Should the state choose for you? Certainly not.

A recent advert in the Financial Times shows a female professor at the London Business School, asking the question:

‘Should financial regulation intervene in the portfolio choice of investors?’

Why is the gender of the professor chosen to represent the London Business School female? Is it coincidence, or has it been selected to make some ideological point? If the latter, what point? That the School has its share of female professors? Or are readers supposed to regard it as more natural to have an interventionist position expressed (or at least considered) by a woman? Herbert Spencer thought that women were more likely than men to adopt interventionist positions, and one can certainly posit evolutionary models which would fit with this.

The LBS could have asked me to comment on whether the position invoked by the advert is philosophically defensible, or logically flawed, but they did not, perhaps in part because they guessed which answer I would give.

Modern economics is rather keen on the concept of ‘bad choices’, and much has been made in recent years of one version of this, the so-called phenomenon of ‘cognitive bias’. It is supposed to be possible to demonstrate, experimentally, that people make choices that are not optimal. In fact, no such demonstration is possible.

This is not to say that the concept is nonsensical to begin with. I dare say the average human being has a psychology that is full of unresolved conflicts, which trip him up in a way that prevents him getting what he really wants. But demonstrating that this is the case, by comparing his actual choices to supposedly superior ones, is another matter altogether. From a strict point of view, it simply cannot be done.

Consider person X making a choice between option A and option B. The choice is made in favour of A, through some action on his part, and consequences start to follow. How are you, an outside observer, going to assess that it was B which was the optimal choice from his own point of view? Because A causes him harm of a kind that B does not? But how can you assess what weights X places on different benefits and detriments, or whether indeed a detriment really is a detriment, from his point of view? He may choose to smoke, for example, precisely because he does not wish to live to the maximum possible age.

What if things become extreme enough, you may argue. If A causes him to lose his wife, and his job, surely he cannot have wanted to choose A? Of course, we have to distinguish between consequences he foresaw and those he did not. Your assessment of the probabilities of different possible consequences may be different from his. ‘Oh, but the way things turned out proves that my probability assessments were correct.’ Well, no. Also, even if he himself thought that the hoped-for outcome of his decision had a low probability, the value he assigned to that outcome may have been so high that the choice was still rational from his point of view.

What if X now seems miserable in a way that is hard to envisage he would have felt if he had chosen B? Even if it were possible to make comparisons between his current emotional state and the one he might have derived from the other option, and possible to rank one above the other on his behalf (it is not), it still would not prove that he should not have taken the gamble.

What if X claims he would not have made the decision if he had known something which he did not know at the time, but which he now does, i.e. if he had had access to information P? And what if a lot of other people say the same thing? (For example: ‘now we have read the leaflet about lung cancer, we think we would never have become smokers if we had been able to read it when we started smoking’.) Would that mean that if awareness of P were increased, decisions would necessarily be made that were ‘better’ for those kinds of individuals? No.

What if additional knowledge does not come into it, and the individuals just say ‘I was foolish’, or ‘I did not think it through’, or ‘I was under the influence of alcohol’, and claim that in a more normal, sensible state they would have chosen B, not A. Can we not at least then conclude they made a ‘bad’ decision? Not really, for the same sorts of reason.

One cannot reach any strong conclusions from what someone says, especially after the event, because of the principle of ‘cheap talk’. If what you say has little or no effect on what happens to you, then arguably nothing can be read into your statements except (possibly) your intention to influence the listener. Only actual choices can reveal something about a person’s desires or interests, and even those only in an imperfect way.

You (a) do not know whether a person’s claims about what they would have done are meaningful, and (b) do not know what their optimal choices, given all available information, would have been. What is more (allowing for the sake of argument the possibility that there is a better choice, and that others know what it is), you can certainly not assume that intervening to produce the outcome of the optimal choice has the same ranking, from the person’s point of view, as the case in which he chooses the outcome for himself.

Such considerations, showing that (strictly) you can never judge that another’s choices are imperfect, can never know what the optimal choice would have been, and can never recreate it artificially even if you knew it, are routinely waved aside.

We can guess the reason why the possible objections are ignored. The assumptions that we can know what is good for people, and that we can bring it about, may seem to provide legitimacy for intervention. It can be claimed that the intervention is done, not for the intervenor’s benefit, but for the sake of the victim.

Conversely, consideration of the philosophical flaws underlying theories of irrationality tends to undermine the arguments in favour of intervening, whether in portfolio choice or any other area of decision-making.

Theories which provide justification for the exercise of power should always be regarded with greater scepticism than those which are neutral with respect to power, and certainly not with less.

The Bourgeoisie strikes back (or is prevented from doing so)

Lenin is said to have declared that the way to crush the bourgeoisie was to grind them between the millstones of inflation and taxation.

This seems to be the programme that has been, and is being, followed in this country and throughout Western civilisation.

There is a smallish house for sale near here, and also a small house for rent near here. Any potential supporter could buy or rent one of them, as a holiday home and/or for us to use. It seems that in modern society we have no potential supporters, but I just mention it.

The agent for the house for sale is Penny & Sinclair.

The agent for the house for rent is Morgan & Associates

Oxford's professorship in education

In December I applied for a professorship in education offered by Oxford University. The text of the covering letter was reproduced here.

I was not even shortlisted for this post, despite the fact that Oxford seem to have had difficulty filling it, since they advertised the same post again in April.

I reapplied, and again was not even shortlisted.

I think – and my colleagues at Oxford Forum agree – that if Oxford was genuinely interested in making progress on topics coming under the rubric of ‘education’ then the individuals responsible for filling this post should at least wish to meet me to find out what ideas I have for research and what I might do if offered the position.

In fact of course, it is doubtful that such motivation exists in modern academia, at a level capable of having an impact on such decisions. Far more important seems to be that mechanical rules are observed (the candidate should have at least so many publications under their belt, they should have at least x years’ ‘experience’ at other institutions – regardless of whether they have actually contributed anything significant to the advancement of knowledge), and that appearances are satisfied (what will other institutions think; are we doing what is ‘normal’ in the academic profession).

So the system is successfully perpetuated: some kind of activity passing under the name ‘research’ is duly carried on by a large number of people, providing one another with spurious professional endorsement (‘what you are doing may validly be regarded as educational research, because everyone else “working” in the field would say so too’).

However, understanding of the underlying issues is not meaningfully advanced.

Philosophy students and vacation workers

text of a reply to a university philosophical society

Dear ...

Thank you for inviting me to speak to the ... Society. I am afraid that I will not be able to come in the foreseeable future.

I am not a member of the ‘international academic community’ to which you refer, although I certainly should be. The rejection of hereditary ability is fundamental to communist or socialist ideology, and I have never been able to overcome the handicap imposed upon me by my ruined ‘education’. I have been, and am being, prevented from making major progress in many fields.

Opposition to us expresses itself in the fact that we do not have a single senior supporter, i.e. any person outside of here, preferably with some social status, prepared to put our case in fund-raising applications. It is actually impossible to gain any financial support without a representative. We do not have one, as the nominal supporters we once had (of which there were originally a great number) offered to resign as soon as they were asked to be active on our behalf, or to contribute money themselves.

Although social status is (or would be) preferable in a supporter, anything is better than nothing. You and your colleagues may well start to have some social status in a few years’ time. If we had one or more academic supporters we could, for example, make applications to overseas universities to set up overseas departments here, so that we could give seminars in vacations on political, social and ideological developments in this country.

We are now in the summer vacation, so why do not you and/or some of your colleagues come to stay in or near Cuddesdon for six or eight weeks? You would need to be prepared to help with whatever work is in progress here, to justify our spending time on putting you in the picture in various ways. And you would need to have bicycles and/or a car to travel into Cuddesdon, as you might not be able to rent rooms close enough to us for walking.

I have put this invitation in the plural, but when we meet new people it is best if they are on their own, as a companion will be sure to reinforce or remind them of elements in the modern outlook which are incompatible with ours.

Kind regards,
etc.

Any undergraduates or academics are invited to come to Cuddesdon in vacations as voluntary workers. They are expected to have enough money of their own to pay for accommodation near here, but would be able to use our canteen facilities. However, we cannot enter into correspondence about arrangements before they come. While here, they could gain information about topics and points of view suppressed in the modern world, as well as giving badly needed help to our organisation.

The onward march of egalitarianism

Prior to the 1939-45 war, getting university fees paid if you, or your parents, could not afford them depended on showing remarkable academic achievement (correlated with very high IQ).

For a time, there were State Scholarships which were regarded as exceptional. They were dependent on getting several distinctions in the exam normally taken at age 18, now called A-levels (though of course quite different in intellectual difficulty from what was taken then).

I got a State Scholarship at 16, regarded as a young age. At the time there were third years of the Sixth Form, and some people stayed on at school until 19 in order to try to get State Scholarships, or at least to do well on the S-level papers. S-level (scholarship) papers were more demanding than A-level papers.

But although the State Scholarship gave me a notional cachet as compared with a County Scholarship, it did not give me (at the time I took it) any financial advantage. All those who had their university fees topped up by the state had them topped up to the same level and received the same amount to live on.

I also got the top scholarship to Somerville College, known as the Senior Open Scholarship, but this also was a cachet and no more. A fraction of my fees was paid by the college, the rest by the state.

From that time on, the number of people going to university each year increased continuously, all receiving a similar level of financial support, regardless of ability.

By now about 50% of the population attends university or similar institutions. The fees have about trebled, and those who get bursaries or subsidies are those from the poorest families, which is in fact most likely to favour the lowest IQs.

Those with the highest IQs are now at no advantage relative to any other university entrant from a middle-class family, and have to acquire enormous loans (likely to be over £50,000 for those starting in 2012) in order to complete their university courses.

Pre-Welfare State, the highest IQs were at an advantage in getting the few scholarships available; now they are bracketed with the middle class at large in being discouraged by the prospect of debt, quite apart from any discrimination practised against them during the admissions process. Debt, one may surmise, is likely to deter the higher IQs the most, as they are likely to be more forethoughtful and existentially aware.

Only those with the ‘poorest’ backgrounds will be actively encouraged by getting their fees paid, and by various ‘outreach’ strategies that are being pursued. Those with the highest IQs, who would formerly have had the best chances of State Scholarships, are unlikely to fall into this category. To have such an IQ implies at least a fairly high IQ on the part of both parents, and at least one of them is likely to have a reasonable income.

Tax the pensioners till the pips squeak

Attention continues to be focused on the population of pensioners. This is a group with an average IQ above that for the population as a whole. One might have hoped (and did hope) that having run the gauntlet of the taxation system up to retirement age, one might be left alone with whatever resources one had managed to conserve. But no, it will not do. An additional direct tax on the working elderly is being proposed (misleadingly labelled ‘national insurance’).

At present, there is a reduced rate of tax on the earnings of those of pensionable age, which one might have considered reasonable as recognition of their having reached an age at which they are likely to be needing to pay more for age-related facilities, such as cleaners and takeaway meals, while the hours which they could work might be limited. Now it is argued they should be taxed more, ostensibly in order to finance a tax cut for younger workers.

Older workers who choose to stay in their jobs beyond 65 should pay national insurance to support young workers, a group of Tory MPs has said. Up to £2 billion a year could be raised by imposing National Insurance on the income of Babyboomers who are still in work. The money would be used to give young, low paid workers a National Insurance ‘holiday’ to allow them to get ahead.

The recommendation is on the back of studies showing that this generation of young workers is likely to end up worse off than their parents. At the moment, older workers are not required to pay National Insurance - although their bosses have to pay 13.8 per cent - because the money is perceived as being for pensions and benefits.

The money would also be used to scrap the National Insurance payments for those who employed young workers. This would be worth an extra £375 for an 18 year old working 40 hours a week on the minimum wage rate of £4.98 - and would save their boss £450 per year. For a 21 year old, it could be £675 a year, saving the employer £800. (Daily Mail, 9th July 2012)

Over-65s are a selected population, even if selected only by managing to survive to that age. The proposed tax involves resources being transferred to a younger population, selected only by being ‘low-paid’. This fulfils the familiar acceptability criterion applied to a potential tax used to finance benefits, that resources should be moved from a population with a higher average IQ to one with a lower average IQ.

There are other potential rationalisations waiting in the wings as reasons for taxing the working elderly. For example, it is being argued that all local councils should have the same criteria for assessing ‘need’ for the sorts of ‘help’ they provide. So overall, councils will no doubt have to pay out more than they do at present, and where will that come from? From taxpayers, which includes the population of those who do not seek, or do not qualify for, ‘help’ from councils. Thus, in effect, resources are to be transferred from the more independent pensioners to those who fall into the clutches of the Oppressive State, voluntarily or involuntarily.

It seems very likely that the population of pensioners who keep themselves independent, by working or otherwise, has a higher average IQ than the population which fails to do so. So transferring resources from the former population to the latter also fulfils the standard acceptability criterion (see above).

* For more on how pensioners are being increasingly regarded as milch cows, see here and here.

A YouTube video about my ‘misogyny’

text of a letter to someone who posted a video about my ideas on YouTube

My colleague Dr Charles McCreery came across your video on YouTube. It is interesting that you find some of my ideas fairly palatable – that is, my ideas about the drawbacks of female psychology.

As you may have gathered, the main point of my writing books is to advertise my need for people to come and work with me. This applies to people of any age, sex, social status, and ethnicity. Also of any IQ, although in practice only people with a very high IQ consider coming here.

You mention in your video that you regard my writing to have deteriorated since I wrote The Human Evasion. While writing The Human Evasion I had a very small modicum of financial support, and while I was writing it I was still hoping that my other books (Lucid Dreams and Out-of-the-Body Experiences) would encourage people to give me financial support to carry out further research in the areas which I had opened up.

However, no such support was forthcoming. I was not in a position to carry out any viable research into lucid dreams or any other hallucinatory experiences, nor in anything else, such as theoretical physics. The books which you regard as showing a deterioration in the quality of my writing are simply what I have managed to squeeze out in a totally unsupported and constricted situation. If you have looked at my blog (which has been running since 2006), you will see that I am still attempting to enter on the 40-year professorial career which I should have started 50 years ago when I left college. I am also attempting to build up my current situation into at least one university department which will provide me with the hotel environment which I need to lead a liveable life of progressive intellectual activity.

As I said, I need people to come and work with me, to help me build up my situation. If people want to help me, they have to be unselective about what they do, and not insist on doing ‘creative’ work. If you are interested in this possibility, you are welcome to come. I do not know how difficult it is for Australians as regards visas, work permits, etc. You would have to sort this out yourself if you are interested enough. Even if you do not wish to come yourself, please let other people know about my existence and my need for people to work with me. I would be happy to send complimentary books to anyone who supplies a postal address, including yourself. If you send your postal address we would send you complimentary copies of books, which you could present to public or university libraries.

To potential associates in Greece (and elsewhere)

An open letter

We welcome people from Greece who wish to visit us, because we want people to know about our situation and our need for people to work with us.

We are a developing and hopefully expanding organisation opposed by the bitterest social hostility, in spite of being extremely respectable. We say we are aiming at being an independent university with several research departments and a publishing company supported by a business empire, because people need to be aware of our long-term aims so as not to misinterpret our present embryonic state, which can still do little more than some book publishing and investment. Our relatively modest position, and apparent lack of progress, results from the apparently universal desire that we should be squeezed to death, and is not a reflection of our objectives.

Our expansion depends very much on getting to know more people who might come and work with us. We would like to have people coming as temporary or part-time workers to get to know the situation, and spread the word about it among their acquaintances. People who come need to be unselective about the work they do; it is no use to us if people insist only on doing ‘creative’ or ‘interesting’ things such as working with computers. We need people to be willing to do whatever happens to be useful at the time, especially when they are starting with no knowledge of our office systems.

It is best if people come as voluntary workers, supporting themselves in the first instance, so they can get to know the work. We realise this may be difficult for people from Greece, but it is only by coming on a short-term basis that people can get to know about our position realistically. Even if this does not lead to their ever wishing to come permanently, at least they would be in a position to tell others about us and about our need for additional manpower.

When we say that people should be prepared to support themselves in the first instance, this refers to their legal position. We would not want them to be uncomfortable before we could work out if a permanent arrangement was possible.

We are situated in Cuddesdon, a pleasant village outside Oxford. The village has good views and clean air, and is near to major roads to both Oxford and London. There is a Christian theological college (Ripon College) in the village.

There is a demand for workers of various sorts in Britain. If more people were to come than we could support in our organisation, we would attempt to set up ways in which they could supplement their income by doing freelance work.

David Cameron has threatened that, if Greece leaves the eurozone, he would set up border controls to prevent Greek citizens from flooding into the country. It might therefore be a good idea to act promptly if the prospect of coming here permanently interests you.

If you are interested in the possibilities discussed, please email us via the contact page on my website, putting the word ‘Greece’ in the subject header.

Withering faster on the vine

After some years or decades of ‘withering on the vine’ it was announced first that state pensions would be means-tested, and then that the ‘basic’ state pension which remained would be increased each year in line with the CPI (Consumer Prices Index). This is less than if the increase were based on the RPI (Retail Prices Index) which includes the cost of housing, presumably because it is supposed that if you are poor enough you can apply for housing benefit, so your pension should not need to include your rent, mortgage, house repairs etc.

Not only that, but the CPI can be manipulated in various ways, one of them being to arrange for individual suppliers to operate means-testing. Electricity and water suppliers are to supply more cheaply to ‘poorer’ customers. Supermarkets are to keep down the cost of the cheapest and most basic foods so that price rises will be made only, and more steeply, on higher-quality or more nutritious foods.

Now the threatened increase in fuel tax is to be postponed from August to January. If it had started to apply in August, as was apparently planned, it would have affected the September CPI, on which the increases in next year’s pensions will be based.

In any case, it would have been a tax on motorists commuting to their jobs rather than on those who were excluded from academic careers and had to live as capitalists; or on pensioners, few of whom commute to jobs. Such a tax would be penalising the ‘working’ population more than the ‘independent’ population and that is presumably not what modern ideology favours. Independence is normally to be stamped out at any cost.

Those drawing pensions who will never apply for any means-tested benefit, such as myself, can derive little joy from observing the real value of their ‘pension’ shrinking year by year, ever further from a realistic cost of living, even leaving the cost of housing out of it.

Three or four decades ago I remember asking myself whether it was really good value to pay voluntary contributions towards the state pension when I had no salary. Might I not do better by putting aside an equivalent amount of money and investing it as favourably as possible? But, I thought, as probably many others did, there might be an unforeseeable Weimar-style inflation, and then the state would have to keep the pension at a realistic level, whereas one’s own investments might not keep pace with a very high level of inflation. So paying into the state pension was an insurance policy, protecting at least a small part of one’s money from erosion under all conceivable circumstances. So I thought, some decades ago.

More on lucid dreams and the BBC

text of a recent letter to an academic

I have just sent you a link to our comments on the BBC’s omission of any mention of me from their history of lucid dreams. This omission is despite the fact that it has always been said that no one has denied my priority in the field of lucid dream research.

Moreover they give a link to Stephen LaBerge’s website, but not to mine. I have got far more information and ideas about what could be done to make real progress in research, and people should want to know about my need for funding to get started on it. Stephen LaBerge, having a salary, research assistants, laboratory facilities, access to college dining facilities, and so on, is in a position to be ‘doing something’ in their eyes, whereas I, who could be making much more progress than he does, with even half as much money as he uses, can only continue to work towards being in a position to get measurements made in a laboratory; so I do not count as ‘doing something’ in the eyes of the BBC or anyone else.

Stephen LaBerge is able to raise money to finance his ideas on ‘virtual reality’, whereas I can get no support at all.

When I met Stephen LaBerge at a conference, he expressed no sympathy with my disastrous situation. By that time he knew that my work on lucid dreams had been motivated by my need to get back into a suitable academic position. There was certainly no indication that this modified his rejoicing at the favourableness of his own position, in which he was well-placed to get money to do (nominal) research in this field which I had opened up, while I could get no money at all and hence could do nothing.

He has continued to publicise the possibilities of lucid dreams ever since, but he has never even had the decency to send me a small fraction of anything he received.

His name is on the list of people who have worked on lucid dreams in America, presumably all salaried, from whom I have requested a donation of £1000 a year each to support my work in my independent academic institution. None of these people have had the decency to send me a small fraction of their salaries, which would have appeared to me natural in the circumstances.

We will make some sort of protest to the BBC, although this is very difficult when our secretarial capacity is already so overloaded.

Another American research worker, Jayne Gackenbach, told me that she had put some money of her own into supporting an organisation of people having lucid dreams, so that they could compare notes and publish a journal. But although she had been prepared to put some of her money into that, she had not been prepared to put even an equivalent amount into supporting the person who had originated this field of research in which she was allegedly working.

I asked Jayne Gackenbach if she could suggest ways in which I could get financial support to carry on my own research. ‘Oh no’, she said, ‘Getting money for research is impossible. I have given up on trying to get any’. She conveniently avoided noticing the great difference between her position and mine, that she had all the advantages of a salaried academic career. Being deprived of this, I needed large-scale funding for research in a specific area, to start making good the lack of money to live on and the lack of an institutional environment to provide the minimum conditions necessary for a tolerable life.

Academia and the IPR: not mutually exclusive

There has always been a tendency to represent working in (or being associated in any way with) my incipient independent academic organisation, known as the Institute of Psychophysical Research, as if it were an alternative to an academic career, and that a career in the IPR and a university career were mutually exclusive. This has been used as a way of forcing those who became associated with me into an outcast position.

Consider, for example, the case of Dr Charles McCreery.

In his final year at New College, Charles had met me and become aware that my intellectual precocity had led to hostility which, since I was not free to make my own decisions, had ruined my education and career prospects. He recognised parallels to his own problems in those I had encountered, and saw that my position was, at least superficially, even more appalling than his own, on account of my low socioeconomic status, which in fact arose from the social displacement of two families with aristocratic antecedents.

Therefore he wanted to help me and thought that he could do so, as he saw no reason why my fund-raising, virtually aborted by the hostility of Somerville and senior academics associated with the SPR, could not immediately be put on an altogether different footing by invoking the aid of his parents and their numerous wealthy and statusful contacts.

Therefore, after his degree, he did not immediately embark on a career at the Tavistock Clinic in London or at Oxford University’s Department of Experimental Psychology, but put his energies into assisting with my fund-raising campaign. The future structure of the Institute and his possible relation to it, probably working for academic status on his own account while helping me to plan projects and organise research assistants, would depend on the scale of operation that was possible, and this could not be determined until it was seen how successful the fund-raising could be.

I was always keen on the idea of my associates working for DPhils and aiming at professorial status, so that their academic status could be used to support my own applications for Professorships.

Charles had been considering applying to work as a clinical psychologist at the Tavistock Clinic. I thought that I might prefer him to do a DPhil and proceed to an academic appointment in Oxford, but he was disenchanted with what went on at the Department and thought that he would probably prefer the Tavistock.

I deferred any discussion of the alternatives until it could be seen how successful the fund-raising could be, and what scale of operation it might permit. The more successful it was, the easier it would be to combine our research activities with Charles having a salaried job in London.

In any case, there was certainly no plan, either on his part or on mine, for his association with the Institute to involve any detraction from other career paths. It is perfectly possible for an academic – provided he is successful enough, whether in terms of peer approval, public success or fund-raising skills – to combine roles for a number of different institutions at the same time. This was certainly the idea when we started, even if in retrospect it was over-optimistic, since it underestimated the opposition we would encounter.

In fact the fund-raising was aborted by the hostility of Charles’s parents, who joined forces with those who were already hostile to us, in spite of having agreed to become Patrons, and hence ostensible supporters. General and Lady McCreery both made tiny covenants, ludicrously incommensurate with the benefits which they bestowed on Charles’s siblings.

Charles was driven into the breach with his family by their persistent and insulting hostility, in spite of the great efforts he made, over a period of at least a year, to comply with their demands. In putting so much pressure on him, one may suppose that his family were motivated to justify themselves in slandering and disinheriting him. His siblings, of course, had the additional motive of seeing the opportunity to enlarge their own shares of any inheritance from which he was excluded.

The idea has always been widely promoted that, in setting up the legal constitution of an independent academic organisation, I was setting up something in which people could work as an alternative to an academic career. My potential associates were, almost always, people with very high IQs who might normally have been regarded as good prospects for such careers. The image which tended to be foisted upon us – that of a group of ‘enthusiasts’ for some unusual area of research – was maintained by the repeated rejection of my associates for higher degrees, or for appointments.

This, of course, may have had something to do with the storms of slander which arose whenever there seemed to be a possibility of my gaining an advantage by acquiring a financial supporter or an advantageous associate.

Charles, with his family connections, was the most potentially advantageous associate I had ever had, or have had since. The fund-raising having been aborted, it was clear that his working at the Tavistock would be too demanding, in view of the costs of travel to London and accommodation when there, so that the option of taking a DPhil at the Department of Experimental Psychology now became the best possible one.

However, the pressure upon us continued to be so great that Charles did not attempt to take a DPhil until he was 44, and his then obtaining it led to nothing, as no allowance was made for the difficulties created by our anomalous position. Far from it, of course, he was stigmatised by the well-publicised awareness of his association with me, and could obtain only disadvantageous appointments, such as that of College Lecturer in Experimental Psychology at Magdalen College. For this he received only a pittance, but continued to hope that this sweated labour might lead to better opportunities.

Without going into detail about all the discriminations against him, and the rationalisations used to justify his exclusion, it became clear that he was, like me, to be kept out of any appointment worth having.

It has throughout been the case that we were motivated to do research work which would enhance our individual claims on academic careers aimed at Professorial status, but this was made impossible by the financial siege conditions. No money could reach us from any source, so research, and even the writing and publishing of books, became impossible. It remains the case that we are attempting to raise funds to enable us to establish our claim on starting our forty-year academic careers, however belatedly.

Worthless ‘degrees’, pointless ‘research’

I wrote previously about how socialism had been a bad influence in my life until I got a very modest amount of support in setting up my independent research establishment from a newspaper tycoon, Cecil Harmsworth King. As I had been thrown out at the end of the state-funded ‘education’ with no usable qualification, I had seen no way ahead but to set up my own academic institution to provide me with the circumstances of a tolerable and intellectually productive life.

The temporary initial support from Cecil King was the only non-trivial support I have ever had. By trivial I mean donations and covenants which cost more in accountancy, bookkeeping work and letters of acknowledgement than they are adequate to pay for. Neither bookkeepers nor secretaries come cheap, or are reliable.

I am still in need of financial support now.

When the very modest amount of finance from Cecil King ended we were left with no support from any source. I would not get into debt, nor would I sell the house, so we lived from hand to mouth.

It has continued to be impossible to get financial support from any source. The modern world has become increasingly averse to ‘unsupervised’ research, in which a person might be free to find something out. The concept of supervised ‘research’, on the other hand, has expanded as ever larger populations acquire worthless doctorates, Masters’ degrees, and so on. Before a certain date I do not think that the concept of research included ‘supervision’; I am not sure what that date was. Certainly by the time I was an undergraduate there were ‘research students’ working under supervision for ‘higher degrees’.

People, especially of course academics, like to talk as if ‘degrees’ had some intrinsic value, and as if one should be grateful to the university for allowing one the opportunity to use one’s ability in this ‘interesting’ way, even if one has been receiving no salary and, on the contrary, paying fees to the university.

It is important to realise that none of the degrees, at whatever level, which have been obtained by people here were of the slightest use. This includes my own DPhil, which I obtained in 1996. In every case it was a matter of putting in a good deal of hard, boring and pointless work over a period of years, with the sole aim of obtaining a qualification, which one had to hope would lead to a salaried appointment, or its equivalent in the form of a grant adequate to support comparable work outside a university.

I always hoped that my colleagues Dr Charles McCreery and Dr Fabian Wadel would attain professorial status as quickly as possible, so as to be able to use their status in support of my applications for Professorships, etc. But their careers never progressed beyond the stage of sweated labour; doing useless but tiring work to obtain academic ‘recognition’.

Lucid dreams

My colleague Dr Charles McCreery recently sent the following comment to the BBC in connection with a page about lucid dreaming on their online News Magazine.

I think any article which purports to include even a brief account of the history of scientific research into the phenomenon of lucid dreaming should mention the contribution of Celia Green, whose book Lucid Dreams was first published in 1968. Both Stephen LaBerge and Keith Hearne, whose later contributions are mentioned in the article, have acknowledged in their publications Dr Green’s priority in the field and their indebtedness to her work.

In fact, the subject of lucid dreaming did not exist even as a non-academic field of interest, prior to the publication of Lucid Dreams.

The definitive signal that our work had led to acceptance of two new fields of research as academic subjects was that Oxford University (I gathered) started to list both lucid dreams and out-of-the-body experiences as suitable topics for postgraduate theses, in both Psychology and Lit.Hum.

Professor Jayne Gackenbach, a lucid dream researcher in America, said some years later that Lucid Dreams was still the most referenced work in academic papers on the subject of lucid dreaming.

The relevant departments of my unfunded independent university are effectively censored and suppressed. They have been prevented for decades from publishing analyses of the complex issues involved, while misleading and tendentious representations of them have continued to flood out from socially recognised sources. I hereby apply for financial support on a scale at least adequate for one active and fully financed university research department, to all universities, and to corporations or individuals who consider themselves to be in a position to give support to socially recognised academic establishments.

State pension: not enough to live on

The number of older people who will be forced to pay their own care bills will double over the next 20 years to more than a quarter of a million, a report said yesterday. It said spending constraints and growing demand for help will mean councils no longer provide any care apart from that which the law forces them to pay for. (Daily Mail, 30 May 2012)

A number of pensioners who are now struggling and suffering would not be, if the state pensions, for which they had qualified by paying the necessary contributions for up to 45 years, had not subsequently become means-tested.

In The Great Pensions Swindle, the author describes exchanges in Parliament from which one gathers that there was a strong emotional investment in the idea of paying ‘benefits’ only to those in ‘real need’, that is, those who would not have their freedom increased by the payment, as it would all be accounted for by outgoings necessary for staying alive.

At the time (about 1970) this did not suit the Government’s book, as they needed to justify raising the contributions made towards pensions, so as to have more money available for their favourite forms of expenditure, such as salaries paid to doctors, teachers, social workers etc. for their activities in reducing the freedom of others. Therefore it was necessary to talk as if a person’s contributions were paying for a certain level of pension, in a way that was comparable to previous commercial schemes.

By now, post-means-testing, few people remember what went on, or impressions that were created, around 1970.

People do not complain that they were given no warning that means-testing might come about. Certainly I was acutely aware of the difference between a benefit and a pension paid ‘as of right’ when I made the efforts necessary to pay voluntary contributions over 40 years, being usually unsalaried and unable to draw income support.

But, it may be objected, most people are not making a deliberate choice about paying or not. They pay automatically because they have a job which involves compulsory national insurance contributions, and so they cannot complain if the government subsequently changes its mind about what it will pay, or at what age it will pay it. However, while it is true that they may not think about the deductions from their pay packet, and may acquiesce in what is considered a sensible thing to do, they always might think about it, and do something else instead. And the consensus always might decide that salaried jobs with pension deductions were bad value, and it might become received wisdom that everyone should run a small business from home instead.

A fifth of workers are putting nothing into a personal pension, threatening poverty in old age. People are sacrificing saving for their retirement in favour of covering immediate bills such as mortgages, heating and food. The proportion of those who are saving the minimum needed into a personal pension to provide a comfortable old age has fallen to an all-time low of 46 per cent.

Pensions expert Scottish Widows ... said most people are hoping for a retirement income of £24,500 in order to provide a decent standard of living. (Daily Mail, 21 May 2012)

Various means-tested benefits are suggested, such as a few free stamps for Christmas cards, or going on a cheap ‘social’ tariff to be provided by energy suppliers. These would all involve an extra workload for salaried staff, who would need to interact with each applicant about the validity of his claim.

No one suggests that the pensions already paid for should be restored to a non-means-tested, and more realistic, basis. Discussing plans for a future non-means-tested pension, the Scottish Widows experts give £24,500 p.a. as the amount that most people hope for on retirement to provide a decent standard of living.

The present basic (non-means-tested) state pension is less than £5,500 p.a., so that the gap is considerable. If the present basic pension were raised to, say, £20,000 p.a., a considerable number of pensioners could be relieved of extreme pressure, conceivably at less cost to the taxpayer than relieving the same number by complicated schemes to provide marginal relief with specific expenses, such as bus fares, Council Tax, heating, meals on wheels, etc.

But the reason that people do not like this idea is that some pensioners, who have other pensions, or a certain amount of capital, might have some money (i.e. freedom) left after the most basic expenses. And we know that the ‘fair’ society is one in which there is no freedom at all for anyone. The average voter, I expect, is far more interested in absolute fairness, in this sense, than in the cheapest method of providing for certain types of distress.

Social engineering and the Thought Police

The following is an extract from an article by Professor Max Hammerton* entitled ‘The Thought Police’ in a recent issue of the Oxford Magazine, which mildly endorses the idea that heritability of intelligence undermines demands that there should be more representation among university students from outside the middle class.

David Hume, the greatest philosopher of modern times, rightly pointed out that no ‘ought’ statement can validly be deduced from any ‘is’ statement. However, if you accept some ‘ought’, an ‘is’ may tell you how some action, or want of action, may help or hinder its achievement. Now I trust that you will agree with this ‘ought’: that ability to profit from a course of study should be the only criterion for a person’s being selected for that course. If it should appear that factors other than ability are influencing the outcome then there is a case for altering the selection procedures used. (Oxford Magazine, No.325, p.7)

I certainly do not agree with Hammerton that the ‘ability to profit from a course of study should be the only criterion for a person’s being selected for that course.’

This implies a context within which a ‘course of study’ is a necessary prerequisite for obtaining a qualification and is not devised and paid for by the person seeking the qualification, or by his representative (parents, etc.). The ‘course of study’ is an obstacle race devised by people who have been given their positions by other people, all the way back to a democratically elected government, the members of which are motivated to win approval from the population at large. The ‘course of study’ devised in this way cannot even be freely bought by anyone who has sufficient money to do so. It is bestowed upon those who are selected to receive it by agents of the collective who are empowered to do so.

When the Oppressive State was introduced in 1945, people, including those with above-average IQs, rejoiced that they would receive, under the names of ‘education’ and ‘medicine’, goods which corresponded to things for which they might previously have wished to pay.

However, ‘courses of study’ for which you have not paid directly cannot be presumed to be a positive factor in any sense. They are certainly likely to be less positive than those for which you might have paid, as indeed is generally supposed to be the case in comparing state-funded ‘education’ with private education (with the consequence that those who have not been exposed to state schools ‘should’ be discriminated against). Or the unpaid-for version may be so destructive in every respect that you would be far better off without it.

‘Caveat emptor’ does not apply, because you are not paying for what you get.

Those who run a person’s ‘free’ education may act on any combination of ideological rationalisation and personal malice. As Hammerton says, ‘it is now a generally adopted act of faith that group differences simply do not exist, and any hint that they may is to be suppressed by the Thought Police.’

It is not only an act of faith, but expert dogma, that differences between individuals are predominantly the result of environmental influences.

Therefore, we may plausibly assume, agents of the collective are strongly motivated to make their beliefs appear true, and will stop at nothing to ruin the lives of those with exceptional ability, who might otherwise give the naive observer grounds for wondering whether ability is not, in fact, largely innate.

A recent Daily Mail quotes someone as admitting that the middle classes (in other words, those with higher average IQs) are being discriminated against. Actually, in my experience, high IQs have been discriminated against throughout my lifetime (from the age of 10 onwards, when I was first exposed to state-funded education).

Mary Curnock Cook raised a series of concerns over the so-called social engineering of university admissions. Under the policy, universities are expected to make background checks on applicants and use the information to reduce entry grades for poorer students. But Mrs Curnock Cook, chief executive of UCAS, warned that ‘somebody has to lose out’ unless the total number of university places increases ...

The UCAS chief went on to admit she had ‘real concerns’ over the quality of official data on pupils’ backgrounds supplied to universities. The system could result in discrimination against deprived pupils who received bursaries to go to private schools while giving an advantage to wealthy pupils at under-achieving schools, she suggested ...

Her remarks to a conference came on the day Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg launched a major social mobility drive aimed at breaking the grip of middle-class families on top jobs and sought-after universities. (Daily Mail, 1 June 2012)

Of course somebody has to lose out, and it will obviously be offspring of the middle class, i.e. those statistically likely to have higher IQs.

Expressing concerns over whether the discrimination urged on universities may not work exactly in the directions intended merely diverts attention away from the more serious flaw in the whole programme of admissions engineering: that there is no reason why discriminating in favour of some relatively excluded social group is going to result in more, rather than less, weight being given to innate ability. The issue of heritability is simply ignored. One may well conclude that the programme is essentially an effective part of the strategy for discriminating against ability.

* Professor Emeritus in Psychology at Newcastle University. Head of Department 1973-92.

Barking up the wrong tree

Nick Clegg vows to tackle Britain’s lack of social mobility
Nick Clegg said it was a ‘national scandal’ that some of the country’s brightest children were left behind because they came from poor backgrounds. (Guardian)

It should be a national scandal – but apparently is not – that some of the country’s brightest adults are forced out of academia because their IQs are too high.

The account of the situation, and of the supposedly competing views on it, contained in the article from which the above extract is taken is wildly fictitious, and the various unexamined assumptions which are implied in it cannot be analysed without writing at considerable length.

However, I may observe that in 1946 I went to an Ursuline High School with a grammar school scholarship (at the age of 10), and even at that time the egalitarian ideology that would deprive the most able of opportunity was clearly operative, although not yet so explicit as it subsequently became.

I developed an increasingly strong conviction that the real motivation underlying the state-funded educational system was to block the way of the really exceptional. This, after all, is much the easiest way of making space at the top for the mediocre – to knock out the most exceptional (with IQs over 160, say) who would otherwise occupy an ‘unfairly’ high proportion of the top positions in society, so that more spaces are left to be competed for by the much larger population of people with IQs of around 140, or even 130.

What is the IQ profile of the population currently holding salaried academic appointments? I dread to think. Sixty years ago I read that the average IQ of those doing scientific research at Cambridge was – well, I forget the exact figure – something in the region of 120.

Nick Clegg could start to tackle the real problems of stasis in social mobility by addressing the difficulties of those here who have been deprived of the academic or other careers to which they are well suited.

The bell curve: one third are ‘special needs’?

In relation to my recent post regarding the shifting of the bell curve, it is interesting to note that there has recently been a spate of newspaper articles commenting on a perceived lowering of ability amongst schoolchildren.

An article in the Daily Mail (9 May 2012) quotes a Department of Education official, Dr Sidwell, as saying: ‘Even the outstanding primaries tell me that children at five are coming in with lower and lower ability to get on with their work.’

An earlier Daily Mail article (5 May 2012) gives some figures: of children aged four to sixteen, 21% are recorded (as of 2011) as having ‘special needs’, an increase from 19% in 2006; amongst nine to ten-year-old boys the figure rises to one third.

Various explanations for this are offered, in particular that it is due to bad parenting, or deliberate misdiagnosis to cover up for poor teaching standards. One of the articles is headlined ‘Poor parenting to blame for surge in special needs’.

A possible explanation that is not mentioned is a genetically caused reduction in IQ of the overall population. As my earlier post points out, an increase in the proportion of low-IQ people in the population implies a corresponding reduction in the proportion of high-IQ people.

Of course, it is characteristic of the exponential growth effect that it starts off small but continuously increases. The initial shifts are unlikely to be noticed. If there has been a shift in the IQ curve which is now causing noticeable effects among those of school age, this might prime us to notice some signs of reduced performance in those older than the current school-age population that might otherwise have gone unobserved.

Interestingly, another recent Daily Mail article (22 May 2012) mentions a study of adults’ spelling ability, reporting a poor standard, supposedly because of over-reliance on computer spellchecks. Tellingly, the youngest of this test population, the students, performed worst. I suggest that this poor standard may not be entirely due to an over-reliance on computer spellchecks.

Exponential growth may start at an imperceptible level, but by the time it has become noticeable, ever greater increases may be expected in the near future.

The reports of significantly lower standards in various areas over short timescales are compatible with the view that a significant shift in the IQ of the population has already taken place, and that the speed of the shift is very likely to accelerate.

Existential urgency and commercialism

And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness, for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.
And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully:
And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits?
And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there shall I bestow all my fruits and my goods.
And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink and be merry.
But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee; then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?
So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.
And he said unto his disciples, Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on.
The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment.
(Luke 12: 15-23)

Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth.
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
(Luke 12: 33-34)

Jesus said:
There was a rich man who had much money. He said: I will use my money that I may sow and reap and plant and fill my storehouses with fruit so that I lack nothing. This was what he thought in his heart. And that night he died. Whoever has ears let him hear.
(Gospel of Thomas, log 63)

Comments

Sayings of this kind are usually taken as being against capitalism, or any kind of commercial activity. The alternative is supposed to be social interactions of a kind favoured by the prevailing religion.

Although my intentions were not obviously commercial, being only to take exams (but as many as possible) and to do research, Mother Mary Angela disapproved of them in a similar way, as being insufficiently people-oriented.

My awareness of the insecurity of finiteness, and the fact that one's life could be terminated at any time by various circumstances over which one would have no control, certainly contributed to my sense of urgency and the need I experienced to get on as fast as possible.

Other people might make plans about how I would not take exams before a certain age, get to university before a certain age, do research before a certain age, and so on, but it seemed to me in no way natural to hang about in a dangerous situation.

So in fact Mother Mary Angela and all concerned were really advocating that I should go in for time-wasting social interactions as if time was no object.

The modern ideology, and human psychology generally, seem to be very much geared against living at all purposefully, or with any sense of urgency. To do so is to behave as if anything one did mattered, or was of any importance, so it is taking oneself too seriously, which is much disapproved of.

The Gnostic form of this parable merely points out (without suggesting any alternative course of action) that all one's plans may come to nothing if one happens to die in the night, so it can really be seen as an incitement to urgency, in the way that I thought my plans for taking exams might be aborted by death or other adverse circumstances, so I had better waste no time with getting on with them as fast as possible.

The concept of moth-free treasure does occur in Thomas, but not as an alternative to commercial planning. It is the pearl of great price, which is worth more than anything else; but one might note that it is bought, and that it is a merchant who buys it.

Jesus said:
The Kingdom of the Father is like a man, a merchant, who possessed merchandise and found a pearl. That merchant was prudent. He sold the merchandise, he bought the one pearl for himself.
Do you also seek for the treasure which fails not, which endures, there where no moth comes near to devour and where no worm destroys.
(ibid., log 76)

Has the bell curve shifted?

One expects any variation in the IQ bell curve to show up most noticeably at the upper and lower ends, where the percentages approach zero along the x-axis.

It used to be said that the female bell curve was narrower than the male; so women were much less likely to be geniuses, but also much less likely to be idiots.

The shift in the bell curve subsequent to the onset of the Welfare State may well have caused a significant reduction in the numbers of people with IQs above 150 or 160, as the mean has shifted downwards. But if it has done, it has also created an even greater increase in the population of the dysfunctional, with IQs below 50 or 40. I speculated that if the number of people above a certain IQ level (100 + x) has been reduced to 1/n of what it was before the shift, then the number of people below (100 – x) might well have been multiplied by something like n.

My speculation turns out to be not too far off. If you reduce the population of the exceptionally intelligent by shifting the bell curve, without changing the shape, you more than correspondingly increase the population of the most dysfunctional.

Say that, before any shift takes place, the proportion of the population with an IQ over 140 is 0.38%. A shift in the mean of one point downwards reduces it to 0.31%, and a shift of 2 points to 0.25%. A shift of 5 points reduces it to 0.13%, which is about one-third of 0.38%. So in this case the number of people in the population with IQs over 140 has been reduced to a third of what it was.

The shift of the mean to the left would also have affected the proportion of those with IQs below 60, originally also 0.38%. A shift in the mean of 5 points downwards makes it 0.99%, i.e. 2.6 times 0.38%. Reducing the proportion of the population with IQs above 140 to a third of what it was, has at the same time increased the number of those with IQs below 60 (which is fairly dysfunctional for any purpose) to nearly 1 percent of the population, making a group formerly thought of as marginal into a considerable element in the total population.

If there are now one-third as many people with IQs above 140 as there were before the shift, say, then there are now about three times as many with IQs below 60. The reduction in the population of really high IQs may have something to do with why we (the real University of Oxford in exile) find it so difficult to increase the number of our associates, but it is otherwise easy to overlook.

What is probably less easy to overlook, if one is in a position to observe it, is the multiplication of people with low IQs and other genetic deficiencies who can never be self-supporting.

This is clearly a tremendous drain on taxpayers’ money, although it is diffused throughout the general cost of benefits, the NHS, ‘education’ and ‘social services’.

What is paid out to pensioners, on the other hand, is clearly identifiable. Pensioners are a section of the population with an average IQ above the mean for the population as a whole, so the finger can be pointed at them, and the process continued of transferring resources from the above-average to the below-average.

A graph illustrating the possible shift in the bell curve, with close-ups of the tails:

Graphics by Andrew Legge

The relevant departments of my unfunded independent university are effectively censored and suppressed. They have been prevented for decades from publishing analyses of the complex issues involved, while misleading and tendentious representations of them have continued to flood out from socially recognised sources.

Selective laying bare

State-funded pensions will cost £5 trillion, today's Daily Mail informs us.

Laid bare for first time, £180,000 burden facing every British family
(headline, 28 April 2012)

But why is this being ‘laid bare’ for the first time, one wonders, and not any of the other burdens facing the British taxpayer? Such as, for example, the cost of social workers to take babies away from their families and shuffle them around from one foster family to another? The cost of paying foster families ‘child maintenance’ for having kidnapped children living with them? The cost of providing free ‘education’ for every child born to immigrant parents and other categories of parents?

The object, one supposes, is to justify new forms of taxation; the population of people of pensionable age, being one with average IQ above that for the population as a whole, is the ideal target to be blamed for the ever-rising costs of ‘social services’, and to be made to pay as much as possible in the way of extra tax. Presumably pensioners, especially those who are not public employees (doctors, teachers, social workers, etc) are to be as impoverished as possible by the time they die. Otherwise they may leave houses and other assets to their offspring, who are also likely to have above-average IQs. Heredity may be unmentionable in polite society (David Willetts), but there is some sensitivity to the fact that high-IQ parents may have high-IQ offspring. Even before they die, high-IQ parents may give positive assistance to their high-IQ offspring, if their financial resources, in the way of both income and capital, exceed their most basic needs.

If my father had had a normal pension at the end of his teaching career, he would have been able to give me financial support at a level which, in view of my lack of an academic salary or of income support, would have been appreciable and have at least slightly eased the pressures of constriction which were oppressing my attempts to remedy my position as an outcast. This was the position into which I had been thrown at the end of the ruined ‘education’, although it was universally assumed that I had turned my back on a university career voluntarily. ‘Oh, I thought you got what you wanted,’ my aunt gasped half a century later, having apparently assumed that whatever I found to do in exile must have been something that I wanted to do so much that I would prefer doing it in destitution and degradation, rather than having a high-flying university career.

The question of ethics with regard to pension policy is one of the issues on which critical analyses could be being published by Oxford Forum if it were provided with adequate funding to do so.

Should banks be forced to take on more risk?

Extract from an article by the Daily Mail's Alex Brummer:

Roughly one-sixth of construction output consists of putting up new homes. In the final quarter of last year housing starts were just 20,400 which is half the level of five years ago. Yet commercial housebuilders like Redrow and Persimmon are doing very nicely. How can this be the case? Having cleaned up their balance sheets after the Great Recession, most homebuilders are concentrating on upmarket homes in the South-East that are affordable only to the most affluent. The government’s scheme intended to help people get on the housing ladder, by offering up to 10 per cent in deposit assistance, is not working because the mortgage lenders refuse to offer loans at the appropriate cheaper rates to these people.

... the government could do more to get construction moving. The special liquidity scheme did support mortgage lending, in the wake of the first part of the recession, and the Bank of England may well have been too enthusiastic in pulling back the punch bowl. It was influenced by the fact that the banks felt prosperous enough to pay huge bonuses to executives and the feeling was that taxpayers should not be subsidising such immoral action. (Daily Mail, 26 April 2012)

As usual, it is supposed that the destructive consequences of socialism can be remedied by yet more socialism. Yet more transfer of resources from populations with above-average IQs to populations with a lower average IQ.

There was a time when banks lent money on commercial principles, i.e. only to those who already had some capital assets and who were the sort of people unlikely to default on repaying loans, whatever hardships they might have to undergo in the process. Thus the bank would continue to profit, and not lose, from the arrangement.

But now, of course, it is considered that banks, and taxpayers, should be forced to set their money at risk by lending it to those least likely to repay it, so long as such people express socially-approved intentions.

Even if such people are provided by the government with the money necessary to pay the deposit on a house, the banks still regard them as a bad risk, and refuse to lend them money at artificially low rates, in order to preserve themselves and their shareholders from further losses. This, in the modern ideology, is immoral. What are banks for but to transfer money from populations with higher average IQs to populations with lower average IQs?

No sympathy for the victims of socialism

This is something I drafted a long time ago but did not send because of lack of staff, money, and everything else that makes life tolerable.

copy of a letter to a senior academic

As the oppressive state closes in, there are protesters against capitalism camped outside St Paul’s, and a good deal of sympathy with them is expressed in many quarters.

I hope I shall be able to fit in writing something in praise of capitalism, since it has actually been the only positive factor in my life, and those who wish to abolish capitalism are wishing to destroy the chances of people who are in any way like me.

When I was thrown out at the end of the ruined education I bought the Financial Times and thought all day about how many sixpences I was adding to my capital (by not spending from my daily spending allowance) and how much capital I would need for the very smallest residential college with dining hall facility and ancillary staff.

But, slow and painful though it was, the accumulating coins did me far more good in the long run than the efforts I made to get a postgraduate degree with the grant from Trinity College, Cambridge. At the end of it the way into any university career channel was still blocked, and no financial support was available from any quarter until the King money, which enabled me to do introductory surveys in various areas which I had identified as having potentialities for research while I was doing the BLitt.

But again, this left me empty-handed. When the King money ended, our books still had to be published at our own expense, being blocked by those regarded as experts, to whom prestigious publishers referred them. So I still had no academic salary and no income from books.

Once you have been exiled from society, you should not suppose that it will be possible to return to a normal position in life by doing the same sort of research, and publishing the same sort of books, that you might have done as a socially accepted academic. Throwing money at the problem will not help, as I found. If you use your own money to publish a book, and even if you get it published under a respectable imprint, it will not change your position. You are still known to be a statusless outcast.

Publishing with your own money is ‘vanity publishing’, with which several people have taunted me, and no one has shown the slightest willingness to consider that a book might be a demonstration of one’s grievous misplacement, since if you can produce a book at all in such circumstances, surely it might be regarded as an indication that you could be producing far more if reinstated in a normal career providing salary, status and a hotel environment. This appeared not even to be considered when I was told that my book was still the ‘most referenced’ book in the field of ‘research’ in universities which had arisen since its publication.

The research which we had done with the King money withered on the vine, so far as we were concerned, while providing opportunities for overseas salaried academics, who made no progress that I would myself have regarded as significant.

I would, of course, have been quite willing to do research as pointless as theirs, so long as I was provided with equivalent salary, status and ancillary conditions. I could have undertaken to do only what other people might have thought of doing, but I would certainly have done it more efficiently.

The house in the Banbury Road continued to increase in value over the decades, and we continued to acquire experience of investment so far as our very small capital permitted.

So you can see that it is only capitalism that has ever done me any good, and my attempts to ‘prove my worth’ to senior academics by doing work to a high standard in bad conditions have done me no good at all.

Shifting the bell curve

David Cameron has suggested that the NHS and the education system should ‘close the gap’ between rich and poor.

Recently a grandfather of 29 was in the news. The low-IQ population seems to have a shorter generation length, i.e. seems to reproduce faster than the high-IQ (‘educated’) population. If at the same time it produces more offspring, say twice as many, as the high-IQs, it takes a surprisingly short time for the relative proportions in the population to change radically.

For at least 70 years now the more functional have been increasingly discouraged from producing children (a recent Daily Mail contains a warning to career women that leaving it too late to start families may damage the offspring). At the same time, the least functional have been encouraged, by ‘benefits’ and other measures, to reproduce early and prolifically.

There follows a very rough and simple calculation which shows how the bottom 25% of the population in terms of IQ could become the bottom 75%. There has been ample time since 1945 for a macroscopic shift in the balance of the population to take place and it may well have done so, which might account for the reports of ever-declining standards in primary schools. Bad though the schools no doubt are, this may be the inevitable result of the IQ level of the intake, and not of behavioural deficiencies on the part of either parents or teachers.

Suppose we start with a population of 20 with IQs below 90 (“Bs”), and a population of 60 with IQs above 90 (“As”).

Let us assume that at an average age of 30 the As add two offspring per pair, so after 30 years there are 60 + (30 x 2) = 120 As, and after 60 years 60 + 60 + (30 x 2) minus the original 60 who (let us assume) die at age 60, i.e. still 120.

Let us further assume that at a lower average age of 20 the Bs add 4 offspring per pair, so after 20 years there are 20 + (10 x 4) = 60 Bs, after 40 years 20 + 40 + (20 x 4) = 140, and after 60 years 20 + 40 + 80 + (40 x 4) – 20 = 280.

So now we have 120 As to 280 Bs, so that the ratio has changed from 75:25 to 30:70.

Graphics by Andrew Legge

David Willetts describes the belief in heredity as something that ‘cannot be mentioned in polite society’ (The Pinch, p. 198). Academics who refer to the possibility of hereditary factors are liable to lose their jobs pretty quickly. It is implausible to suppose that there are not hereditary factors affecting individual differences, however much academia likes to believe otherwise, and it is certainly unscientific not to entertain possibilities.

The rationalised intention of closing the gap between ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ (correlated with above-average IQ and below-average IQ) has in all probability only succeeded in creating a bottomless pit into which resources can be poured.

Providing the ‘poor’ with additional resources may simply create an even bigger population of the ‘poor’, while at the same time placing increasing pressure on the ‘rich’, by taxation, to postpone and limit their families.

Has measured average IQ declined since 1945? Perhaps it has not, but this may simply show that IQ tests, as used, do not give a realistic picture of trends over time. The people who devise and apply the tests which are used are usually salaried academics with a vested interest in a certain outcome. When my colleague Christine Fulcher was working for her psychology degree from the Open University, she gathered that the intelligence tests which are used are always being modified to make them ‘fairer’ or more ‘appropriate’ to modern conditions.

Nick Clegg (Daily Mail, 5 February 2011) asserts that the ‘middle class’ will not notice the effects of extra taxation on their ‘lifestyle’. Maybe not; it will be quantitative rather than qualitative in most cases, but it will add that much extra delay to their paying back university debts, saving enough money to start buying houses, start families, send children to non-state schools, etc. Hence adding a bit of acceleration to the shift in the bell curve of IQ. Some of those working here now were at times salaried as university lecturers and in other professional capacities, and some in the future might be again. Taxation has diminished, and would again diminish, their ability to build up capital towards setting up our fledgling organisation as a properly funded and productive academic institution.

The relevant departments of my unfunded independent university are effectively censored and suppressed. They have been prevented for decades from publishing analyses of the complex issues involved, while misleading and tendentious representations of them have continued to flood out from socially recognised sources. I hereby apply, for financial support on a scale at least adequate for one active and fully financed university research department, to all universities, and to corporations or individuals who consider themselves to be in a position to give support to socially recognised academic establishments.

[first posted 7 February 2011]

The Great Pensions Swindle

I have a book entitled The Great Pensions Swindle* which, 40 years ago, made some useful points about the likely unreliability of state pensions. The following, however, is unrealistic:

The breaking point is not postponable indefinitely. The resistance to periodic increases in ‘social insurance’ contributions will begin all the sooner when the ‘contributors’ realise they are paying not insurance contributions but an income tax. (p.128)

In fact, no significant realisation arose that “National Insurance” contributions were just a form of income tax, which increased the Government’s current spending money. Otherwise the book anticipates very much what has happened. What happens when a future generation decides it prefers to spend its money on what is fashionable at the time (overseas ‘aid’, social workers, ‘universities’, etc.) rather than providing a former generation with the pension it thought it was paying for? The pensions are 'too expensive'; they are suddenly means-tested, and paid at ever later ages.

Not least, let it be clearly understood that ‘right’ (to the pension) and ‘contract’ are two more good words that have been made misnomers. A ‘right’ to a pension that a man acquires by saving for it is unambiguous. The ‘right’ a man has to an income when he can no longer work is of a different kind. The word has been re-defined to mean a moral right or claim on society. But transfers of income from one age-group, or class, or generation, to another represent decisions by one group, or class, or generation, to help another in time of need. No group, or class, or generation has a ‘right’ in any absolute sense. ...

In civilised parlance ‘contract’ means a voluntary agreement between two parties each of whom thinks it will gain. There is no such voluntary agreement between the generations on pensions. Indeed, there can hardly be one since future generations cannot be consulted; and if they could they would hardly agree since the terms are loaded against them. (pp.129-130)

* * *

Retrospective legislation has become increasingly frequent, and by now no one seems to remember that there was ever anything against it. It used to be said that the individual had a right to know what was legally open to him (in taxation, etc.) so that he could plan his affairs to secure the best outcome in view of his own interests and priorities, as he conceived them to be.

The recent changes in the ages at which state pensions become payable is really an egregious example of retrospective legislation, and directly affects people in as bad a position as we are. If a company which offered pension schemes were suddenly to announce that all its pensions were to be paid two years later, those who had been paying into the schemes might well wish to sue it for breach of contract. When the government does the same thing, no legal redress is available. This has happened recently and seems likely to happen more, so that my junior colleagues’ pensions recede as one approaches them. The age at which one of them will start receiving her pension was first shifted from 60 to 62, and then again to 64. Another’s pension was shifted from 65 to 67, and seems likely to be further delayed to the age of 68.

Thus the state has already deprived us, who are trying to build up towards an adequate academic institutional environment, of seven years’ pension money, i.e. £35K at today’s pension rate.

I have previously pointed out how means-testing of pensions retrospectively reduces the benefit received in return for contributions paid. This means nearly two thousand pounds per person per year. The proposed tax of £20K towards the cost of state ‘nursing care’, whether such care is received or not, was first proposed as a tax on estates on death, but is now suggested as a capital levy to be paid by every pensioner on reaching retirement age. If that were made retrospective, so that it applied to myself as well as to my colleagues, that would represent an additional confiscation of £80K.

There are several other examples of abandonment of principles, and I should be able to write about them at length, because they are actually very serious, although no one else appears to recognise this. If Oxford Forum were provided with adequate funding, we could be writing and publishing analyses on this issue which are currently being ignored in favour of the usual pro-collectivist arguments.

* Arthur Seldon, The Great Pensions Swindle, Tom Stacey Books, London, 1970.

[First published 11th September, 2010]

Hatred of directors and hatred of ability

It is objected that directors and shareholders of water firms continue to receive substantial ‘rewards’ in salaries and dividends, although the companies are failing to provide consumers with an efficient water supply.

It may be that it is simply impossible to run such a company efficiently in a country so far gone in socialism as Britain now is. It may be that it is necessary to pay directors at a commercially realistic rate in order to attract persons of high ability (which is likely to include high IQ as well as realism) in order to prevent an even worse failure in providing a reliable supply of water to customers.

In my view a company should be free to decide for itself how best to allocate its resources. I also support the idea that a company should be run for the benefit of shareholders. If it is not run for the benefit of shareholders, why should they contribute and place at risk their capital in becoming a shareholder? They may well think, as I do, that they would do better to find other ways of using their capital to increase their independence of the hostile society in which they live.

It is complained that the money spent in rewarding directors and shareholders could have been spent on repairing the fragile pipe system.

The Mail can also reveal that an astonishing £500 million was paid to the water companies’ mainly foreign shareholders for the six months to September 2011 – when drought was already blighting the East of England. Critics say this money could have been better spent fixing Britain’s fragile pipe network. (Daily Mail, 5th April 2012)

So some of the company’s resources are being applied to rewarding a population with above-average IQs, whereas the ideology dictates that resources should only be transferred from higher-IQ populations to those with a lower average IQ.

If directors’ salaries are cut, there will be less money in the hands of individuals who might decide to support other high-IQ individuals, who might then be able to do, for example, research not supported by socially recognised universities, or who might then criticise tendentious research published by them. That is to say, there would be even further reduction of the population of people who might think of coming to work for, or to support morally or financially, my suppressed independent university.

I was forced to start working towards setting this up by the ruin of my state-funded ‘education’. There was, of course, no sympathy with my terrible position as an outcast academic. There is no suggestion that the damage done to the lives of high-IQ outcasts should be repaired, and they are not acceptable objects of charitable support. They may, like me, be unable to ‘earn a living’ by regaining access to a university career at a senior level. Therefore the object has been fulfilled of reducing the access to financial resources of a high-IQ population.

If the water companies were run by the government, it is certainly not likely that more money would be spent on infrastructure; instead the money not spent on salaries or dividends would be absorbed into the collectivist ‘welfare’ system, thus, for example, providing extra support for the population of doctors, teachers and social workers. These, and especially the latter, are very likely to have IQs far below those of company directors.

A cynic might suggest that privatisation of the water companies was arranged partly to create a publicly obvious diversion of resources to a population with above-average IQs, at a level which would be regarded as egregious. This could then be attacked, functioning as a kind of showpiece scapegoat.

The overall net effect would thus be to reduce the resources in private rather than public hands. That is to say, reducing still further the freedom of individual citizens in Britain. (Not yet to absolute zero, though that could come if capitalism were abolished altogether, as is now from time to time advocated.)

A tax guide favouring collectivism

Mention the world ‘tax’ to most people and their first – and often only – reaction is to ask for ways they can cut their tax bill. But once you ask those self same people if they want cuts in education, the national health service, road building or local street cleaning and their response is almost invariably ‘no’. (Tax Handbook 2011/12, published by Which?)

It seems disingenuous, to say the least, to bracket such things as ‘education’ and the NHS with such things as road building and road cleaning. I would wholeheartedly advocate the abolition of state-funded and compulsory ‘education’, but I admit that I would like some usable roads around where I live, although I am not sure that a better arrangement for paying for them could not be found than by paying tax to dubious and unprincipled collectivist bodies such as national and local government.

But it is true that, since roads enable the displacement of persons and objects across areas that are larger in size than any one individual’s territory, there is justification for devising some collectivist system for maintaining them, rather than having each piece of road paid for by the owners of the land along each side of it. However, if the payments for maintaining it are paid into a collectivist entity which is also responsible for maintaining other collectivist activities, there will immediately arise the problem of blurring the exact allocation of a specific portion of the taxes paid in, as has happened so notoriously with pensions.

In the case of collectivist oppressions such as medicine and education, people are being provided (at least nominally) with something that is specific to the needs of the individual, so the arguments in favour of collectivist road provision do not apply.

What an individual will in practice receive under the headings of ‘medicine’ and ‘education’ is what other people wish to impose upon him. This is no substitute at all for what he might wish to pay for on his own account, and the effect of taxation is merely to diminish his ability to do so.

Another benefit financed by defalcation

I see that those on pension credit (the means-tested supplement to the basic state pension), along with others receiving benefits, are to be able to buy a certain number of Royal Mail stamps at reduced prices.(Daily Mail, 28 March 2012.) The cost of this, including the cost of time spent by Post Office staff, will have to be borne by someone, presumably by those not on pension credit or receiving any other benefit, when next the prices of stamps are raised.

When pensions were declared to be means-tested this was effectively turning the state pension system into a ‘benefit’, instead of a payment made ‘as of right’ to those who had made the specified number of contributions.

It was on that basis – the payment ‘as of right’ basis – that I paid into the state pension system for over 40 years, without entertaining any fears of eventual means-testing. Being deprived of a salaried career and even of eligibility for the so-called social security on account of my ruined education, I had virtually no income and paid voluntary contributions to the state pension scheme to reduce, at least by a small amount, my disadvantage relative to salaried academics.

Even if the threat of means-testing had been bruited, I would have thought it unlikely to affect me, since, having no academic appointment, I had no other pension expectations and negligible income from any source.

Having finally qualified for the state pension, and still being without a salaried career, I was horrified and shocked to find that my pension was now to be means-tested and that I would not be eligible for the supplementary ‘pension credit’ even if I was prepared to apply for it as a ‘benefit’. This was because I had devoted all my attention to building up capital to provide myself with a roof over my head. If I had not bought the house I lived in, I would have had no income with which to rent one.

Now that the emphasis of the means-testing is shifting from income to capital, I find that I have too much of the latter to qualify for ‘pension credit’, since I was never able to depend on income and had to build up capital as best I could. I see that those on ‘pension credit’ are to be able to buy cheaper postage stamps, apply for cheaper energy on ‘social tariffs’ and no doubt in many ways spend less on fundamentals than if they were not on ‘benefit’, thus increasing their advantage relative to me.

At the same time, others of my unsalaried colleagues who have fully qualified for their pensions by making voluntary contributions, see them receding into a distant future, and expect them to be means-tested even when they start to be paid.

The question of ethics with regard to pension policy is one of the issues on which critical analyses could be being published by Oxford Forum if it were provided with adequate funding to do so. Meanwhile, the idea that it is 'fair' to redistribute from better-off to worse-off pensioners is likely to receive reinforcement from pseudo-research published by the universities.

Realism versus kidding yourself

This is a letter sent to Bel Mooney, the ‘agony aunt’ of the Daily Mail.

Dear Bel

Every day I wake up and pray: ‘Please God let today be a good day — don’t let me think that I want to die’.

Fifteen months ago, at the age of 56, my youngest sister died very suddenly of pneumonia. The whole family is devastated. Our parents don’t really talk of her and I can’t believe she’s dead. I have to keep telling myself she is gone for ever. I miss her so much. She was my best friend and confidante. We spoke almost every day on the phone, discussing everything, from fashion to politics. ...

The hammer blow of her death made me feel a total waste of space. It’s made me realise how poor I am and how poor she was, that she left this world as poverty-stricken as when she came in. My life has been full of ‘what ifs?’.

I can’t afford to heat the house, pay the water rates etc. My whole family lives this struggle, but I never thought about it, I just got on with it. Now I am so angry, with her, with myself, with fate. I want to be rich and taste some of the fruits of wealth — the theatre, restaurants, foreign holidays and so on — before I die.

Last week I went to get a repeat HRT prescription and the nurse refused it, telling me I had to have a mammogram, because she could not live with herself if I had ‘something’. I went to the doctor (who put me on it) and asked for the full dose, but he refused, pontificating about risks. I don’t care about them.

I’m not coping. I nearly had a panic attack at the thought of not having my HRT. Basically, the nurse told me to ‘pull myself together’.

I cannot handle the stress. Everyone is telling me how bad-tempered I am — shouting at my children and grandchildren. I used to be so placid, now I feel like hitting someone. I just want to go to bed and never wake up, but sadly I do, and it all begins again. (Daily Mail, 24th March 2011)

Bel Mooney’s replies to this lady are, naturally, all in line with the prevailing ideology. Seek counselling and the support of groups of people with similar problems who will help you to be reconciled to your position.

The horrific role played by the medical Mafia in modern society emerges clearly. They decide, not you. On consulting them you expose yourself to psychological abuse, which is the last thing you need when you are already assailed in other ways.

It is deplorable that all are taxed to pay for the NHS; opting out should be possible for those who would never have anything to do with it, or with the medical Mafia in general. It would be a good deal less objectionable if only those who chose voluntarily to submit to such a system were forced to contribute in taxation towards its enormous costs.

Of course, Bel Mooney’s advice is to consult various agents of the oppressive society. Actually this correspondent is realistically aware of the existential predicament, and that the oppressive society in which she lives offers her no ways of improving her position. I suggest to her and to anyone in a similar situation that they come to live nearby, at least temporarily, and do some voluntary work for our organisation. We have many ideas for the best ways in which individuals can cooperate to improve their financial position, but we cannot suggest any particular project unless and until we know what the person concerned is willing and able to do, and whether they can get on with us, who do not accept the prevailing ideology.