Choice in politics

Choice is good, the Labour party tells us. That simple if rather dubious maxim appears to be guiding many of their reforms in health and education. Now we hear that Gordon Brown wants to spend a huge amount of money to replace Britain's nuclear deterrent. So how about this: could we please have the choice of at least one party of the left in the next election please? I'm getting a little bored with the game of pick one from:

(a) a party of the right with vaguely greenish credentials (not really);

(b) a party of the centre veering right with no identifyable leadership or credibility; or

(c) a party of the right with no respect for privacy, the institutions of the welfare state or international law.

Parking as a constrained resource optimisation

London has a problem. There are too many cars. This has several consequences. Firstly it is difficult to get anywhere fast, at least between 6.30 and 21.00. Secondly, it is hard to park, and often expensive when you can. The problem has been managed partly through charging and partly through rationning. Nevertheless, some people feel that driving in the centre of a large city and parking once you arrive at your desination are basic human rights. See this intemperate rant in the Guardian, for instance.

Look, folks, it's simple. You can't set up this game with all the people, all the cars, and everyone doing what they want for nothing. What you do is political, of course, but the basic premise can't be that everyone will be happy. There just aren't enough roads or parking places for that. And creating them, even if this were viewed as a good idea, is infeasibly expensive. So get used to the idea that parking is not your right and start obeying the law: then we might actually
make some progress with our transport policy. Remember, this will never be a picture of London:



However, as the Transport select committee points out,
there are some steps which could make this game easier to play. A national set of standards would at least remove the irritations of different rules council by council. But how this for a standard: `if you park illegally, for whatever reason, whereever, we take away your car'? That might finally stop the SUV driving idiots who think it is acceptable to block a street just so they can pop into the shops or pick their kids up from school.

The Gentle antis vs. the strong pros

Thinking about the Olympics recently, and the fact that I'm going to pay for some of it (via my council tax, thanks Ken), I was reminded of the power of the few versus the many --- if the few are vocal enough and the many are only mildly concerned. 5 million people who don't want something can be easily and democratically over-ruled by a few thousand who do, provided the former aren't organised and the latter are. Most of the people who don't want the Olympics in London view it will mild distaste and, like me, did not realise the danger until it was too late. Well, I mean, who would have thought London would have beaten Paris? Meanwhile of course the pros were organised, connected, and happy to spend my money. It almost makes me want to get involved in politics...

Canadian musings

It has taken me a little while to come up with anything approaching a coherent set of thoughts on Montreal, and this is definitely a first cut. Part of the interest in Quebec (sprinkle accents over that) of course lies in the mixture of American and French influences. The ferocious consumption and competition of the US is moderated by a more European pace of life and a seemingly broader set of societal concerns. There is a cosmopolitan tolerance, but the place still looks much like a US city. And, noticeably, there are a lot of mendicants on the street (hence the picture), which feels vaguely shocking, given the whole caring shared destiny vibe. But that just emphasises that there isn't a linear scale of social security, just a large set of choices, mostly independent of each other. You can set the game up with lots of different rule sets and the Quebecois have taken one set somewhere between the US and France. I'd love to see one of those cute n-D visualisations (where n=9 or something) which maps the various social policy choices and shows where Quebec comes out vs. France and an average US state, say.

Adding up the Tate

A friend and I went to see the rehang of the Tate Modern yesterday. It's interesting, perhaps flawed in places, - whoever decided that it would be good to hang the futurists in a big gaggle high up on one wall should be taken out and re-educated, - but compared with, say, MOMA in New York, it's imaginative, focussed and thought-provoking. But more than that, it's free. MOMA is twenty bucks. Now suppose you were an economist working for the state of New York or the city or whoever. How exactly would you decide whether it was better, on purely rational economic grounds, for MOMA to be free or not?

Obviously it will cost money to open it for nothing, but if you do, lots of people will go who could not or would not afford $20. And some of them will be inspired to create things, some of which will sell for cash. So making MOMA free will generate some extra economic activity. But how much, compared with the costs? How could you estimate it? While you are thinking about that, here's a picture of the silver birches outside the Tate, taken by my phone with its easy to fool exposure control.

Copy me, mash me up

Reading the customarily histrionic ramblings on boingboing about copyright, The lady doth protest too much springs to mind. As always, the game needs to balance the needs of the various players. Large media companies want as long and as restrictive a copyright law as possible. Consumers want the legitimate freedom to copy something, once purchased, between various devices they own, to time shift their consumption and so on. The greedy want everything for free. Artists whose practice is based on bricolage want to be able to alter other people's work and incorporate it into their own freely - similarly for satirists. And all parties have effective lobbyists.

The right solution will be difficult. Clearly there should be some use it or lose it clause, so that copyright does not prohibit legitimate use where a copyright holder cannot be identified (this holds for the vast majority of works more than a few years old). Equally, creators need some measure of legal certainty, but the protestations of older 'artists' like Cliff Richard that they can no longer live off the royalties on their earlier works do not sway many people. And finely drawn distinctions between the right to listen to a purchased CD on one device but not an MP3 rip of that CD on another will only serve to irritate consumers. Perhaps a disinterested systems theorist could help?