Ducks and democracy

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To The Daily Telegraph
Here in the US we have a law making it illegal to hunt ducks or geese with more than three shells in one’s shotgun. We want to give them a fighting chance, as it were.

A companion law also makes it illegal to hunt those migratory birds with a machine gun, but that just seems downright sensible, doesn’t it?

Ducks have more protection from guns under US law than schoolchildren, grocery shoppers or concert-goers. I guess we like it that way, since this is a democracy and we only pass the laws we want to live by – at least that’s how I think it works.
Tom Boland, United States

No comment necesary from me!

Don’t blame Russia for our diseased politics: a different perspective

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The recent indictment of 13 Russians for meddling in the 2016 US election has prompted a hysterical reaction from some pundits. One commentator called the cyber plot “the second-worst foreign attack on America in the past decade”, after 9/11; another warned that Russia and America were now engaged in a “virtual war”, lamenting that the battle was being fought on the US side “without a commander in chief”; another called for a “Cold War containment” policy to deal with Moscow.

Is this really a proportionate response to what appears to have amounted to little more than a few Russian trolls making mischief on Facebook? “The problem is not that American democracy was hacked”, but that it is in such a fragile state that a “few crude memes” can generate such discord. Similar Russian attempts to meddle in elections in France and Germany were shrugged off. The crisis in the US long predates Russian interference, and “stems from a polarised polity where one party actively encourages its followers to distrust news from non-partisan outlets”. Low voter turnout, voter suppression and rampant jerrymandering have further undermined public confidence in the system. Launching a new Cold War against Russia is not going to solve any of these problems. (Jeet Heer,The New Republic)

Putin wants to “make Russia great again”, which means recovering the Tsarist territories “lost” when communism collapsed. These territories could be interpreted to include Ukraine (of course), the Baltic countries, Poland the Czech Republic, maybe Finland and the countries of the Caucasus. Crimea was a success, so why not press on with the resurrection of the 19th Century empire? In order to realise this (hopefully hopeless) ambition NATO and the EU have to be destabilised and the United States at the very least neutralised. If you buy into this strategy and factor in the deep resentment of US and EU bullying and disrespect (as the Russians see it) over decades, then you have an answer to what latterday Tsar Putin is up to, apparently with huge public support. I don’t like any of it in the least, but understand the resentment. Arguably, Western policies have upset the ataraxia of the Russian people for years.

Are there now too many graduates?

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To The Daily Telegraph
How many graduates does our economy really need and how many can it afford? Fifty years ago, only 5% of school-leavers went on to university. Now the figure has soared to almost 50%, the entirely arbitrary target dreamt up by Tony Blair in his early days in office. This target seems to have become an article of political faith, yet I am aware of no economic evidence that the British economy needs such a high proportion.

In Germany, for example, Europe’s most successful economy, it is only 27%. Instead, Germans prioritise better apprenticeships and focused work-training schemes for young people. That’s what British business and industry are calling for, not for yet more graduates – many of whom have surprisingly poor basic numeracy, literacy and critical reasoning skills.

Our obsession with access over quality has led to such a bloated higher education sector that we have the absurd situation of universities competing for students. (Nigel Henson, Farningham, Kent)

I don’t think the large number of graduates is a bad thing in terms of the quality of life over a graduate’s lifetime (assuming they actually learn critical thinking, espouse lifelong learning and discover aptitudes and interests they never knew they had). Jobs are altogether a different matter. It does seem there are too many graduates for the jobs available. So you have the ludicrous situation of spending a small fortune getting a degree only to discover that no one wants you. Meanwhile we are importing skilled workers from Eastern Europe to do jobs the British always used to do perfectly well. Given Brexit and the urge to cut off the spigot of well-trained Poles and others, where do Brexiteers think the country is going to find engineers, architects, plasterers, bricklayers etc. once they have all been sent home?

Duh! Haven’t thought of that!

Is meritocracy really what we want?

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Theresa May has said, “ I want Britain to be a place where advantage is based on merit, not privilege, where it’s your talent and hard work that matter, not where you were born, who your parents are or what your accent sounds like “.

Sounds reasonable.

And yet, in the wake of the financial crash of 2008 it became clear that meritocracy wasn’t working. Jobs had dried up, debt had soared and housing had becoming increasingly unafforadable. Both May and Trump acknowledge inequality, but prescribe meritocracy, capitalism and nationalism as the panacea. Both praise economic havens for the super-rich, the group they regard as the meritocrats.

Meritocracy used to be regarded as a term of abuse, describing an unequal state that no one would want to live in. Why offer more prizes to the already prodigiously gifted, who could look after themselves, and do? Instead, we should concentrate on helping people who do important but poorly paid jobs (teachers, for instance), spread wealth more widely and thus have a better quality of life and a happier population. This should be the Epicurean way.

Regrettably, it is the “meritocrats” who control the levers of power. Maybe over half these people have been the happy recipients of sheer luck, being born to the right parents, being in the right place at the right time. No doubt the people who run the huge tech firms are smart people, but they caught the tide, had good technical skills, but were also good “politicians”, a must in big corporations. Look at the people now appointed to run the American government. I know none of them, but in general they come across as a hard ruthless and humourless crowd, good at pushing themselves forward, but with a deficit of human kindness. If they are typical of meritocrats, let’s find a better way of stocking government with top bureaucrats!

Stephen Hawking on God

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Stephen Hawking, who has unfortunately just died, famously declared that there was no need for a creator. He was an atheist who stated that science offered a more convincing explanation of life and the universe than god or gods. He believed that the universe is governed by the laws of science. In his 2010 book, “The Grand Design” (written with Leonard Mlodinow) he wrote that the Big Bang was inevitable and spontaneous. “Because there is a law such as gravity the universe can and will create itself from nothing……..Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going”.

Interviewed on ABC News he said, “One cannot prove that God doesn’t exist. But science makes God unnecessary. The laws of physics can explain the universe without the need for a creator”. On other occasions he expressed the conviction that there is no God. “No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. There is probably no heaven or afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe”.

Epicurus believed that there might be gods on Mount Olympus, but spent their time making merry and chasing goddesses. They took no interest in the doings of mankind. This, I suspect, but I can’t prove, was a “ ppolitically correct” statement that avoided huge blowback from priests and believers at the time. In fact, I think he was, privately, an atheist, who laughed at the stories about the gods and preferred a scientific approach to life and the universe. We can, as Epicureans, support both Hawking and Epicurus, but we must do so respecting the beliefs of others and putting our views forward politely, with a smile, especially for those who are religious but are trying to learn and understand modern physics and make sense of it.