Notes from the Panopticon

Learning lessons

Education is the transmission of civilization.~ William James Durant (1885–1981) and Ariel Durant, born Chaya Kaufman (1898 - 1981)

After the murder of Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan dominated the news for a week or so but that has now faded. We were regaled with speculation about the danger to the world posed by an unstable, nuclear-armed, undemocratic state where fundamentalist Muslims find it easy to integrate into society. It was in Pakistan that the Taliban (which took over the government of Afghanistan and provided shelter to Al Qaeda) were originally able to organize and build a foundation. A recent analysis on television suggests that the Taliban are direct descendants of protestors who instigated the mutiny against British imperial rule and Christian missionary zeal in 19^th century India. But Pakistan is also seen as a major bulwark in the "War on Terror" and has been the recipient of $5bn in US aid since the attack on the twin towers.

Endemic corruption 

Now the excitement has died down, Pakistan has dropped out of media consciousness but its problems remain. And one of its greatest problems is education. Like the rest of public life in Pakistan, the education system is subject to endemic corruption. And this should trouble the rest of the world because education in Pakistan is being exploited by fundamentalists in their drive to recruit new followers.

When it was provided with American aid on a massive scale, Pakistan promised to devote some of the money to improving its education system. The World Bank has also allocated a separate $300mn specifically to support schools and colleges – but fearing that the money will disappear into a sink of corruption, it is reluctant to disburse the funds until proper control systems are put in place. These fears are justified. American officials supervising military aid suspect that invoices for supplies are inflated by as much as 30%, enabling millions of dollars to disappear. And in the education system, officials estimate that corruption taps 15% of intended expenditure.

Dangerous structures

Little has been done to improve education in Pakistan. In the Punjab, for example, there are 63,000 state schools, of which:

• 5,000 (8%) have been condemned as dangerous structures.
• 26,000 (41%) have no electricity.
• 16,000 (25%) have no toilets.

Many teachers see their jobs as sinecures and don't turn up to work, while local inspectors distrust the information provided by the ministry of education. Few schools have enough classrooms and some resort to teaching in the open air under trees (possibly safer than sitting in a classroom with cracks in the walls and an unstable roof). Often they have to cope with only one quarter of the desks required. Understandably, parents are reluctant to send their children to these underfunded and under-supervised institutions.

Vacuum filled

Two groups of educators have moved in to fill this vacuum: private schools and religious madrassas. It is the madrassas that have attracted most attention and generated hysteria in the press both inside and outside Pakistan. Some of them are run by fundamentalists, preach Jihad, and groom their students to be revolutionary fighters and suicide bombers

The media in Pakistan and across the world, supported by wild estimates made by Pakistani police, have exaggerated the scale of this problem. A more restrained study by the World Bank and Harvard University has estimated that the true numbers of children being educated in madrassas represents a little less that 1% of children in the 5-19 age group. These figures must be put into context:

• 33% of children are enrolled in state schools.
• a further 12% are enrolled in private schools.
• 87% of children enroll in primary education, but numbers fall sharply at secondary level.
• literacy rates are 63% for men and 36% for women, showing that the standard of education is poor (in comparison, the figures for India are 76% and 54%).

Wealthily endowed madrassas

The development of the private sector is striking. Private schools now educate one third as many children as those educated in the state sector. The population values education and is willing to make sacrifices to give their children the schooling which the state fails to provide. Much has been said about madrassas (wealthily endowed by Saudi money) providing the only chance for the poorest Pakistani families. But private schools are cheap and all but the very poorest can afford them.

So is there nothing to worry about? Indeed no. There are dangers and they are serious ones. The WB/Harvard study showed that, while in most areas of Pakistan madrassas account for less than 1% of school enrolments, in the so-called tribal areas (where Pasto is the main language and there are strong links to Afghanistan) the percentage rises to over 7%. These are the areas the state finds most difficult to control and, if madrassas do have a malign influence, it is here that it would be easiest to foment and develop an anti-democratic movement.

Children brought up to hate Muslims

The survey also estimated that there are about 175,000 students enrolled in madrassas. If we make a guess that 5% of madrassas are run by fundamentalists, this still means that almost 9000 children are being brought up to hate Muslims who do not meet their own "high" standards.

The theory propagated by the extremists is this. The only acceptable law is Sharia law and this should be interpreted strictly (hence the enforcement of headscarves and the like for women … among much worse horrors). It is the duty of good Muslims to create a state which accepts and enforces Sharia. Government leaders who do not concur are the enemy. Those who conspire with the West are the enemy. Muslims who support these governments are the enemy.

In this way, the fundamentalist madrassas create a justification for killing other Muslims. The suicide bombers are given a target and a cause. It has, however, very little to do with the West; the majority of victims are much closer to home. But a flow of almost 9000 young men and women (possibly more – other estimates are higher and my guess of 5% of may be optimistic) is more than enough to recruit suicide bombers and build momentum for the movement.

Dodging and weaving

So let us return to Benazir Bhutto. She and her husband spent the years since she was ousted from power dodging and weaving to avoid convictions for corruption and embezzlement. Indeed, she was convicted of money laundering by a Swiss magistrate, while a British judge found grounds for a prosecution against her and/or her husband for purchasing an estate in the English home counties with the fruits of embezzlement.

Despite this track record, the West was keen to have Bhutto as a friend in Pakistan because of the fear that a nation with its own nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of someone worse. The US has provided huge amounts of cash, some of which has been used to buy delivery systems for these weapons of mass destruction, and has only recently begun to worry about whose finger might be on the button. Bhutto provided some hope of a friend to the West and she certainly looked the part, acting like a civilized politician, speaking excellent English, and sending her son to Oxford.

She had plenty of support in Pakistan (the first attempt on her life killed more than 130 people because her rally attracted so many supporters). But it is almost certain that she, like other political leaders in Pakistan, was a thief. Some of the money she stole, and the money that leaked away into the pockets of bureaucrats and politicians, was supposed to have been spent on education, on the rebuilding of dangerous schools, and on ensuring that teachers turned up to do their jobs.

The public in Pakistan wants education and many people are willing to pay for it. Some of them, however, send children to be taught hatred by cynical clerics who tell them that martyring themselves while killing the opponents of whichever fundamentalist branch of Islam they represent will earn them a place in paradise.

Yet more moral hazards

In any country there must be people who have to die. They are the sacrifices any nation has to make to achieve law and order.~ Idi Amin Dada (mid-1920-2003)

A reply to the latest comments by threeportdrift and Peter Horne (see previous post).

Economic and moral hazard

There is indeed an economic hazard: if the authorities allow a failing bank to go under, confidence in the banking system might collapse, leading to the kind of financial crisis that the world suffered after 1929. And this is the moral hazard: by seeking to avoid the economic hazard, the authorities create a different one; banks will not be so careful in the future, so there is a risk of further failures. They will not be constrained by the need to look after their future well-being because they will expect the authorities to do so. So there is a trade-off. The authorities, in the case of Northern Rock, chose to avoid the economic hazard and no doubt they will bring in a raft of regulations to try to minimise the moral hazard they have created. "Moral hazard" is, perhaps, a misnomer in this case because the real effect is a shift in the nature of self-interest which must be the core of any business motivation. The important thing is that the trade-off is recognised for what it is, and that the authorities make a clearly thought-out decision based on the balance of dangers.

Help the poor

You are quite right to point out that this is similar to an argument that can be – and often is – made against providing financial support to the poor. If you give money to the poor, they will be discouraged from seeking gainful employment, others will lose their incentive to work and more people will choose to live on welfare. This is indeed a "moral hazard".

You also point out that the motive for supporting the poor is an ethical one (we don't like to see others suffer), while the motive for supporting a failing bank is an economic one (a failing bank could precipitate the collapse of the financial system, leaving the economy and all its participants devastated and unable to recover).

You don't say whether you think that the ethical motive is worth risking the moral hazard – a scrounger's charter as right-wingers would say. I suspect that you do and, if you do, I agree with you. But I would be cautious about how the poor are defined and how they should be helped. Without going into detail, people who are poor because they are unable to work should be first in the queue and the method by which their incapacity is assessed should be simple and clear, and should not be humiliating. (I have long thought that complaints about means tests are misplaced since everyone who works has to fill in a tax form, which itself is a means test. But listening to the debate about incapacity payments, I realised that the complexity of the rules and the humiliation associated with the tests are the real problem)

Falling on hard times

I also believe that people who have fallen on hard times should be supported financially and helped to recover. And the nature of the support should be such that they are given a strong incentive to go back to work (the poverty trap is an iniquitous moral hazard that has to be removed). And so on...

Taking advantage

To summarise, I believe that, when acting to solve a particular economic or ethical problem, the benefits should be weighed against the dangers of moral hazard. There is an unintended, but often predictable, danger that people adapt their behaviour to take advantage of the open hand of the state. And in framing its benevolence, there is always a risk that the state can find itself with a large and never-ending obligation.

Respect for the law

Now to your second point about loss of respect for the law. This goes to the heart of my point about moral hazard. The reason this issue is so important is that the law must earn respect, it should not be taken for granted. It is wrong that governments, like those of Robert Mugabe get away with grave misdeeds just because they are in charge of making the laws. It is iniquitous that a monster like Idi Amin was allowed to live out his life in comfortable exile just because he was a former leader of state. And in a different league, it is wrong that the British government should hide behind the doctrine of Crown immunity.

When I drafted my reply to your first comments, I tried to set out a list of necessary conditions for any law to be based on a firm foundation. It was too tough a task for a short note so I gave up. (It did, however, bear some relation to the list of criteria which Peter Horne cited.)Perhaps I should have persisted.

Bringing law into disrepute

My first criterion is that laws should not discriminate against any significant minority of the population. And I think all the examples that you cite are cases where efforts were made, not only to discriminate against minorities, but also against majorities. So the laws that so troubled Ghandi and the other notable civil rights protestors you mention would have fallen at the first hurdle. Your examples illustrate my point; they do not undermine it. If a government tries to do something by passing laws which brings the law into disrepute, it runs the risk of undermining respect for the law and opens the door to legitimate protest. This, as we saw in Northern Ireland, can lead to serious and fatal civil unrest.

Euthanasia

Other areas where there is "civil disobedience" on a lesser scale include the laws against euthanasia. The objection to these laws is widespread. Institutions which practice it are tolerated but any individual who participates in the act risks prosecution and incarceration. But this depends on the whim of the authorities, not a happy situation in an open society.

Sailing close to the wind

I do not agree with your last point about the effects on moral standards of moral turpitude of some of those in the public eye and those who feel they can circumvent the law. People will question their moral compass. It is human nature to sail close to the wind, but a complex and poorly-enforced legal structure has the paradoxical effect of creating a race between law-makers and the rest of us to find or to plug the loopholes in the law. A simple legal structure which reflects a morality which most of the population accepts will result in a decent and law-abiding society.

Law and religion

As for the escape to religion and fundamentalism, I believe that the horrors of Sharia law, the burning of heretics, the unofficial imprisonment of young women in the Magdalen Laundries of Ireland, and the social mayhem created by missionaries in the nineteenth century all speak for themselves. Legal structures based on religious conviction have repeatedly shown themselves to be fatally flawed. The fact that there is now an upsurge in evangelical movements is itself a demonstration of the way in which society is losing moral cohesion. And this, I believe, stems from governments legislating without giving full consideration to the moral hazards which their laws will generate.

Peter Horne and Leslie Stephen

In reply to Peter Horne's comment, I would agree that all human action has an impact on others, but the degree to which it affects others can vary considerably.

I agree that moral issues should be considered when deciding whether to curtail the liberty of individuals. It is the complexity of deciding what is worth doing, and whether the law is an appropriate mechanism for achieving any given aim, which makes me think we should err on the side of caution. My object has been to draw attention to the way the flood of laws introduced by the present government has made us all a little bit nastier. And that includes government ministers, political parties, civil servants and other administrators who, instead of focusing on serving society, duck and dive to gain advantage. One human quality that has vanished because of this over-administration is compassion. Automatic penalties without the intervention of a human being are becoming the norm.

Authority and autonomy

Swinging the emphasis in defining what laws are acceptable, from preventing harm to others towards which restraints are injurious, makes – to my mind – little difference. The point is that, in both cases, there is an authority which claims to know best what is good for others. And I deny that this is ever true (except for children or persons who are seriously lacking in mental or moral capacity). The key to good law lies in the three tests you mention, in research to discover what measures will be effective, and in open discussion and debate. With the vast number of laws that have recently been passed, it has obviously been impossible to carry out this process. And we are all paying the price.

More moral hazards: a reply to threeportdrift’s comment

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. ~ John Stuart Mill (1806 –1873)

From the start I hoped that this blog would provide a forum for discussion. It is hard thinking in a vacuum and I am grateful to threeportdrift for making a number of very interesting points. (see original article and threeportdrift's comment)

What I mean by moral hazard

It seems I failed to make clear exactly what I
meant by moral hazard so I'll have another go. The moral hazard faced when failing banks are bailed out is that the fear of failure is dented and therefore other banks will behave irresponsibly in the future because they believe that they too will be rescued if they gamble and lose.

The parallel in law-making is that, if laws are made and widely ignored, or if they are poorly or unevenly enforced, then respect for the law is eroded. A society without respect for the law is in danger of losing moral cohesion. This is the hazard it faces. It is parallel to the financial moral hazard: if people see others getting away with irresponsible behaviour, they will tend to abandon their own moral compass and behave less responsibly too. It also happens when there are too many laws which citizens find silly, unfair or unacceptable, or which they do not understand. In all these cases, there is a danger that society will lose faith in the institutions which uphold justice.

That is the simple part of the argument. The harder part is deciding when it is reasonable and realistic for society to enact laws to persuade people to pull in the same moral direction, and when it is justified for parts of the population to stand up against laws that are unfair or unjust. And it is here that threeportdrift seeks to take issue with the examples I used to make my point.

Loss of moral faith

My fear is this. The huge number of laws introduced by the Labour government, and its inconsistency in enforcing its policies, are indeed giving rise to a loss of moral faith.

Threeportdrift's last point ("ordinary oiks get off time and time again with warnings even whilst their behaviour gets more and more destructive"), far from undermining my point, actually supports it. I see it like this. The "oiks" see the Kate Mosses, the Elton Johns and the Jackie Smiths of this world getting away with breaking the law and think to themselves "why should I bother?" The reason they should bother is that they don't have the financial and social resources to slip through the legal net. So they get caught – in numbers that the legal system finds difficult to cope with. And so the justice system has a problem which it handles by reducing prosecutions for minor offences. This, in turn, reinforces the idea that the law is there to be ignored. And small crimes turn to bigger ones. (more here)

But let us not forget that being let off with a warning leaves an indelible stain. It makes it hard to reintegrate into society and, in particular, to make a legal living. So an underclass is generated that does not fully integrate into society. Organised crime is the main beneficiary, with society providing them with a work force made up of young men and women with no hope and with nothing to lose. (more here)

We must also remember that the Jackie Smiths and Kate Mosses and Elton Johns provide(d) these gangs with a market for their products, just as the celebrities of the day provided the Mafia with a market for illegal booze when the US government introduced prohibition.

Picking and choosing

Drug laws, I believe, generate the largest and most easily identifiable moral hazard. But respect for the law and the government is also eroded in other ways. If people feel able to pick and choose which laws to obey (speed limits outside schools good; roadworks on the M4 in the early morning bad) is exactly the kind of moral hazard that I am concerned about. It would be much better for the government to bring in fewer laws, to think harder about their implications, and to do its best to ensure that all parts of society are have an incentive to pull together and respect the law.

Epidemic hazard

A final point. Society's contempt for the government and its institutions also shows itself outside the area of the law. When a rogue scientist (completely spuriously) claimed that the MMR vaccine (more here) was the cause of autism and some types of bowel disease in young children, the government was unable to convince the public – in particular the parents of young children – that there was no danger. The government was paying the price for failing to maintain the trust of society, the effect of perceived lies and double-talk, as well as frustration at government efforts to micro-manage people's lives. So when an opportunity arose to make a protest, the population voted with its feet. The result was a catastrophic collapse in the number of children protected against measles, mumps and rubella, and a population vulnerable to an epidemic. Lies and obfuscation also carry a moral hazard.

I believe the government should treat us as citizens, not as subjects. The task is not easy because it must reconcile different needs and expectations in its policies and law-making. But its watchword should be "less is more" (see JS Mill quotation at the top of the page). Fewer laws mean fewer risks of moral hazard. And above all, everyone – and that includes the government and its ministers – should be treated equally.

Thank you, threeportdrift , for giving me the opportunity to clarify my thinking. I hope that I have made my point better now. I am always keen to hear from readers.

Picture credits:

www.badscience.net/?p=457

http://sobnation.wordpress.com/