Author Archives: SEH

Wisdom from Prime Minister Blair

In Tony Blair A Journey My Political Life, Prime Minister Blair has provided an interesting and generally fast-moving account of his years in office.  It is unfortunate that the U.S. has so few progressive politicians with his philosophy and good sense.

On the state of the National Health Service (NHS), circa 1998, before many reforms begun during his tenure (p. 202):

We still had 1.3 million people on waiting lists to become inpatients, most waiting over six months.  However, the waiting didn’t start with becoming an inpatient, it started with trying to get a doctor’s appointment.  At the time there were no minimum standards in terms of getting to see a doctor.  After the doctor, the waiting began to get on the consultant’s outpatient list.  That could take months.  Only after waiting on the outpatient list could you get on the list to become an inpatient.  The six months waiting often wasn’t six months at all; it could be twelve or eighteen or even more.

The NHS was great, heroic even, in terms of dealing with emergencies and the chronically ill, but as a service, it was uneven, good when good, truly appalling when bad.  It was certainly underfunded, but money was not the only problem; and more money therefore not the complete solution.

On the financial crisis (pp. 657-658):

First, “the market” did not fail.  One part of one sector did.  The way sub-prime debt was securitized, spliced and diced with no real appreciation of the underlying risk or value was wrong, irresponsible and immensely damaging. . . .

Second, government also failed.  Regulations failed.  Politicians failed.  Monetary policy failed.  Debt became way too cheap.  But that wasn’t a conspiracy of banks; it was a consequence of the apparently benign confluence of loose money policy and low inflation. . . .

Third, the failure was one of understanding.  We didn’t spot it [the coming crisis].  You can argue that we should have, but we didn’t.  Furthermore — and this is vital for where we go now on regulation — it wasn’t that we were powerless to prevent it even if we had seen it coming; it wasn’t a failure of regulation in the sense that we lacked power to intervene. . . .

On dealing with opponents during twice weekly and later weekly Prime Minister’s Questions sessions in Parliament (p. 114):

I learned how to disarm an opponent as well as blast them.  They get angry; you get mild.  They go over the top; you become a soothing voice of reason.  They insult you; you look at them not with resentment, but pity.  Under attack, you have to look directly at them, study their faces, your eyes fixed on theirs rather than rolling with anxiety.

On use of alcohol (p. 613):

As you grow older, your relationship with alcohol needs to be carefully defined.  When young, you do drink to excess at points, but you go days without it.  As you get on in life, it easily becomes a daily or nightly demand that your body makes on you for relaxation purposes.  It is a relief to pressure. . . .

I came to the conclusion . . . that escaping the pressure and relaxing was a vital part of keeping the job in proportion, a function rather like my  holidays.  But I was never sure.  I believed I was in control of the alcohol.  However, you have to be honest; it’s a drug, there’s no getting away from it.  So use it with care, maybe; but never misunderstand its nature and be honest about its relationship to your life.


Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims

The following quote from William Bradford of Plymouth Plantation appeared as the back page of the Journal of Political Economy, August 1991. For further discussion, see How Private Property Saved the Pilgrims by Tom Bethell, Hoover Digest, 1999.

Perestroika, 1630s
All this while no supply was heard of, neither knew they when they might expect any. So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length, after much debate of things, the governor (with the advice of the chief among them) gave way that they should set corn, every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other things to go on in the general way as before.  And so [was] assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end, only for present use (but made no division for inheritance), and ranged all boys and youth under some family. This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn, which before would allege weakness and inability, whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.

The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that among godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients applauded by some of later times-that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing, as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labors and victuals, clothes, etc., with the meaner and younger sort thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And for men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery; neither could many husbands well brook it. Upon the point all being to have alike, and all to do alike, they thought themselves in the like condition and one as good as another; and so, if it did not cut off those relations that God has set among men, yet it did at least much diminish and take off the mutual respects that should be preserved among them. And it would have been worse if they had been men of another condition. Let none object this is men’s corruption, and nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in His wisdom saw another course fitter for them.

[William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, edited by Samuel Eliot Morison (New York: Knopf, 1963). Reprinted in The Annals of America, vol. 1, 1493-1 754: Discovering a New World (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1968), pp. 72-73] (Suggested to JPE by Michael R. Haines)