I read in Private Eye 1628 about Ynyslas visitors’ centre at a nature reserve run by Natural Resources Wales: the locals are upset that NRW is considering shutting down a centre that delivers a number of useful services to them. PE quotes a representative of the local campaigning organisation as saying “We are appalled that NRW [is] unaccountable and that they [sic] think that the future of the visitor centre is their decision to make, even though it’s a publicly funded organisation…”
I struggle to understand why a small group of locals think that it should be their decision to make either. NRW is either funded by the UK or Welsh governments, and has made it clear in a previous public meeting that it is under budgetary pressure and that the visitor centre is not a statutorily required service (i.e. it’s an optional extra ‘nice-to-have’).
If the locals of Ynyslas want these public services, that’s an argument to have with both their national representatives and with the rest of the country. What are they willing to sacrifice to keep this service? Their children’s education? Pensions? Would they prefer to tax the rich more despite the rioting that the rich will incite via their propagandising media outlets and bots? Do they want to sacrifice services I receive? What makes them think that I will suffer less than they will from such a decision?
I suspect that NRW would love to continue to provide all such lovely services. It, like most public bodies, is trying to manage with maybe half the budget it needs to get even close to the public’s hopes. It will have statutory duties it is ignoring due to lack of funding. Should it continue to direct money at something it is not legally required to do in order to do something nice for the locals of Ynslas, and neglect its legal obligations?
Public bodies are not evil, nor are they looking to do the least they can and pocket the difference. Public servants mostly hope to do good in their jobs and are faced with countless difficult decisions every day, mostly because of the politicians we have voted for. The root of the problem is public policy, and hoping to distort difficult decisions by being noisy simply makes things worse. A petition to NRW is appalling; a campaign to reverse this one decision is pointless. The root of the problem is almost certainly elsewhere.
This is a similar problem to the much-vaunted need for locals to control local decisions such as housebuilding. We are one country, and it is not only the locals who are affected by housebuilding, but also all the people who would have lived in the now-unbuilt housing. There is a vast constituency of ‘young’ people aged 18-45 who do not have permanent homes but would like one; people renting poky flats long commutes from anywhere they want to be because convenient locations already have inhabitants who profit from their suffering (by voting against housebuilding, they believe that they enhance their own homes’ value).
There are people who hate development but then wonder why local shops are closing for lack of customers and why their children and friends’ children can’t live in their hometown. There are people who ensure that housing in their area is incredibly scarce and then complain that super-rich people are buying up the few properties that are up for sale, ruining the character or becoming absentee owners and shuttering local shops even faster. If you inflate your house price beyond the reach of normal citizens, of course your cherished home area will become a billionaires’ bank: a place for dodgy elites to launder and store their wealth.
Housing is a national problem and should be decided by the nation, either through well-regulated national markets, or by government decision. Separately-controlled local markets leads to every locality hoping to enjoy national increases in prosperity without themselves changing to achieve it: a free-rider problem. We outlaw monopolies elsewhere in the economy because they harm people who want to buy the product, but when it comes to housing we not only allow those who already have desirable housing a monopoly, but deem it only sensible! This is because we are blind to those excluded and ignore the harm done to people who aren’t yet directly involved. In audit terms, our moral perception has a completeness error: we have not included everything in our assessment. It’s the easiest error to make. People usually struggle, morally, with directly falsifying information, or ignoring inclusions that shouldn’t be there. But it’s much easier to ignore exclusions that should actually be included. They’re not there yet to see! If it’s not in front of people, most don’t bother to consider it.
It's the same fault that makes people potter about from side to side in the centre of a narrow Tube corridor, ignorant of anyone behind them who might want to walk faster; or that made people offer to reach things on shelves in a shop to my mother in her wheelchair when we’d been waiting for a minute to get past them. When they noticed us they wanted to actively help but getting out of the way of the wheelchair was the passive help we needed.
People like to focus on what’s immediately in front of them, to the extent that it’s regarded as a piece of sage advice. And, for those people losing track of life, making some progress on small, immediate tasks is indeed better than making no progress at all. But going somewhere is no good if you’re going in the wrong direction. Focussing on small tasks in your life is only useful when they’re definitely things you need to do. You do need to cook your next meal; you should clean your home regularly.
But should you be working on getting your local pothole fixed? This is the example used by the Liberal Democrat party as advice for new members: “Want to get involved? Find a local issue first and get that fixed”. It’s ludicrous. My local council gets most of its funding from central government and its council tax is heavily regulated by central government, as are its long list of statutory duties. If I were to campaign for a pothole to be fixed, it would be a waste of my time: about 400,000 potholes were reported in 2023. Fixing my particular local pothole would divert council time, attention and money from duties which are probably even more important. It would be a net detriment to the life of the country, except that the human tendency to think only of what’s in their minds might gain me local support.
Fixing potholes is a way for a political party to gain support at the expense of the locals by taking advantage of their thoughtlessness. I expected better of the Lib Dems, who until recently were more the party of sound policy rather than vote buying and manipulation.
If I want potholes fixed, I need to campaign for more local funding and higher council taxes… or perhaps for reduced burdens on councils, such as less obligation to care for other people’s sprogs, less state-funded care for pensioners, less street cleaning and waste collection…
Some people are, apparently, detail-oriented while others of us more naturally see the bigger picture. A big picture is likely to be wrong without being built from correct details, but details are meaningless without fitting into the right big picture. When we campaign on a single issue, whether Ynyslas Visitor Centre, potholes, new medical treatments or any emotive, attention-grabbing issue, we are ignoring a larger part of the picture, which is the cost.
In an ideal world we would all receive vast bequests and spend them freely without having to work. Sadly, pensions are only for the elderly and will be gone by the time I am old. Because of the cost. If we thought more carefully about all the special interests that seem worthwhile, we might be less stupid when it comes to resisting tax increases. Costs must be paid. Things are connected; no man, or visitor centre, is an island unto itself.
All politics is, eventually, a question of who loses. Our modern discourse, focussing on vote buying for hundreds of special interest groups, keeps the losers hidden from view, and hence prevents proper judgement about the merit of a policy. Seeing the bigger picture is the wise and rational approach, an it’s appalling that most people seem unwilling and uninterested.
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