The problem Banks possess an extraordinary power over their business customers. They can deny a business access to its own funds, sitting in its account, thus preventing it from paying its bills, paying its taxes, and moving money to another account, including to an account provided by a competing bank. This extraordinary power can be exercised at any moment, without notice, without any requirement to give reasons, and it can be sustained for an indefinite period of the bank’s own choosing. Moreover, to date at least, a bank can do these things without any ex post accountability for its action ..read more

In one of the most striking chapters of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov Grushenka tells Alexei a story, a parable of redemption: Once upon a time there was a peasant woman and a very wicked woman she was. And she died and did not leave a single good deed behind. The devils caught her and plunged her into the lake of fire. So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell to God; ‘She once pulled up an onion in her garden,’ said he, ‘and gave it to a beggar woman.’ And God answered: ‘You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake ..read more

The question I keep asking is:  Why, nearly a year after their first trialling, have there been no serious attempts by government or its advisors to assess the effectiveness of the packages of restrictive social and economic measures/interventions that, in their more extreme forms, are referred to as Lockdowns?  The absence of serious attempts by government and its advisors to engage with such a basic question of regulatory impact assessment is the first ‘mystery’ of Lockdown. The position of those who strongly advocate Lockdowns seems to be to be like that of a physician who says to ..read more

It seems like a silly question, doesn’t it?  Lockdowns are intended to reduce infections and that they do so may seem intuitively obvious.  Maybe they are less effective than claimed or intended and are not worth the costs.  But increase infections?  Surely not. However, an intuition that is inadequately tested against observations is just another name for a prejudice. As I learned in a brilliant, motivational, undergrad lecture introducing me to social science more than fifty years ago, the social value of social science chiefly lies in its ability to root out  false ..read more

Barring a miracle, this week will see the English public facing a further wave of oppressive regulation that has been ‘justified’ on the basis of the forecasts emanating from a set of epidemiological models. The earlier counterparts of these models have produced some wildly exaggerated predictions: they have failed to accord with subsequent observations and measurements, and by large margins.  Models, or more generally theories, that fail such a test are normally discarded by scientists, in the same way as would a prospective vaccine that had failed in trialling and testing.  The cul ..read more

Exponential growth bias (EGB) is one of a long list of cognitive biases identified by psychologists and perceptions of it and its prevalence have come to play a significant role in the development of policy responses to Covid-19.  In brief, the bias is seriously to underestimate the future values of something that is growing at a constant proportionate rate. Its existence has been well attested in research stretching back over several decades and a classic illustration is an ancient puzzle:  Put one grain of wheat/sand on the first square of a chess board, double it on the second, ke ..read more

Following Boris Johnson’s press conference on Sunday 24 May, at which he made it clear he had no intention of dismissing his main advisor Dominic Cummings, Professor Stephen Reicher had this to say on Twitter: “As one of those involved in SPI-B, the Government advisory group on behavioural science, I can say that in a few short minutes tonight, Boris Johnson has trashed all the advice we have given on how to build trust and secure adherence to the measures necessary to control COVID-19. Be open and honest, we said. Trashed. Respect the public, we said. Trashed. Ensure equity, so everyone is tr ..read more

CHAPTER IV. OF THE ORIGIN AND USE OF MONEY. 1. When the division of labour has been once thoroughly established, it is but a very small part of a man’s wants which the produce of his own labour can supply. He supplies the far greater part of them by exchanging that surplus part of the produce of his own labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the produce of other men’s labour as he has occasion for. Every man thus lives by exchanging, or becomes, in some measure, a merchant, and the society itself grows to be what is properly a commercial society. Chapter 4 is co ..read more

Epidemiology is much to the fore at the moment and the curves that feature in the epidemiological modelling are to be seen in TV, newsprint and many a social media post. The models used vary according to the biological characteristics of the relevant bug and there is a good summary of a number of their various types here, where a general reader’s scan of the list will suffice to give a flavour: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmental_models_in_epidemiology#The_SEIR_model They work via analysis of the interplay between variables that are defined by medical states, linked via a system of dif ..read more

Back in the 1990s and the early years of the 21st century the UK government developed a relatively sophisticated handbook to guide the evaluation of alternative lines of regulatory policy development and implementation, largely under the stewardship of the Cabinet Office and the Business Department. This was part of an international movement in which it is fair to say that the UK played a leading role. By way of example, the UK promoted the establishment of a ‘Directors of Better Regulation’ group for Member States of the EU, outside of normal EU structures, where comparative experiences could ..read more