In a programme first broadcast in 2016, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the impact of the eruption of Mt Tambora, in 1815, on the Indonesian island of Sambawa. This was the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history and it had the highest death toll, devastating people living in the immediate area. Tambora has been linked with drastic weather changes in North America and Europe the following year, with frosts in June and heavy rains throughout the summer in many areas. This led to food shortages, which may have prompted westward migration in America and, in a Europe barely recovered from the Napoleonic Wars, led to widespread famine.
14 July 2020
BBC4 Analysis: The Post-Pandemic State
Government intervention on an unprecedented scale has propped up the British economy - and society at large - during the pandemic. But what should be the state's role from now on? Can Conservatives successfully embrace an enduring central role for government in the economy given their small-state, Thatcherite heritage championing the role of the individual, lower spending and lower taxes? And can Labour, instinctively keener on a more active state, discipline its impulses towards more generous government so that they don't end up thwarting its ambitions for greater equality and fairness?
Four eminent political thinkers join Edward Stourton to debate the lessons of political pivot points in Britain's postwar history and how these should guide us in deciding what the borders of the state should be in the post-pandemic world - and who's going to pay.
Those taking part: Andrew Harrop of the Fabian Society, who draws inspiration from Labour's 1945 landslide victory to advocate a highly active and determined state to promote opportunity, fairness and equality; former Conservative minister David Willetts of the Resolution Foundation, who sees the lessons of the Conservative revolution in 1979 as relevant as ever about the limits of the state but also argues core Conservative beliefs are consistent with bigger government; former Blairite thinker, Geoff Mulgan, who, drawing on the lessons of 1997, resists notions of a catch-all politics in the face of the multi-faceted demands on today's state; and Dean Godson of Policy Exchange, influential with the Conservative modernisers of the Cameron era, who insists a Thatcherite view of the state shouldn't rigidly define how the centre-right responds to our new circumstances.
Aeon: The necessity of awe
When a scientific paradigm breaks down, scientists need to make a leap into the unknown. These are moments of revolution, as identified by Thomas Kuhn in the 1960s, when the scientists’ worldview becomes untenable and the agreed-upon and accepted truths of a particular discipline are radically called into question. Beloved theories are revealed to have been built upon sand. Explanations that held up for hundreds of years are now dismissed. A particular and productive way of looking at the world turns out to be erroneous in its essentials. The great scientific revolutions – such as those instigated by Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, Einstein and Wegener – are times of great uncertainty, when cool, disinterested reason alone doesn’t help scientists move forward because so many of their usual assumptions about how their scientific discipline is done turn out to be flawed. So they need to make a leap, not knowing where they will land. But how? [...]
The need for cognitive accommodation makes you aware that there is a lot you don’t know. You feel small, insignificant and part of something bigger. In this way, awe is a self-transcendent emotion because it focuses our attention away from ourselves and toward our environment. It is also an epistemic emotion, because it makes us aware of gaps in our knowledge. We can feel overwhelmed looking at the night sky, deeply aware that there is so much we don’t know about the Universe. In one recent study, participants listed nature as their most common elicitor of awe, followed by scientific theories, works of art and the achievements of human cooperation. [...]
Empirical evidence suggests that awe plays a role in the appreciation of science. These studies provide a tentative glimpse of how awe and science relate, even though they focus on laypeople, and not (yet) on scientists themselves. Writing in 2018, the psychologists Keltner, Sara Gottlieb and Tania Lombrozo found that the tendency to feel awe (dispositional awe) is positively associated with scientific thinking in non-scientists. Participants with higher dispositional awe have a comparably better grasp on the nature of science, are more likely to reject Young Earth creationism, and also are more likely to reject unwarranted teleological explanations for natural phenomena. When awe is induced, people feel more positive toward science. One recent study showed participants a movie montage of the BBC TV series Planet Earth, containing sweeping vistas of waterfalls, canyons, forests and other awe-inducing views. Participants in a control condition watched humorous videos of cute animals engaged in capers and antics. Those who saw the awe-inspiring videos were more aware of gaps in their knowledge than those who saw the funny videos.
New Statesman: End of the Golden Decade
Two important developments have forced Johnson’s hand. The first, clearly visible even as he tossed out those Brexit promises, is the growing systemic competition between the US and China – a competition in which both superpowers will increasingly insist that smaller countries, such as the UK, take sides. The second is a startling reversal of attitudes to China within the Conservative Party. Its leaders, only a few years ago, declared undying friendship with the People’s Republic (a relationship that George Osborne embarrassingly titled as the “golden decade” of UK-China relations); now the party is settling into unremitting hostility.
The beginnings of this remarkable U-turn pre-date the pandemic. The process has been greatly reinforced, however, by Beijing’s early cover-up of Covid-19 and its subsequent aggressive propaganda, and by the imposition of a draconian security law on Hong Kong that effectively tears up China’s agreement with the UK to leave Hong Kong’s way of life unchanged for 50 years. The UK’s recent promise of a “pathway to citizenship” for Hong Kong citizens who hold British National (Overseas) passports – which was described by the Global Times, China’s nationalist mouthpiece, as a “rubber cheque” – provoked an angry response from Beijing, where the move was characterised as an imperial power trying to interfere in China’s internal affairs. [...]
The Huawei decision should also calm the fury that has been simmering in Washington, DC since Johnson’s initial failure to fall in line. Yet this reversal will, inevitably, provoke ear-splitting volumes of complaint from the Chinese government, along with threats of a general retreat of Chinese investment from the UK and retaliation against UK companies and interests. British companies that depend on the Chinese market – such as the bank HSBC, which backed China’s new security laws in Hong Kong – should be nervous. [...]
Pro-Brexit Atlanticists such as Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson sit alongside Remainers, such as William Hague and Tugendhat, concerned about China’s encroachment on liberal democratic values. Others, such as David Davis, are there for the civil liberties ques-tions, and human rights advocates such as Fiona Bruce, the MP for Congleton, and the activist Benedict Rogers, who runs the Conservative Human Rights Commission and is a co-founder of Hong Kong Watch, form another sub-set. A further group comprises those who fear the economic impacts of Chinese trade practices, and long-standing China sceptics such as Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s former aide and occasional New Statesman essayist.
Social Europe: Time to tackle the tax dodgers
In France, for example, half the CAC 40 index—representing the 40 top companies by market capitalisation—still decided to pay out between €35 and €41 billion in dividends, despite receiving state aid from the short-time-work scheme to compensate workers for reduced hours due to the pandemic. In Germany, the list is also extensive, with carmakers featuring prominently—Volkswagen has placed around 80,000 employees on short-time contracts, yet still plans to pay around €3.3 billion in dividends. And in the UK, the world’s largest chemicals company, BASF, which received £1 billion in support funding, voted last month to pay out more than three times that amount in dividends to shareholders. [...]
This is why, while keeping in mind that the US administration has just announced that it no longer wants to take part in negotiations to overhaul the international tax system, it is urgent for countries to introduce, regionally or unilaterally, at least temporary taxes on the digital giants. This is one of five main recommendations proffered last month by the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT)—of which I am a member alongside economists such as Joseph Stiglitz, Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman—to enable states to cope with the explosion in spending caused by the pandemic. [...]
We already know that, in normal times, it is not taxation that pushes a company to invest in a country: it is more about the quality of infrastructure, the workforce, market access or political stability. And while expansion projects are constrained by uncertainty and corporate overcapacity, tax cuts will not stimulate private investment anyway. But they would certainly deprive governments of valuable resources.
Nautilus Magazine: How the Pandemic Has Tested Behavioral Science
To their credit, the Nudge Unit has had some noteworthy successes, like developing interventions that have increased rates of tax payment and organ donation. But they’ve also been accused of overreaching; there is some evidence for behavioral fatigue, for example, but probably not enough for it to form the foundation of a country’s response to a deadly pandemic. As Anne-Lise Sibony, a researcher who studies the relationship between law and behavioral science, wrote in the European Journal of Risk Regulation, “[I]t is not clear why behavioral fatigue was singled out given that other, better-documented behavioral phenomena might—with equally unknown probability and distribution—be at work and either fuel or counteract it.” [...]
The flipside to this, of course, is when bad psychology comes from scientists. “If we’re overconfident in studies that don’t replicate,” psychologist Hans IJzerman told Nautilus in an email, “then we’re also establishing our own psychology.” Using evidence before it’s ready for primetime may not be better than nothing—it could be a waste of resources, or even actively harmful to those it’s intended to help. Concerns about behavioral fatigue, for example, were meant to protect the UK public, but they ended up indirectly facilitating the virus’ spread by delaying social distancing measures. [...]
Psychology and other fields are making progress in addressing their flaws, but it remains true that in the interplay between behavioral science and policy, puffs of smoke abound. For example, in the wake of worldwide protests against racist policing, there’s renewed interest in using science to change the behavior of police officers. For years, implicit bias training—classes and workshops designed to help participants recognize and counteract their own discriminatory thoughts and feelings—has been touted as the answer, not just for police departments but for white-collar office spaces and many other kinds of professional environments. The problem, though, is that it doesn’t seem to work, at least in its current form. A 2019 meta-analysis found that, while certain interventions can reduce measures of implicit bias, they don’t do much to change people’s behavior. “The reality is this multimillion, maybe billion, dollar industry has gotten way far ahead of the evidence,” said Patricia Devine, who runs a lab studying prejudice, on Marketplace Morning Report.
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