Capital punishment: why libertarians can believe in death penalty

Before going any further: I deplore the death penalty for many and varied reasons. I urge anyone who doesn't to read, for example, Jack of Kent's moral argument against it, which includes an overview of some of the other arguments.
However one idea that has come up again and again in twitter is that you cannot be philosophically libertarian and support the death penalty.

For example I've done a quick search and lifted a few tweets:

The incoherence of supposed libertarian @GuidoFawkes supporting the death penalty (which costs more than life imprisonment) is hilarious 

I'm a pro-death penalty libertarian! I'll let the state kill me, but God forbid I give them any money

Genuinely don't understand this death penalty campaign from @guidofawkes. If you don't trust the gov to tax you, why trust it to kill you?

(I've left off the names, but searching on twitter should find them if interested.)

This seems based on a fundamental misunderstanding of libertarianism.  A strawman is being constructed that a libertarian doesn't trust the state to do anything.

Libertarianism is about maximising some measures of liberty.  I think these measures are limited and ignore other limits on freedom, which is why I am a Liberal and not a Libertarian.

However these measures of liberty include restrictions on the actions of others: they cannot act to reduce your liberty: for example by stealing your money.  I imagine very few libertarians would say that freedom to murder is a freedom they want to protect.

Libertarians do not want abolition of state (that is a form of anarchism), but the minimising of it.  From those I've read bits of this would include a military and a justice system.  Once you accept the need for a justice system, including courts, then you accept the need to punish people by restricting their liberty in some way.  This is entirely consistent with Libertarianism.

For example the US Libertarian party platform says

Government exists to protect the rights of every individual including life, liberty and property. Criminal laws should be limited to violation of the rights of others through force or fraud, or deliberate actions that place others involuntarily at significant risk of harm.

Acknowledging the need for some government, albeit a minimal one.

Once you have courts the decision to execute or not can be entirely orthogonal to the size of the state you want.  If you believe (wrongly in my view) that executing reduces the murder rate then executions could be justified to maximise liberty of others.

The top one is especially silly: Libertarianism doesn't have to be about doing things on the cheap for the sake of it, and besides capital punishment doesn't have to be more expensive then life imprisonment.

So can we leave off the misplaced personal abuse of Paul Staines: play the ball and not the man. Lets win the debate. It is too important.

Two down from the Met

Events continued to surprise me yesterday and today in the hacking scandal. I didn't expect Met Commissioner Stephenson to stand down, but he did.  After that I shouldn't have been surprised when Yates went, but I was.

Two people have gone for hiring Neil Wallis: a man who hasn't yet even been charged let alone convicted of any wrong doing.  As such I am unsure I will be celebrating: two senior police officers were in charge of an organisation facing serious allegations over corruption and they resign not over that but over who they hired to handle Public Relations.  Something seems wrong here to me.

More interestingly, two people have stood down for hiring someone considered toxic due to their association with the News of the World, but someone who hired his boss remains in post.

For the first time since the start of the scandal I am seriously wondering if Cameron can survive this.

On balance I come to the conclusion that he can. There are several reasons:

1. No Tory will wield the knife. I don't think all the Conservative party are even sure there is a problem with Cameron having hired Coulson.
2. Following on from that there isn't an obvious successor. A piece by Henry G Manson on political betting examined the possible successors. When the best bet looks like Hague I'd imagine most Tories would like to sit and wait for bit. See my PS for an example.
3. It isn't a confidence issue, and the Liberal Democrats are quite enjoying Cameron being a bit inconvenienced.  I can't see how Labour can drive a wedge between the coalition here: the crude attempt to last week was undermined by sensible reactions from the government in agreeing to the motion.
4. Cameron hasn't broken the law or been caught doing anything wrong personally. Spin doctors are dodgy: don't forget that Malcolm Tucker rang true to the Labour spin machine. I would question his judgement in appointing Coulson but that is hardly a resignation issue for the PM.
5. The scandal includes Labour too, and no amount of whitewash can remove that fact.
6. Least significantly the scandal is blowing itself out: given the failure of Gordon Brown's accusations to stick to the Sun it appears that it hasn't spread to other papers.  The flip side of this claim is that we haven't gone even two days without something significant happening if you include the resignations. (I also ought to add that although the obtaining medical information part has been rejected, I don't recall the blagging of financial details being dealt with: did I miss this or has this been (tacitly) accepted by the Sun?)

What might change this? If Coulson is charged or convicted then it might be a different matter. At that point number 3 and 4 begin to look shaky.

However I am now actually thinking about it which I wasn't on Friday.

Post Script: If you need to cheer yourself up try saying "The Prime Minsister, Michael Gove"...

Sympathy for a Tory MP

OK, maybe it is a sign of encroaching Coalition think but... (The symptoms are similar to those members of the Labour party who'd defend everything the last Labour government do, and now accuse LibDems of betraying "progressive" politics.)

Various places ran stories like this one about Dominic Raab. The claim is that he is refusing to take emails from constituents.

The tone is outraged, and they provide his email address as a link to encourage you to share your outrage with him. You are meant to think "how dare he hide from his constituents".

I think I would have ignored the story if it wasn't for childish inclusion of email address in these posts.

The first problem is... it is up to him and his constituents. They elected him and get to kick him out. That is the system. So noting the hypocricy of me commenting on this having observed it is nothing to do with me, we move on.

Secondly it isn't true that you can't contact him. I checked his website, and he provides a way to email him. Albeit an irritating one. There is also a contact email address for his consituency party which I am sure would be bounced to his office. From reading his blog I see the form was added in response to the furore. However this does show he is willing to be contacted.

Third 38 Degrees are just plain rude. They Work For You gave an example of how to do this politely. An MP asked not to get faxes or emails via the site, and they honoured this. People who tried to went to a page that told them the MP had asked for this and gave his postal address. I think the MP in question was wrong to do this, but it was up to his constituents.

Next, reading the quote on LFF Mr Raab didn't say no email from constituents, just no prepackaged email from a pressure group. Another way of saying this is that they twisted the facts. They said his publishing his address was enough to let them off the hook. I disagree, and observe that this is the claim of Spammers throughout the world. The address is not being used for the purpose it was published. But that doesn't matter in the world of twitter: as what has been tweeted world over is the headline.

Fifth the parliamentary email address is for parliamentary business. He needs to be able to see what is urgent in that inbox. I guess Parliamentary IT or Mr Raab are not up to filtering! If the pressure groups are stopping him doing his work, and the nuisance of the fake indignation of bloggers and tweeters.

However, Mr Raab was (at best) naive to do this. It is bad politics, and he should have seen it coming. He assumed that a pressure group wouldn't want to raise publicity for their causes. How does someone as intelligent as Mr Raab clearly is not spot the problem in that.

To be honest the best approach is to publish a casework email address that goes to his office or to filter the email to parliament to send it to the office. (The office can then send replies.) It'd be hard to object to an email saying "please send these to my office address" if that was the approach taken. This is a problem with a trivial technological solution that doesn't have political implications. There should be IT support for new MPs to fix these problems.

If you want a thought through response from an MP send a personal letter/email. Otherwise they will bounce you a standard reply from their party. I am sure the fake indignation brigade will rise to this, but if you put in no effort why should they? A candidate I spoke to in a no-hope seat told me that his email inbox bulged and he could spend all his time responding. In a winable seat it must be even worse.

Coalitions and Liberal Parties

As I said on Monday I've just finished reading A Short History of the Liberal party 1900-1988.

One thing that has become clear is how bad coalitions were for the Liberal party. Of course we aren't the Liberal Party, we're the Liberal Democrats. Totally different. But a quick recap is sobering:

1915-1922 Coalition under Asquith and Lloyd George saw us go from 270 seats in 1910 election to 36 seats in 1922. Having split into Liberals and Coalitions Liberals.

The 1931 election elected 72 Liberals (split into Liberals and National Liberals). The National Liberals were in coalitions with the Tories (and Labour for some of it), and by the end of the crisis in 1945 we were down to 12 seats.

In case you think it is just a Tory thing, don't forget in 1974 we had 13 seats, and the Lib-Lab pact cost us 2 seats net. (over 15%!)

Mind you it has to be said that this does knock the idea that coalitions are unstable on the head: both coalitions lasted over the length of a modern parliament. Didn't do us much good electorally though.

The stubborness of Mr Kawczynski

On Today this morning the Conservative MP for Shrewsbury and Atcham was talking about the referendum on changing the voting system. The BBC seem to believe they know the date: 5 May next year with the local elections.

Daniel Kawczynski seems to prefer the current system because he thinks it unfair on him.

You get two votes...

He wants to know why people who vote for minor parties should get two votes to his one. On face value this seems a fair comment: after all they get to vote Monster Raving Loony, then for someone else. However as an argument it is just plain daft.

Let us consider an election under FPTP

Mr Kawczynski 1000 votes
Miss Smith 900 votes
Miss Looney 800 votes
Mr Bob 600 votes

Not an impossible outcome under FPTP in local elections. Now it looks like everyone got one vote in the outcome. However in fact 2300 votes were not counted, and they got no vote. More than twice the number who did get a vote.

This is bad for democracy as Miss Smith next time will try to squeeze Miss Looney and Mr Bob, saying that only Smith can beat Kawczynski here. Those who support Looney might be persuaded into voting for the lesser of two evils out of Smith and Kawczynski rather than the party they support.

Now suppose we had AV. Not a perfect system by any means. Then we'd transfer Mr Bob's votes:

Mr Kawczynski 1150
Miss Smith 1050
Miss Looney 950
Untransferred 150

(even split between the three others and deciding not to).

Now it is true that 150 people have no vote now. That is because they chose not to.

They made a choice not to transfer. They haven't been prevented from voting. Note that all 1000 people who voted for Mr Kawczynski initially find that at this stage have one vote. As do all the people other than the 150 who opted out.

Noone has two votes at this stage.

This goes on until we get to a head to head. At which point the people who voted for the final two still have one vote each in that decision.

... and I don't

Mr Kawczynski says it is unfair that he, who only ever wants to vote Conservative, has only one vote.

He can chose to not transfer his vote, and that is his democratic right. As it is the democratic right at the moment to spoil a ballot paper or stay at home. It isn't true to say he has less votes: he has the same vote as everyone else but is chosing not to use it. Just like the current abstainers and ballot spoilers.

I also don't believe him. I would imagine that he has preferences. Suppose he found himself in a Labour LibDem marginal. Currently he has two options.

1. Vote Conservative and get ignored
2. Vote for the lesser of two evils.

This is wrong. He should be able to vote Tory to show his true views, but that statement should not disenfranchise him. He still has to be represented by the elected official.

He may not have a strong preference between Labour and LibDem, but suppose he found himself in a seat where the BNP have been fighting Labour. He probably doesn't want either to win, but most people would want to avoid a BNP councillor. If I faced this situation I'd be worried: I do not support Labour, but could my LibDem vote be better used to stop the BNP?

The fact we have to address that issue and make that decision is anti-democratic.

Democratic crisis?

In fact across the country currently many people have a grim choice: vote for the lesser of two evils (there are very few three/four way marginals) or be uncounted. The fact that despite this the percentage vote for the big two parties has fallen in every election since 1992 ('92 76.3%, '97 73.9%, '01 72.4%, '05 67.6%, '10 65.1%. In 1979 it was over 80%. It doesn't look much prettier if you include the third party vote.) and the turnout has fallen to the point where I thought the 65.1% in 2010 was good, from 1945 to 1997 it was never below 70%.

In 2005 more people stayed home than voted to reelect the Labour government. The first time this happened.

This must show that something has gone wrong: I think we are facing a democratic crisis.

69.1% of the vote is the most that a government has had since 1945 but even so that is only about 44% of the voters.

Not that I doubt Mr Kawczynski but...

He has claimed he has had no consituents contact him about the electoral system. I find this hard to believe given the Power 2010 campaign to mobilise people this year. Could it be that he didn't see the post as it was filtered for a form response by staffers? Or is it really the case that noone in Shrewsbury wanted the change. From people I know who were LibDem candidates I doubt it.

I will be campaigning for a yes vote on May 5, because AV is an important step towards getting a fairer system and trying to unpick the disenchantment that 30%+ of the population have with government and politics.

DC and families

It is an old joke but a favourite from the era of Cecil and Alan Clarke that the Tories are so keen on family values they want to have as many as they can.

So the Tory attempt to mobilise their base has begun with tax breaks for married couples with children. This worries me as a liberal as the state interfering in the bedroom: most certainly not the business of the government.

Marriage is designed to protect people in the risks of long term commitment needed to raise families. It isn't a moral issue, the history of English marriage shows this. Early modern (16th/17th century) marriage amongst the majority of the population was considered to gave taken place when a couple started cohabiting, but the legal marriage was delayed until pregnancy. Not a million miles from today. The Victorians tried to change all this, but not very successfully outside the upper classes.

The evidence that children do better in stable homes is clear: but that doesn't mean they do better in volatile households. Also the evidence on cohabiting couples isn't much different from married.

This clearly is not about child welfare. It also won't make anyone tie the knot. It might help people at an expensive time when money might cause a split, but this is true of cohabiting couples who face the same strains and whose kids would also benefit. If it was about children it'd therefore be an announcement of child tax relief or credits. It is about promoting one way of life above others to pander the base.

This could be the less nasty edge of Toxic Conservatism reasserting itself.

PS I imagine everyone and his cousin has now seen the childish opportunity to create your own spoof DC poster and the collection of silliest at the my DC spoof site. If not have a look.

Tory teachers

The Tories needed an eye catching idea: only the best teaching maths!

How will they know? Rule out people with only a third and discourage non-specialists.

Oh dear. It might help if more Tory MPs (and to be fair other parties too) sent their kids to state schools. Then they might know that:

1. There is a shortage of maths teachers. Reducing the pool isn't wise.


2. OK not everyone who'd like to teach us suitable: but having a first or a PhD doesn't make you able to teach.


3. Some pupils respond better to teachers with backgrounds in engineering rather than maths per se

Everyone and his dog has pointed out that the Tories beloved Carol Vorderman would be excluded by this rule (although that would be a good thing, arithmetic isn't the totality of maths). As it is funny I'll do so as well: the suggested rule would exclude the Tories maths education expert.

If the Tories want to improve teaching then they should just focus on gradually raising the pay if teachers so it becomes more attractive, recognise the vocational nature if teaching to many of the best teachers, and leave the profession to settle down after 20 years as a political football.

Most teachers would appreciate a few years without changed to qualifications, inspection regime and increased paperwork. Not trying to privatise schools and reduce T&Cs (the reason for academies) would be a bonus.