Pissing on bonfires

In amongst the riff raff outside of the Westminster bubble there is a peculiar sect of quasi-libertarian Marxists who tend to unite around Spiked online. As far as these sects go they're actually a decent bunch with a great deal more intellect than your average kipper or libertarian. But what they share in common with libertarians is a joyfully simplistic view of the world. They hold the view that we should simply build more houses on the green belt to solve the housing crisis. It's similar to the kipper tendency to believe leaving the EU solves all our problems - and that it can be done easily.

Put it to this bunch that things might no be so straight-forward and before you know it, me of all people, is labelled a nanny-statist, a socialist or a Malthusian or something equally dreary. I'm none of those things. The reason I end up pissing on so many bonfires is because I am a colossal nerd. During the Somerset floods I was down there taking photographs of sluice-gates and pumping stations. I can often be found at airfields, quarries, reservoirs and power stations or anywhere there is civic infrastructure - because dull as they seem, they are intensely political things.

Over the last few years I have accumulated knowledge I never expected to need or use but now I know a gravity gate from a tidal gauge and I can even date concrete just by looking at it. I am completely self-aware enough to know how absurd that sounds. But stuff like this matters. Details matter.

Such things are relentlessly boring and are often ignored because they get in the way of people's flights of fantasy - but who's actually going to check huh? Well, me as it happens - which is why I take Spiked online with a pinch of salt. I love their lofty aspirations, which is a bit more positive than the Kipper miserablism but most of the time I look upon it with a certain bemusement. 

It was put to me that "policy should follow the people, not stand Canute-like in their way". This does make me chuckle. You see policy is an instrument of governance, and governance is largely the practice of making large numbers of people do things they wouldn't do otherwise, and wouldn't do if you asked them nicely. But sometimes, for the greater good, it is most necessary. Politics is when it infringes on morality and speech, but mainly it's about facilitating more freedoms, more trade and protecting us from the elements. 

The libertarian tendency, one which I have in recent years subscribed to, holds that most of it is unnecessary. And of course that is a valid view if you operate from a position of complete ignorance. As indeed I did. Good government is invisible government. It's massive and it is everywhere. Most modern, complex systems simply would not function without it and its impact is massive.

My example de jour being the shipping container. There are better designs but we settle for the mediocre one because universality is what makes the global shipping trade work as efficiently as it does. Perhaps one of the greatest innovations of the modern world. The shipping container dictates the size of lorries, the types of dock crane, and the shape and size of ships, the width and camber of roads and the height of bridges. That does mean lorries are now much bigger than we would necessarily want for our roads on this little and ancient island, but the common good benefits are there for all to see. But then cyclists get squished so now we are remodeling our cities. Just one design standard can change everything.

Many people remark all cars look the same these days. That's not by accident. Design is heavily regulated so that when a pillock steps out into the road and gets hit by a New York taxi, he is alive to write a blog about it. Would this have happened without regulation? Would it bollocks. 

Meanwhile, everything under our streets is tightly regulated from sewers to cabling and gas pipes. As much happens beneath our feet as above ground. It is of labyrinthine complexity and it is regulated and it needs regulating because otherwise it would be an even bigger mess than it is presently. It adds costs but not arbitrarily. It means maintenance works are cheaper and faster, and that planned works do not interfere with the operation of other things. All the things you take for granted and don't think about are planned and regulated by somebody somewhere.

Road building is a thing that fascinates me. Most people are now aware that turning your front lawn into a driveway now contributes to flash flooding. So we now have flood impact assessments and we have planning. It seems nonsensical and absurd to libertarians that a council can tell you what to do with your property, but would be less amused by their home being under three feet of water - and would be the first to complain about it. So yes, government, to an extent has the right and the necessity to tell you what to do. And we all benefit from it.

A favourite talking point of libertarians is "who would build the roads" and as a man demonstrated in Bath just recently, people would indeed build roads of their own accord. But done without planning permission and not to regulatory specifications, the liability for accidents is his, with just one small collision having the potential to be ruinous. Meanwhile, proper roads have factored in camber and drainage. I am one of those people who loves to speed down a motorway. Who doesn't? The majority of people now do. And why is that possible? Regulation. The roads are well set out, the signage is standardised - and deep, lethal puddles on motorways are now a rare thing thanks to engineering, but that is engineering working in tandem with regulation. Thanks to this, journey times are shorter and driving is more fun. 

Meanwhile the M62 has an active traffic management system which slows everyone down to 40mph in heavy traffic. I think it's an amazing system. Is that because I am a nannying fussbucket who likes to spoil everybody's fun and a Malthusian who wants to slow down human progress? No. It's because traffic jams are caused by the bunching effect of sudden breaking. Traffic jams are a massive waste of life and better regulated traffic flows better giving us more time to spend with our families.

All of this spawns an army of faceless bureaucrats making decisions about peoples lives and while we might think we can sack them all and shrink the size of the state, the reality is, we need them. Maybe not the lesbian tennis outreach programmes, but traffic flow statisticians and hydrological surveyors are people who make the world work better in ways you've never considered. 

So when someone says "just build more houses" I have to laugh. Details cannot be causally disregard in any such estimation - and in approaching any policy, for everything you have thought about, there's half a dozen you haven't.

We have certain energy objectives for starters; to reduce, yes that word again, externalities, and of course dependency on foreign powers. Consequently fuel efficiency has become something of a thing in planning, where modern thinking lends itself toward CHP. So, then you have to plan your facilities that go with any housing - and location becomes an even greater consideration because here's the kicker - not just housing is expensive in London... it's absolutely everything. And as Mrs Pants in Blackadder would insistently ask "But what about the DRAINS?"

Keeping London supplied with water is one of the emerging problems as indeed is waste water. There are unique constraints that prevent new reservoirs, both geographical and regulatory, and so the issue has to be tackled at both ends; Supply, and then demand side management, which again has been presented as Malthusian greenyism, when actually it's a sensible and necessary thing to reduce waste water - because it has a cost.

Then there's congestion. I could do a whole essay on that, and I probably will with sufficient provocation. So this proposition of "simply" building more houses at the expense of the green belt starts to look a little less simple doesn't it? Planning exists for a reason.

Some would rightly point out that our planning system is absolutely illogical, outdated and shambolic, and I wouldn't really offer much argument, but the current planning regime is working very nicely in ways nobody really anticipated. It is making London a prohibitively expensive place, serving as a deterrent to agglomeration, and is actually now causing an exponential exodus from London in the professional classes while protecting essential green spaces - which does have a value despite what these utter philistines say.

Rather than surrender and resolve just the symptoms (high property prices) by building more houses, one might look at the causes - and the opportunities. In the case of housing, London housing is expensive because there is always a strong demand. Why is there a strong demand? Because of the economic opportunities present in London which are a global draw as well as a draw for young professionals from within.

What that tells you is as much as London is a pull factor, there is also a push factor - ie sod all in the way of economic opportunities in the North and elsewhere. That is a policy failing thus internal migration is a policy failure too. So before you think about "just build more homes" you might want to put some thought into how one best reduces the push factor that drives demand in the first place. Not least least because unless you solve that you won't actually make any worthwhile impact on affordability.

You can do that with corporation tax competition, decentralisation of development policy, and an industrial policy that favours development outside the South East. The economic advantages are many and obvious. Just adding capacity in perpetuity without looking at smarter alternatives is not going to solve the problem. We have open borders so property near London is never going to be a bad investment, so however many houses you build, there is little actual evidence they would be affordable - and that's assuming we can even intelligently define what affordable even means. And even if they were affordable, they wouldn't stay that way for long. 

We have some great cities outside London - and they are the answer. I am absolutely in love with Newcastle, and Liverpool has so much untapped potential: fabulous architecture with nearby beaches, yet these places are still hemorrhaging young professionals and entrepreneurial types. There's no reason why it should be that way at all.

The notion that effective policy making is standing "Canute-like" ignores the fact that such policies have worked in the past, not least the Common Agricultural Policy which prevented an exodus from the regions into Paris and could be said to have prevented more profound civil unrest. We are seeing migration stresses not just internally, we are also seeing our corner of the world erupting into chaos with more people coming our way. As much as that will present a great many challenges, they are key to revitalising our Northern cities - but not if people are encouraged to stay in London. Price is the best policy tool we have for affecting that change. London is its own deterrent.

That will not stop Londoners moaning about house prices, but that's just what Londoners do. Economists will also bitch, whine and moan about house prices for eternity, but they tend to be London economists who have never stopped to ask what the economic and human costs are in allowing our greatest cities to crumble and fade. 

It's going to take a lot more than what we have explored here, but it is a big part of the puzzle, and the flights of fancy by libertarians, kippers and Marxists are insufficient. Their mindsets are born of the same casual indifference to detail and complexity and their ideas are throwbacks to a simpler age when the whole of the law was lesser in size than a telephone directory. Now such a book is only the index of modern law, for a modern, complex society with intricate challenges. 

Through their fog of incomprehension they call me a nannying fussbucket and a Malthusian - because engaging with the details is too difficult. That is why I will continue to toil in obscurity pissing on their bonfires. Nothing is as simple as it seems and anyone who pretends it is should be considered a fraud. They would be half way to enlightenment if only they could, just for a moment, acknowledge the depth of their ignorance. I did. And the world is a much more interesting place when you do.