too much into the why. Suffice to say that the usual happened: the market system had its way; banks gambled, making short-term profits that could only lead to a bust; consumers didn’t know any better; and the financial interests of the bankers led not only them, but the entire political establishment, to abandon reason.

Anyway: I think I’ve covered this flaw insofar as is feasible short of writing an economics book on the topic. Let’s address our next bug-bear—equality.

Conservatives and Equality

Unlike some, Conservatives by and large like equality. In fact, they make quite a fuss about the equality of opportunity. They even, in fact, like to have equality of outcomes (though not, of course, if it openly contradicts the diktats of the market—or the interests of their donors).

Conservatives also like to attack Socialists because Socialists ‘would limit the great so as to be equal to the mediocre’. This, however, is a misunderstanding of Socialism; the real mistakes are being made by Conservatives.

Firstly, Socialism does not want to shackle the good to remain with the bad; rather, they wish to free the good (and the mediocre) from the oppression of the lucky undeserving.

There are two examples that best illustrate my point: housing, and education.

With education, Socialists are quite keen on equality of outcomes. Why? Because equality of outcomes, in reality, is crucial to equality of opportunity. A good student—even if possessed of wit and determination—will struggle in an environment characterised by chronic insecurity in housing (i.e. constantly having to move); in one where their parents are alcoholics, and/or abusive; and in which the tools of their success (books, computers, free time) are unavailable due to poverty. It’s hard to read Adam Smith’s the Wealth of Nations—and become a brilliant economist—when you’re parents need you to work at Asda’s to pay the bills. And ditto becoming a photographer if your parents can’t afford cameras.

It is because equality of opportunity needs at least some equality of outcomes (even substantial equality of outcomes) that the Conservative ideology becomes self-contradicting.

Indeed, the current Conservative government is acting very much against either equality. In housing, they provide ‘Help to Buy’ (i.e. demand subsidies) to further inflate house prices and drive more people into the loving arms of Buy-to-let landlords. And God-forbid you suggest building houses, be it council housing or housing for private ownership; only the market can do such a thing!

As for education, I have some trouble understanding how removing maintenance grants (to help poor students pay for accommodation while at university) and introducing £9000 a year tuition fees can possibly aid equality.

(The latter issue is a bit more complex, of course, but the principle is simple: students who have to go into £27,000 of debt will struggle to pay back that loan when they’re confronted with unemployment or low wages for entry-level graduate jobs. The difference between the haves and have-nots will be exacerbated, however, since the haves can rely on the bank of mum and dad. Not so the have-nots.)

Wealth and Poverty

The final misconception underlying Conservatism is, with little doubt, the supposed causes of wealth and poverty.

Conservatives frequently portray themselves as being pragmatic and in touch with reality. But their notions of poverty are anything but in touch with reality—let’s see why.

Firstly, we must ascertain why poor people are poor. The topic is of course very complex, but here are the key causes I’ve both personally observed and which the data supports:

1. The conditions of the labour market. It’s really quite simple: with the way things are set up, we need people to work in supermarkets; to waiter in restaurants; and to staff call centres, act as cleaners, and work manual jobs. These people will not be paid very well. Salaries ranging from the minimum wage (like averaging around £14K/year gross or so) to, at most, £20K will be the norm.

So you see, whichever way you cut it, some people are going to be rather poor—unless you can improve their pay. This would, among other things, involve playing nice with the unions.

2. Unemployment and working conditions. Even with Osborne’s miraculously low figures approaching 5%, people are still unemployed; JSA is not very much money; and quite a few people are living insecurely under zero-hour contracts and forced self-employment.

3. Chronic mal-education, depression, and social problems. In my experience, those from poor families lack motivation in school, and are doomed to repeat the mistakes of their parents.

4. Some people are poor because they’ve been rendered unfit to work (due to disease or disability) and receive little support from the state.

Conservatives seem blithely ignorant of pretty much all of the above. For the first point, they seem to believe all it takes is ‘education’. Sorry to break it to you folks—but unless you stop going to restaurants, clean up after yourselves, and have robots cash the till, these people will need to be hired. Giving them degrees or A-levels won’t make a damn bit of difference. In fact, quite a few graduates do end up working manual jobs—and never repaying their university debt.

As for point two, some easier solutions are available. We could abolish zero-hours contracts for larger firms. We could force employers to contribute to National Insurance, and have NI really be an insurance—paying out a guaranteed sum of money, every month, regardless of working hours for as long as the individual is employed by the firm.

Unemployment and self-employment are trickier. The NI scheme could perhaps the extended, again, to cover self-employed people. But unemployment is a problem fundamental to capitalism. To even go into it would be the topic of high-level economics; but suffice to say that a combination of the National Education Service (already proposed by figures in my party), more state control of the economy (yes), and possibly even printing money may be effective.

As for points three and four, you will see little sympathy from Conservatives these days. But one thing is for sure: ignoring them doesn’t mean they’ll go away.

Wealth and Tax

The final misconception I wish to address, going on from the above, is wealth and taxation. Conservatives don’t like raising income taxes, especially (it would seem) on the rich. Partly this is because of obvious reasons—the Tory party is funded by the rich. But a number of ideological and practical reasons are given.

1. It (a 50% tax) won’t raise revenue. False—the 50% tax didn’t raise revenue because it was only introduced temporarily and because rich people forwarded their asset gains. This basically means that they reported lower-than-usual incomes when the tax was introduced, and higher-than-usual incomes after it returned to 45%. So effectively the 50% tax collected abnormally low revenue, and the 45% collected abnormally high revenue. One must also consider taxes in the context of Osborne’s significant cuts to HMRC staffing; if Osborne doesn’t staff HMRC properly, then of course they won’t be able to catch tax evaders (of which there will naturally be more of if the rate goes up to 50%).

2. Tax is bad—it causes growth to stall because people have no incentive to work. False; as I’ve written already this argument fails to consider how revenue collected by the state can be used to increase economic growth—by training the engineers of tomorrow, keeping our roads and railways running quickly and efficiently, and by providing health services at a much lower cost than comparable private health insurance. Even benefits can lead to economic growth. Housing benefit—recently chopped by Osborne—puts a roof over the heads of some very young and very vulnerable people. By doing so, these people are much more likely to become successful, tax-paying members of our society as opposed to criminals costing police time, or sick people in NHS beds.

3. The rich don’t deserve to be taxed—they worked hard for their money.

The final argument is symptomatic of the last Conservative mistake. Rich people do work hard for their money (unless they inherited, of course!) but normal people work hard too. They don’t become rich. This is because rich people are in a very economically privileged position: firstly they had the upbringing and resources to allow them to e.g. become software engineers; secondly, they had the trust of the wealthy to obtain capital (since rich people are overwhelmingly of the capitalist class); and thirdly, they were lucky. They hit the market with the right product at the right time. They’re not more virtuous than mere mortals!

What’s more, rich people should pay taxes—because, firstly, they can (unlike poor people) and, secondly: because they more than anyone benefit.

That’s right—even if rich people don’t claim benefits, they are the chief benefactors of state investment nominally. What allows Jaguar to be successful? Engineers and designers who went to schools funded by the state. What allows people to buy cars? Roads funded by the state. Who enforces contracts for Jaguar? The police, funded by the state.

And so why should Jaguar’s CEO, who earns £4.5M, not pay taxes? (One could even ask why he’s given such a handsome share of the pie, but that’s a topic for a different essay).

But this example challenges Conservatism in yet another fundamental way. Conservatives think of wealth as private—‘it’s my damn money,’ in Thatcher-speak. But in reality, wealth is just as much social in character as individual; because nobody makes wealth on their own. Jaguar’s CEO’s wealth stems from Jaguar cars; that’s the ‘wealth’ in this equation (which must not be conflated with money). The CEO doesn’t make the cars himself. The people who work the factories, who design the engines, who style the cars; they make the cars. Who gets the wealth is a social decision—because the wealth is created collectively!

(Note that this is not to say the CEO does nothing at all; that would be a gross failure to understand the demands placed on a modern car company, and the role of the CEO.)

Conclusion

This essay has proven lengthy. Despite this, I have not been entirely concise; for such is the nature of the blog. Doubtless, explaining some of the underlying economics and philosophy would take up a book’s worth of words.

But I do, however, hope that this essay has at least challenged you—if not convinced you outright. Beware the claims made by Conservatives. The truth is often complicated…

Greetings from the Ether

Hail faithful readers!

You may be wondering why Mr Stargazer has not posted his little interview with the theologian-come-fantasy-writer, Mrs Jenna Hiott. This, my dear, is because Mr Stargazer has actually been requested not to do so—and not, (as you are no doubt thinking) because he is a lazy bastard. Although, really, he is. But never mind.

And before you despair (and perhaps break some unfortunate nearby entities) know that the interview is not cancelled; merely delayed. (Yes, I know we all say that; but it’s true. Really.)

To further alleviate your fears, Mr Stargazer can confirm to have received the transcripts.

To answer your final question: the interview date is tomorrow.

Moving On...

Mr Stargazer has now, officially, moved house. This has proven to be a slightly traumatic experience—due in no small part to having no Internet access for four days, in which time he was unable to keep you lot on your feet—but it is now over. After carrying enough furniture to crush a car with, Mr Stargazer has everything in place.

As for the Fallen Saga (a collection of poems following a broad narrative of a war between angels and demons, for those unaware) that will be receiving a fourth episode; to read the first three, do acquiant yourself with the Poems page.

Stargazian Vicissitudes

Mr Stargazer is also terribly occupied with school. The final year exams are but a few months away; and Mr Stargazer ought be assiduously revising. That he ain’t doing (moving is a terrible business, as he says) and, furthermore, he has been busy researching universities.

There are good reasons for this also. Firstly, he must make the quintessential choice that troubles all burgeoning intelligentsia: Oxford, or Cambridge? With regards to the latter, monsieur Stargazer spent an entire day taking ‘Masterclasses’ at Corpus college. (He was, of course, selected by the school to attend; a fact which balloons his already remarkable ego, and must therefore not be mentioned.)

With regards to the former, our darling literati has already visited the university multiple times. He considers it most appealing—a difficult choice indeed.

Aside from this, Mr Stargazer has spent many an hour researching foreign universities. There are good causes for this too, of course. Firstly, the Dutch, Swedish and Swiss universities offering English bachelors provide a very international outlook—and this, in a globalised world, is rather valuable.

Secondly, English universities are—for many reasons, not least of which include the Tories, the lying Lib Dems, Labour, a cultural obsession with going to university for ‘fun’ (i.e. getting drunk and partying), and many more reasons besides—very expensive. Indeed, to study in the Netherlands, I would save £22,000—enough to buy a nice car. To study in Sweden, I would save £27,000; that’ll get me a Mercedes.

Finally, our darling Mr Stargazer finds England increasingly dull. England—though possessed of a great history, landmarks, and the quintessential green hills—lacks snow, mountains, easy access to mainland Europe, and multilinguality. It’s also quite poor in comparison to these other nations.

Okay, Alex, Can You Get on Already?

Tergiversations aside, I have over a week of holiday left. I will revise, and of more concern to you, I will write. Stay following for the interview, the poem, other blog tour goodies, and maybe even an essay or two.

Until then, may the stars watch over you...