ASI Bulletin: Back to School
Dr. Eamonn Butler, our Director and Co-Founder, takes you through the last few (always busy) weeks at the Adam Smith Institute.
Donate here, and help us in fighting our cause
If you like this Adam Smith Institute e-Bulletin, tell your friends. If you don’t, tell me.
In this bulletin:
Why American cartoonists are running short on supplies
Worthy winner of our Adam Smith 300th anniversary essay prize
Reports on trade, crypto and nukes; plus events, merchandise and comment
But first...
Congratulations to my colleague and ASI co-founder Dr Madsen Pirie, who was awarded an OBE in the New Year Honours List, for his contribution to the development of public policy. He sends thanks for the many kind messages of congratulations from friends of the Institute (and the market!)
And second...
The postal regulator Ofcom has a wheeze to ensure that the Royal Mail doesn’t deliver letters late so often. (It’s cutting the service to three days a week. So your letter will still arrive ten days late, just less often.)
The Covid Inquiry is costing £1m a week with no end of it in sight, which is a situation known in lawyers' jargon as ‘nice little earner’.
As Donald Trump steams through the primaries, I hear that US cartoonists are running out of orange pastels. (No such problems, here where the political cartoonists’ subjects are a universal grey.)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, says there is now scope for some nice tax cuts before the forthcoming election. (Is he winding us up? He’s so far managed to increase the overall tax take.)
But I digress…
ADAM SMITH 300TH ESSAY WINNER
Perhaps the only good thing about 2023 is that it was the 300th anniversary of Adam Smith, the great Scottish philosopher, economist and social psychologist. To mark the occasion, the Lord Borwick kindly hosted a reception in the House of Lords, at which we announced the anniversary essay competition, which he has also sponsored.
Entrants were asked to pen an essay on ‘What would Adam Smith write about today’. [Ha! He’d be so angry that his hand would be shaking too much to write anything at all.—Ed.] The winner, Shu Lin, who goes away with a cheque of £3,000, was formally announced at our Back to School party. Congratulations also to Pranjal Kumar, who received the second prize, and Amelia Chesworth who came third. Cheques to be posted soon…
ENLIGHTENMENT ESSAY COMPETITION
Another year, another essay competition. We are delighted to be looking further afield in our search for excellent essays. We are asking students, from undergraduate to post-doctoral, to answer the question: “How can the ideas of the Enlightenment become embedded in the Arab World?”
Applicants can answer from many angles, such as:
Whether the Arab world was more advanced than Western Europe in 1000-1500?
How can projects like NEOM drive enlightenment?
How does the region balance bottom-up emergent capitalism (the historic UK model) and top-down capitalism (a more Singaporean model)
What comments would Adam Smith or Ibn Khaldun make if they visited the region today?
How can the GCC implement the ideas of Enlightenment economics?
The deadline is the 30th of August at midnight. £8,000 will be awarded for first place, £4,000 for second place, and £2,000 for third place. Submissions can be sent to maxwell@adamsmith.org.
NEW REPORTS
World Traders: The case for the UK’s participation in the WTO MPIA
In this report, trade expert David Collins says that the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has long been a force for free trade. But its mechanism for settling trade disputes between member countries is stuck in a rut because the US has vetoed the appointment of any new judges. So we make the case for the UK joining an alternative arbitration system, the Multi-Party Interim Appeal (MPIA). Simples!
Watch our explainer video below!
Saving the Golden Goose: How the UK’s Crypto Rules Narrowly Avoid America’s Securitarian Trap
These catchy titles just keep streaming out, don’t they? Anyway, it turns out that the UK is in the forefront of cryptocurrency and digital asset investment, and the third largest digital asset economy. That’s because we have a much more permissive regulatory regime than other big players like the US. Indeed, US over-regulation is stifling innovation in digital currency: for example, if it fluctuates in value, it can be taxed. If PM Rishi Sunak really wants to make the UK a ‘global crypto asset technology hub’, he must resist well-meaning calls to (over)regulate.
And it was Smart Thinking’s featured report this month!
Fission Impossible: Building better Nuclear for the Future
I don’t think I mentioned this report, which came at the end of 2023. But EDF saying that the building of Hinkley Point C might cost a third more than forecast [Did someone mention government projects?—Ed.] put it in my mind. Why is nuclear power such a poor relation of, frankly, less reliable renewables? A terrible commissioning mechanism, for a start, says energy expert Nigel Hawkins. He makes a number of recommendation on how to fix that, including by introducing a mutual recognition of standards for Advanced Modular Reactors and establishing a ‘Contracts for Difference’ (CfD) approach. Here’s the write-up in the Telegraph.
EVENTS
Back to School Party
Thanks to Robin Birley for hosting us at his uber-smart 5 Hertford Street club this week, alongside a host of senior political journalists, ministers, and academics- as seen in Politico’s spotted list:
The Next Generation
On February 13, Shrove Tuesday, our young political and policy activists meet again for chat and cheer. [Will you be serving pancakes? Yum!—Ed.] And we will be welcoming Rachel Cunliffe of the New Statesman, letting you in on all her secrets on what to watch out for in the by-election results. Don’t miss out on all the juicy info….
If you are under-35 and interested in coming, sign up here.
ON THE SUPER-BLOG
Getting privatisation wrong: It’s a lot easier than getting it right, claim I, on the basis of long and bitter experience. Too many state monopolies or near-monopolies, like Royal Mail, have been privatised without reform — so they stay complacent and do not innovate as competitive companies do. The management might change, but the trade unions still dominate working practices and government bureaucrats (like Ofcom) still try to run it all. How to get privatisation right? Simply create the conditions for alternative service providers to grow and compete.
Since vapes work, the fools want to ban them: Half of young people who use disposable vapes are not smokers. Surely, says Tim Worstall, this is a good thing- vaping is a far less damaging substitute. Depressingly, but not surprisingly, the government is pressing ahead with the ban on disposable vapes anyway.
MEDIA
Our research guru, Maxwell Marlow has, as ever, been giving his opinion on a wide variety of topics, including whether we should allow asylum seekers to work while awaiting a decision on their application on GB News with Nigel Farage, on mad suggestions to ban large wine glass servings in pubs in the Mail, on the NHS’ own ‘ministry of silly walks,’ the Transport for London fare freeze in the Express, and in the Telegraph on the use of council tax to fund gold-plated pensions.
Director of Government Relations, James Price, was in the Spectator defending BrewCo’s decision to stop paying the voluntary ‘real living wage',’ and patron Sir Brandon Lewis MP mentioned our recent housing polling in Conservative Home and Politics Home.
ADAM SMITH ONLINE
There’s an array of books and merchandise in our online store. Hardback editions of my own Condensed Wealth of Nations, for example, and Tim Ambler’s authoritative guide to Shrinking Whitehall. Plus ties with Adam Smith on, T-shirts with Smith's famous ‘not from the benevolence…’ our Magna Carta documentaries, and Adam Smith pop sockets, whatever they are. https://www.adamsmith.org/store
MAKE A (VERY) OLD MAN HAPPY
Last year was Adam Smith’s 300th birthday year. Help us continue his legacy of economic enlightenment by supporting our activities to engage with and educate the coming generation.
We have big ambitions for 2024 and beyond with a fresh team, but we need your support.
That’s why we’ve launched the 300 Pledge.
Thanks to the generosity of one supporter, for the first £300,000 we raise, they will match every pound you put in. So there has never been a better time to support our work.
Make the Pledge here:
You’ll enable a step-change in our efforts and support entire new campaigns to be fought in the battle of ideas.
You’ll help us to hire a part-time economics researcher or fund influential policy research.
You'll help us to take on 3 new interns, organise 3 school engagements, or host 3 The Next Generation events.
And I quote…
New year, new year quote: this one from Malcolm S Forbes:
“There’s another major hurdle to a new year of prosperity: our tax code. No human being understands it…. Incalculable amounts of the nation’s intellectual brain power are devoted to the dead-end task of coping with the current tax code. Over on-half million people in the US make their living off it, whether in lobbying, lawyering, tax preparing or accounting…. Americans spend five and one-half billion hours a year filling out tax forms…and spend between $100 billion and $300 billion to comply….”
I hope all our UK friends get their tax returns in by the end of the month…. And on that happy thought,
Bye…
e
OUR SOCIALS
Thanks for reading the ASI’s e-Bulletin! Subscribe for free to receive new content, information about events, and other soundness.