On liberalism, Brexit, Asian banks, Syria, the European Union, data, economists

The liberal disorder

You stressed one aspect of liberalism’s attitude to power and neglected the other two (“The year of living dangerously”, December 24th). Liberals believe in protection from undue power, whether the coercive power of the state, the economic power of concentrated wealth or the unfiltered power of popular majorities. By focusing too long on undue state power, free-market liberalism contributed to the political difficulties liberal democracy now faces with the second and third aspects of undue power: an over-concentration of wealth and unanchored popular distrust.

To take only Britain, the liberal founders—Mill, Gladstone, Hobhouse—grasped that what was needed was not less government but better government; not less politics, but better politics. The great liberal achievements of state schools, public works, health and welfare and a world trading order all came about thanks to ambitious thinkers, ambitious politicians and ambitious states.

To liberalism’s present travails, your suggested solutions of new gadgets, devolution and deregulation sound by contrast almost magical.

EDMUND FAWCETT
London

The rise of universal free education in the 19th century was, as you note, essential for the growth of commerce and democracy. The decline of the quality and increasingly unequal distribution of that required education is at the source of the challenge faced by democratic societies, from voters unequipped and unable to seek the truth. Thomas Jefferson’s counsel that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” requires citizens, not just the elite, to desire to seek the truth to be free.

BERTRAND HORWITZ
Asheville, North Carolina

* Your leader makes a persuasive argument that liberal politics must offer grander visions than it has done of late, and contrasts with those of earlier times, such as universal free education, free healthcare and the welfare state. I found the suggestion of devolving more democratic powers to cities almost laughably lame in comparison; and further it is difficult to imagine how a local administration could enact any truly grand vision. The idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) is closer in scale. It is dismissed by many, including sometimes by The Economist. I can’t help suspect that had those who dismiss UBI today lived 100 years earlier they would have been similarly dismissive of ideas so utopian, impractical and unaffordable as free universal education and the welfare state.

GREG LAW
Cambridge

* Liberalism has always been the ideology of a broad, upwardly-mobile middle class. When upward mobility has faltered, as it has recently, so has liberalism. A ballyhooed elite of high-tech wunderkinder, and cheap imported consumer goods for the rest, are no substitute for general economic security. If capitalism can’t reinvent its ability to supply that for a critical mass of the populace, maybe we have to reinvent socialism instead.

CHRIS NIELSEN
Seattle

What’s on the Brexit table?

It was good to see The Economist discuss the options for trade under WTO rules when Britain becomes once again a sovereign customs authority (Free exchange, January 7th). But it was disappointing that you chose to discuss mainly procedural matters and ignored the economic options this gives us. As we have repeatedly emphasised during the referendum campaign and since, the best economic option is for us to open up our markets in food and manufacturing to the world by scrapping the EU’s protectionist tariffs and non-tariff barriers on these goods, just as we have always had open markets in services. The gains from this will be much lower prices for our consumers and the reallocation of our resources according to comparative advantage. This prescribed course is entirely consistent with WTO rules, and far from being as complicated as you suggest, reverting to a zero tariff would be straightforward and not subject to anyone else’s say-so.

We can follow this up with free-trade agreements around the world on broader issues of investment and property rights. We hope that the EU will follow our lead in this policy of free trade, but if they do not, that is a problem for their consumers and their economies, not ours. If they are stupid enough to impose tariffs on our manufacturers, which average only around 3.5% in any case, we should not be distracted by this from opening up our own markets to free trade. Our manufacturers can easily take these tariffs in their stride, given our highly competitive exchange rate and pro-business policies.

PROFESSOR PATRICK MINFORD
Co-chair
Economists for Brexit
Cardiff

The time is now
* Observers, even The Economist, continue to fail to note the apparent lack of corruption controls at the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (“The Incumbent”, December 17th). Comparing the Asian Development Bank with it’s new rival provided an opportunity to note that ADB is one of the world’s five major development banks, lead by the World Bank, which controls and enforces controls on corruption. The World Bank developed its now shared sanctions system over more than 20 years. It is an effective model, available for the AIIB to join or to replicate. The timing is ripe as it is now recognised at the highest political levels in China that corruption is endemic there.

All 57 AIIB country minority shareholders must now use their combined voting power to demand action.

MICHAEL ROBINSON
(former board member, Transparency International Canada)
Toronto

Out with regime change

You pointed out that after the genocide in Rwanda, many countries agreed that they have a responsibility to intervene if a government fails to protect its own people (“The fall of Aleppo”, December 17th). But you then said that “The desire to promote freedom and democracy was not far behind.” Conflating “the responsibility to protect” with regime change is, in effect, one reason the tragic civil war in Syria is continuing.

Although almost 200 countries have committed to the UN’s Responsibility to Protect, which entails the right to use force to intervene in the internal affairs of others, many of them strongly oppose coercive regime change. So when America made it a precondition for negotiating a settlement in Syria that Bashar al-Assad must go, Russia correctly viewed this condition as a threat to the survival of its last ally in the Middle East.

The same issue arose in Libya, where the West first intervened because it held there was a genocide in the making. However, when Muammar Qaddafi offered to negotiate a settlement, the West forcefully insisted on regime change. What followed is another civil war. Since then Russia, China and others have soured on the responsibility to protect. A better policy would be to decouple armed humanitarian intervention from coercive regime change, and promote democracy only by non-lethal means.

AMITAI ETZIONI
Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies
Washington, DC

One for all, all for one
* In the light of Charlemagne’s wise reflections on the need for an “animating mission” in order to keep the European Union alive (December 24th) we should remember that Europe does indeed have its own cultural identity, embedded in at least 1,500 years of shared perceptions. Until around 1500, this resided primarily in the values, theology, institutions and rituals of Latin Christianity. Unity was given concrete expression in the papacy and church hierarchy. Since then, amazing bursts of creative rationality, political reform and artistic self-expression have originated in different places but been absorbed by most of Europe, to create what is now called “the West”. This can indeed be an object of patriotic feeling.

This does not mean one needs to abandon the distinct nationhoods which make up this unique family of nations, any more than by being English one ceases to be a Yorkshireman. But building a European Union cannot be the task of just one or two generations; we have to be in it for the long haul. We need to recall the centuries it took to form what is today Switzerland, surely the obvious prototype for a political union between people with their own traditions and languages.

ANTONY BLACK
Dundee

Store detection

“Following the fashion” (December 24th) looked at what retailers might gain from collecting detailed data on customers’ in-store movements. In fact, the competitive advantages (and privacy concerns) for such tracking within physical stores are very similar to those from tracking online browsing behaviour on websites. Such Big Data insights are much richer than those which can be gathered from simply analysing sale data.

Adding concealed cameras and microphones in shops, coupled with machine-learning algorithms, allows retailers to link foot traffic with details of age, gender, ethnicity and the dialect of both the shopper and any shopping companions, including children. All of this will soon be more tightly controlled in the European Union by the General Data Privacy Regulation, which comes into effect in May 2018. From that date, companies with EU customers will be more restricted in their collection and use of personal data, including data that can be linked to a smartphone.

There will still be a rich analysis of foot-traffic statistics, ideally benefiting the customer as well as the retailer, but it will become increasingly imperative that such data are dealt with in ways that both respect the customers’ privacy and that shield the retailer from legal and reputational risks.

DAVID STEPHENSON
Chief data scientist
DSI Analytics
Amsterdam

A pack of economists

Further to the letter of Michael Ben-Gad (December 17th) I think the appropriate collective noun for economists should be “a quandary”.

COLIN MCALLISTER
St Andrews, Fife

Given the conflicting opinions between economists, I propose “a befuddlement”.

DARREN GALPIN
Bristol

The optimum choice must surely be “a surplus of economists”.

J. BROOKS SPECTOR
Johannesburg

* Letters appear online only