Andrew Ferrier’s Blog

Good to see Hampshire County Council are spending my taxes wisely. In the propaganda brochure accompanying their latest letter demanding 800 pounds for rubbish collection and clogged roads, I find this item:

These pages have been checked for clarity by Plain Language Commission [sic].

Sometimes I’m ashamed to live in a socialist country.

Every time I get sad about the illiberal attitudes of the public sector in the UK, at least I can reassure myself that I don’t live in France.

I’ve been interested in languages for a few years (despite only being able to speak one with any fluency) and consider myself a bit of an amateur linguist. It’s long been a standing question as to how to determine ‘correct’ English. Linguists divide grammar into two competing factions: descriptive (30% people speak like this, 70% people speak like that) and prescriptive (thou shalt speak in this way, as others have since time immemorial). It’s not hard to see that this concept could be - and probably has been - extended to spelling.

I’ve found it hard to have sympathy with the prescriptive camp. Of course there is a place for clear writing, and I strongly believe that well-studied punctuation, spelling, and grammar makes communication clearer at best, and even a good impression at worst. Nevertheless, prescriptive diktat is everywhere, and often with little justification. As an example, despite being British, I’m a big fan of American English - which is often ridiculed and misunderstood by many British people.

As such, I’m going to propose Ferrier’s Rule of Common Language Usage, #1:

Any describable linguistic construction used by a majority of the population should be prescribed where relevant.

(by ‘where relevant’, I’m talking about language education in schools, etc.)

I think this would greatly help language develop - it ain’t static; get over it - and make language richer and more interesting. What do you think?

It appears that Starbucks is finally coming to Winchester. No doubt many will lament over this further Americanisation and homogenisation of our high street, but I’m kinda curious.

For a long time, Winchester’s most obvious and best option for coffee (in my humble opinion) has been the equally sterile and characterless Caffè Nero chain. There are a few other chains and independents around, but they’re all weaker for one reason or another (low ceilings, no air-conditioning, dirty tables, etc.). Starbucks will become its most obvious competitor, located only a few doors down, and will hopefully shake things up. It’s interesting how Caffè Nero’s dominant position has allowed it to get away with some things - the lines are always far too long, and the staff slow and inefficient. I see this as a practical example to observe how change in markets works, that wouldn’t be possible in a larger city with less incumbency and more turnover of residents. It’s going to be curious to see what happens, and I’ll be one of the first in Starbucks’ door.

The political arguments around government and business are well understood. At one extreme are people who despise profit-making businesses, considering them a necessary evil at best, and who’d prefer to see governments take more action to protect their and society’s interests. At the other are those who’d prefer to see governments scaled down significantly and businesses given more freedom.

People with my political opinions often make arguments for the latter based on either practical or moral arguments. Richard and I had a online discussion about this recently. But maybe there’s another, more silly, question that’s missing: which is sexier: business or government? A quick look at the primary US government portal compared to Wal-Mart’s homepage leaves me in no doubt who hired the better web designer, at any rate (and Wal-Mart is hardly an example of glamour). Which corporate body makes you want to interact with them? Anybody who’s spent any time at a UK local council, with their cuppa-and-rich-tea-biscuit image, will know what I mean (that’s an example of non-sexiness, if it’s not clear: not that I have anything against rich tea).

I’m semi-serious, actually - this does matter - it’s an issue of marketing. Clearly a company cannot actually be sexy - only people can be that. But the Virgin family of companies gets pretty close - and not just because of the suggestive naming. It’s an image that has been carefully cultivated by the folk at Virgin. Virgin is a company that you want to like (well, I do, anyway), irrespective of the fact that their trains don’t run on time.

I think the reasoning behind this is simple. Companies have to be sexy - or at least, they have to project an image which is aligned with values their customers want them to have. Sometimes this is sexiness - and Virgin is a prime example of a brand that’s attacked several markets with that technique and won some new custom. Sometimes, to be fair, there’s another image to be conveyed (UPS brown vans and brown uniforms are not alluring; but they do project an image of reliability). Conversely, government has no such motivation to project an image of anything - or at least the vast majority of unelected officials don’t. There’s no requirement to improve, no motivation to act like a marketer, because there’s no competition. Thus, government will always continue to project an image of dull and incompetent, whether that be the case or not. As Seth says, ‘[people] lose their jobs because of boring marketing’ - except in government they don’t, because they rarely lose them at all.

It’s probably not the most pressing problem the world faces right now, but wouldn’t it be nice to stop worrying about global warming for five minutes and think about how to make the institutions we deal with on a daily basis more appealing?

Today is Milton Friedman day. Friedman is a personal hero of mine, an economist who worked hard to publicise the concepts of freedom and liberty, and who sadly passed away last November. His clarity and forthrightness in explaining his beliefs to the layman won him praise, and deservedly so:

The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.

Milton’s son David is also an economist, and continues to promote his ideas on this blog. The Economist has also drawn up an interesting selection of quotes discussing Friedman.

Note: Milton Friedman is unrelated to Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat, a book which Roo Reynolds wrote a partial review of recently.

I’ve recently taken to reading a lot more on-line - particularly as services such as del.icio.us have helped me to find high-quality content and more high-quality blogs come on the scene. This, of course, is the long tail of written content. One of the things I’ve noticed, though, is that as I read more and different things, I get more impatient with long articles. I hardly read non-fiction books any more, and fiction books almost never (preferring film).

I suspect I’m not the only one suffering from this decreased attention span, but the question is - is there anything we should do about it? Insofar as lots of shorter information diverts people from a few bits of longer information (reading 100/articles/week, say, rather than 2 books/week), it probably indicates that we simply don’t get as much value or entertainment from the longer stuff as we thought we did (or should). This is called revealed preference - what you prefer is shown by your actions, not by your words. So I suspect the simple answer is no.

Seth Godin certainly seems to agree with part of this theory - he has a theory that books, in many cases, have now become a ‘takeaway’ for shorter essays and other written pieces. I don’t think it’s fair to go as far as to say that they are simply fluff, but Seth nevertheless makes a good point - that many books simply expand on shorter ideas - and it is questionable, sometimes, what the marginal value of that is over consuming something completely different (everything you do has a time-driven opportunity cost).

The problem, of course, is that building up habits like this may make it harder to concentrate for sustained periods of time on reading/viewing/listening when that is necessary.

I’m interested in what your experiences are - do you suffer from decreased attention span? Is it a result of increased volumes of information, or do you think it’s something different?

TEDTalks has hit a home-run again (seriously, I can’t recommend this series of videos highly enough - whatever you think about whatever else I’ve written here, you’ll find something you like). Bjorn Lomborg, who’s not a stranger to controversy, explains in this 2005 TED presentation why climate change, relative to the world’s other great problems (e.g. disease, sanitation), isn’t an efficient problem to solve. This is a finding of the Copenhagen Consensus, who expended no small amount of effort on the exercise. He makes very clear what the ranking means - not that it isn’t desirable to ’solve’ climate change (it is) but simply that it’s inefficient - there’s more bang for the buck in ’solving’ free trade or controlling HIV/AIDS than in solving climate change.

Bjorn is an economist (my favourite type of -mist) and I know this doesn’t bode well for the acceptance of this theory: primarily because economics has never done a very good job of publicising what it’s about, and so there’s a frequent misconception that it’s something to do with money. The typical reaction to the conclusion above is that economists only are only looking at the monetary side of things. Well, yes, that’s true, but it’s also the whole point. Economists put prices and costs on all kinds of things that many people don’t (life or death, polluted air, a loving relationship, etc.). Of course one can argue until the cows come home about the what those prices and costs are: and everyone does (even when they aren’t quoting them in dollars or pounds). But the money is only used as a number, as a symbol.

If we were to try and rank which we wanted more, an orange or an apple, we could probably do that. In fact, we could probably say how much more we wanted one than the other (twice as much - give me two apples, and I’ll exchange you an orange). Introduce a banana and the decision becomes more complex, but the principle doesn’t. This is all prices are - a way to trade off one alternative against another and allocate resources (which is similar to the definition of economics you’ll find in any textbook).

This is why it isn’t really callous to rank the world’s big problems and say that maybe climate change doesn’t deserve so much attention. At the end of the day, the world only seems prepared to spend so much time and money solving problems. Doesn’t it make sense to solve the ones that gives humanity the greatest degree of progress, health and prosperity?

Richard and I went to see Steve Forbes (of Forbes magazine fame) speaking last night at an event organised by The London Junto (a libertarianish organisation). The topic was flat taxes, and Forbes made a compelling argument for one - albeit probably preaching to the converted. Forbes has to be one of the most knowledgeable people I’ve ever seen speak - he dealt with economics, business, and geopolitical questions with equal capability, forthrightness, and clarity. He’s a former Republican presidential candidate, and it’s obvious from his winning politician’s smile. The Lansdowne Club is a traditional old-boys London Club (you can tell this partly because they pointedly use the word criterion on their website), and it made a suitable venue, although it didn’t exactly appeal to my taste. All in all, a worthy experiment.

It seems to be a commonly held contemporary belief that transport and travel are a guilty pleasure at best, and reprehensible at worst, mainly due to the unpleasant environmental side-effects, and should be minimised. Environmentalists have already invented carbon offsetting to assuage collective and individual guilt about the trendy problem of carbon emissions (Tim Harford has explained why this makes no sense; and I think it’s nothing short of miraculous how carbon offsetting services can put a price on emissions so easily).

However, the upside is often overlooked. Travel is pleasurable. Some of the best experiences in my life have involved travelling, and I’m far from the only one. Quality of life does have value. Perhaps even more importantly, transport enables you to get stuff more cheaply. Trade is mostly beneficial, and the wider the scope of a market, the more beneficial it is (because of the greater likelihood that you’ll find large extremes of want and produce a large profit). Fast, cheap, reliable transport increases the efficiency of markets and is good for humankind.

Don’t feel bad next time you hop on a jet, and please don’t waste your money on offsetting carbon. Recycling is a whole ‘nother story.