How to save £100bn15th April 2010
How to cut public spending (April)? Stop teaching medicine, law and dentistry at university. The private sector will establish colleges to provide these courses, and arrange bursaries for poorer students. Let the others who wish to pursue careers in these fields pay for the privilege. The state should cough up for the areas the private sector will not fund: poetry, philosophy and Welsh.
Julian LaiteVia the Prospect websiteMuslim numbers2nd April 2010
Eric Kaufmann (April) claims that “demography is destiny.” But is it? Just because the number of devout first and second generation Muslims in Britain remains the same, it does not follow that the nature of their faith does too. Evidence suggests that Islam is understood and practised very differently between the generations; it is more individualised, faith-based and ideological (though not necessarily in a political way) for younger Muslims than for their elders, for whom it formed part of the fabric of their social lives and community.
As I have argued before in Prospect, there is a wide middle ground between being “secular” (whatever that means) and “fundamentalist.” Yet Kaufmann suggests that if younger Muslims are changing, they are becoming more fundamentalist. He cites the infamous statistic from the 2007 Policy Exchange report on British Muslims, which is that 37 per cent of Muslims aged 16-24 wanted sharia law, compared to just 17 per cent of those aged over 55. But this tells us almost nothing about what those 37 per cent take “sharia” to mean, or in what sense they “want to live” under it. In my book, Young British Muslim Voices, I asked my respondents (aged 16-30) to talk about their attitudes to sharia law. Of those who did express a desire for it, when pressed to explain what that might mean in practice, all hedged their responses with so many qualifications that the concept of sharia became completely attenuated.
Beware the tyranny of numbers. Demography has its place, but to understand society we must also pay attention to what people actually think, feel and believe.
Anshuman MondalBrunel UniversityIraq’s oil risks30th March 2010
Alice Fordham’s article (April) about democracy in Iraq argues that an economy dependent on oil is likely to be uncompetitive in other sectors, and to rely on government patronage to create jobs. Research conducted elsewhere by International Alert, the peacebuilding organisation I work for, confirms this. Moreover, it shows that, over time, this situation can lead to a resurgence of violent conflict. This occurs for two reasons: first, because patronage tends to be shared unequally, leaving out particular ethnic groups or other constituencies, and second, because the oil-dominated economy limits opportunities for entrepreneurs in other sectors to create wealth and jobs. The risk in both cases is of a large number of economically and politically excluded Iraqis, which is liable to destabilise the country.
It seems inevitable that Iraq’s economy will be dominated by oil in the near future, so it’s essential that the country’s leaders and foreign investors recognise these risks. To avoid a return to violence, they must share the oil wealth as widely as possible—and use it to capitalise other sectors.
Diana KleinInternational Alert UKThe arrogance of Raphael19th April 2010
It is hard to know where to start with Frederic Raphael’s letter on Koestler (April), so steeped is it with misogynistic arrogance. So Jill Craigie’s behaviour was “not consistent with someone who had just been surprised by an unprovoked violent assault”? Perhaps Raphael can explain just what the “normal” behaviour of a woman who has just been “surprised” by rape is supposed to be? And Craigie “consented” to be alone in her house with Koestler? Ah yes, the familiar male “defence”: she asked for it, and got what she deserved. In her own home.
Jen LindsayLondon W9Get out of London more28th March 2010
Perhaps your contributing critics should get out more. Their general recommendation for April seems to be: “Don’t on any account stray from the narrow confines of the capital for your monthly quota of classical music, art, theatre and dance.” Isn’t this a rather parochial mindset?
Jon Nixon Kendal, CumbriaHousing error6th April 2010
Philippe Legrain (April) is wrong about the economic impact of housing transactions. As he points out, “swapping more or less the same stock of houses with each other cannot logically create riches for society as a whole.” This is because the transfer of funds from buyer to seller is a zero-sum game. But his next assertion, that the exchange of existing properties “has huge costs because it diverts funds from productive investment,” is defeated by the same logic. Why? Because for every purchaser who buys a house rather than investing elsewhere, there is a seller receiving investible funds. To prove that owner-occupied housing “crowds out” other investment, Legrain would need to argue that the level of new housing investment is too high—a much harder case to sustain.
David GriffithsHuddersfieldLet’s not live at sea22nd March 2010
There’s a major problem with the “seasteading” idea Eamonn Fingleton (April) describes: pirates. The defence costs for this sort of “floating nation”—populated by wealthy financial services types or high net-worth libertarians—will be very high if national governments don’t provide some form of deterrence. The only reason cruise liners aren’t attacked more often is because their passengers do not have enough money (or ransom value) to make it worthwhile. Near the US, pirates might be deterred by the coast guard, but this hardly counts as a genuinely libertarian approach. Perhaps libertarians have forgotten how “nasty, brutish and short” Hobbes’s state of nature—which is also the res nullius of the open ocean—actually is.
“Hobbes” Via the Prospect websiteUn-erotic capital26th March 2010
Looks matter considerably in the labour market, but are they as important as Catherine Hakim (April) argues? She focuses on arts and media, but what about medicine? Does Angela Merkel have “erotic capital”? Did Margaret Thatcher? A 2008 study in the Journal of Political Economy concludes that most of the “height premium” in the labour market simply reflects higher intelligence: it seems that good nutrition and health in the first years of life can help make you both cleverer and taller. Meanwhile a 2006 study in the American Economic Review attributes a large part of the “beauty premium” to personality traits like confidence. The two may be related, but many people have one without the other.
More generally, how useful is it to mix physical attractiveness and sex appeal with personality characteristics such as charm and social skills in a single concept as vague as “erotic capital”? I’m not sure I want my young daughter to conclude that beauty, self-adornment and seduction skills are as important for her career as hard work, education, and creativity. Not without some serious evidence, anyway.
George SymeonidisLondon N2
