For us heartless capitalists, can be truly thankful we don’t live in North Korea or Cuba, where the free market is a demon to be slain with all due and undue haste. However, in the words of Ron Paul, “Capitalism should not be condemned, because we’ve never had it.”

The idea that we live in a fully-fledged market economy, abiding by capitalist principles, has been severely dented in recent times by the government’s reaction to the Northern Rock crisis. It started off with the government throwing £24bn at the bank in a misguided attempt to restore confidence, and has continued farcically for the past month.

In today’s PMQs, we had Gordon Brown refuse to answer a perfectly valid question by Lib Dem acting leader and Orange Booker Vincent Cable about whether the government had indeed spent £24bn propping up Northern Rock. And Brown astonishing refused to explain or justify such a massive expenditure of taxpayers’ money.

As far as Northern Rock is concerned, matters about what is actually happening within the company are obviously of commercial confidence. I gather that the stories in the newspapers this morning are about papers unrelated to the Treasury, the Bank of England or the Financial Services Authority, and only to Northern Rock itself. I cannot comment on those confidential papers.

But, since the government just paid Northern Rock £24bn - with the expectation that it’ll lose £2bn of it - the taxpayer would be quite justified in arguing that we own Northern Rock’s arse. If we want them to jump, they’d bloody well jump. And if we want to know how Northern Rock is getting itself out of trouble, the government had better tell us. Either that or the crooks should give us our £24bn back.

It’s another tale of the government being secretive about state business, following the disclosure that the government didn’t tell the public about the employment of illegal immigrants to guard Metropolitan Police sites because they didn’t think it would play well with the voters (the issue that David Cameron raised in PMQs today).

Equally bad for government-voter relations would be the collapse of a high street bank, so the government decided to do something fundamentally stupid by guaranteeing a business that frankly shouldn’t have been operating as it was. Mervyn King has said:

What we want to do is to give incentives for people to behave properly, so in judging the interest rate at which we lent to Northern Rock we asked ourselves the question: “At what interest rate would they have to pay in borrowing from us today that would make them regret not having taken out an insurance policy as Countrywide did before the 9th of August?”

But they should have asked, “How the hell can we make them regret it more than making them go out of business?” That would cost the taxpayer nothing, and create a pretty darn strong disincentive for companies to act that irresponsibly in future.

Instead, this government rewards irresponsibility by loaning them taxpayers’ money at below commercial rates. That is, they rob from those people that made the right decisions, and reaped what they sowed, and gave it to people that made the wrong decisions. They should have been made to reap the whirlwind.

Former astronaut Frank Borman said, “Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell”, and, as CEO of Eastern Air Lines - which itself went bankrupt - he should know. Capitalism can’t work without the incentives; if there are no incentives to succeed, no disincentives to fail, the market resorts to socialist lethargy: encouraging bad behaviour and cutting off the invisible hand in an orgy of Sharia retribution.

Here we have a government hell-bent on taking the ’sharp corners’ off capitalism, when it’s those ’sharp corners’ that are the cutting edge of capitalism, and its actual purpose. We need, instead, a government that doesn’t despise the free market. On that doesn’t rob taxpayers blind. One that isn’t afraid to take tough decisions or stand by as others make them for themselves. We need a government that’s open and honest. Sadly, in the vein of Ron Paul, we can barely condemn this government’s dishonesty, because we’ve never had one that has shown a shred of decency.

For the thirteenth year in succession, the European Union’s auditors have refused to sign off on the European Union’s accounts, and, in doing so, has lambasted the EU’s accounting system for its systemic flaws.

The European administration has, as usual, buried its head in the ground, and mistaken a fleck of paint for a silver lining.  Apparently, the EU being found to be - once again - ungovernable and unaccountable is a good news story, at least for Siim Kallas, European Commissioner for auditing and former PM of Estonia:

I am glad to see the Court now gives its green light to over 40% of total payments, compared to roughly 1/3 last year, and only 6% three years ago.

Which, of course, means that 60% of the budget is completely and utterly unaccountable.  Is that really a good news story?

Despite this outbreak of insanity, I like Kallas a lot, and often cite the Reform Party that he once led into government as a working European libertarian party. In their own words (fortunately in English, because my Eesti is rusty):

We want Estonia to become a state of free citizens, where the Government intervenes as little as possible in peoples’ lives, doing this only where it is absolutely necessary for ensuring society’s security and preserving and developing the Estonian society and culture.

Sound!

But they also claim:

The policy of the Reform Party is based on the principle of open society.

Popper may not be entirely happy with them hijacking his work and claiming it works for them when their ex-leader, their ex-Prime Minister, defends the indefensible and presides over the worst-managed public accounts in the world.

Worse for claims of governmental transparency and the promotion of the free society, the European Union’s accounts continually fail, despite the EU having its own in-house auditing team, working by its own rules. This is illegal for any company auditing in the European Union. Perhaps more damning is the fact that it’s also illegal for any statutory auditor:

Articles 24 and 25 of this Directive require EU Member States to prescribe that statutory auditors do not carry out statutory audits, either in their own right or on behalf of an audit firm, if they are not independent.

And that’s because independence is critical to making sure that the numbers do add up, rather than relying on the institution employing wishful thinking and the honour system.  As far as the European Union is concerned:

Independence is also the profession’s main means of demonstrating to the public and regulators that statutory auditors and audit firms are performing their task at a level that meets established ethical principles, in particular those of integrity and objectivity.

So, there you go.  By not opening their accounts to external auditors, they’re proving themselves to have no ethical principles, integrity, or objectivity.  For an institution that styles itself as a ‘court’, they’re a bit hopeless, aren’t they?

The complexity of the European Union’s system of financial governance makes good accounting almost impossible, so it can’t come as much of a surprise that their accounts once again failed to make the final cut.

However, that complexity is the EU’s own fault.  The decision to rob European citizens of their right to know how government acts, supposedly in their name and certainly with their money, runs counter to the principles of responsible government and democratic values.

The inability of those in the ivory towers to justify their actions and spending is entirely in-keeping with the other policies of the European Union, which serve to obfuscate and deny a say to the people whom they are governing: the worst practices of the worst of despotisms.  That is not in the interest of the people or their governments, and must be addressed before it undermines what is left of virtue in the ‘European project’.  If, however, that is the EU’s intent, they must perish as would any despotism.

Government’s always trying to save our souls by moralising to us, no matter how many times they damn us to the eternal fires, dancing daemons, and countless pointy thingies of hell. Anti-discrimination legislation is a perfect example of this. Racial or religious discrimination is stupid, and bad for the perpetrator as well as the victim, but this story just takes the biscuit.

A hair salon owner is being sued for religious discrimination after refusing a Muslim teenager a job as a stylist because she wore a headscarf. Sarah Desrosiers said she refused 19-year-old Bushra Noah the position because it was an “absolutely basic” requirement that customers could see their stylist’s hair.

I was a bit slow in commenting on this story, and I’m ashamed of that because it’s some bloody indicative of how incredibly stupid most government regulation is. However, I had only read about it in the London Lite and thelondonpaper (bastions of only the highest of journalistic standards, and as an ex-reporter for the Sun, I should know). Having just read the Telegraph’s account, my jaw dropped, as I just noticed the detail that brings home how silly the whole situation is.

The 32-year-old, whose “alternative” salon in London specialises in “urban, funky punky” cuts, has already spent £1,000 fighting the case.

“Urban, funky punky?” She wears a hijab! How on Earth does she keep her own hair “urban, funky punky”? Heck, who’s to say that she has any hair at all, let alone urban, funky punky hair? It’s like sitting James May down in front of a particularly angry-looking skinhead with a big pair of clippers. I don’t care how many times he’s watched Top Gear, he’s probably not going to be as clued-up and reassuring as he could be otherwise.

However, fortunately, it seems, the government’s religious discrimination legislation may force employers to consider the hijabi as equally qualified to style hair - HAIR!! - as someone that is actually willing to show it off. Such a requirement reduces the quality of service that a customer receives, and may put the business at risk, just as Ms Noah has in this case by suing them for refusing to hire someone that doesn’t meet the job description.

A requirement for a free society is a free market, and that involves allowing people to hire whoever they want, for whatever reasons their business may have. Maybe they need male bouncers, rather than put women on stilts to inspire fear in the local drunkards. Maybe they need black actors, rather than ask white people to daub blackface to portray black characters. Or, maybe, just maybe, they need hair stylists that are willing to prove they have some basic hair-styling sense by showing their own hair.

If the business has a legitimate reason, as those given above, the ‘discrimination’ will increase their profits. If there is none, they will be punished by having to hire inferior alternatives that suit their bigotries. Thus, as with almost all things, the market mechanism solves the social problem by providing an automatic righting system, without government regulation. If only the state realised that, and stopped moralising, businesses like this salon wouldn’t go out of business. We’d be climbing the ladder out of hell, rather than riding snakes down into its pits.

In over 15 years in state education in this country, I’ve encountered enough bad teachers to know they don’t deserve the time of day. In fact, I was suspended from secondary school for having the temerity to suggest that one be given her P45. That’s the sort of gratitude I get for saving them all that money on HR consultancy fees…

And so it’s nice to hear that the government is finally taking my advice and kicking out the lazy socialist bums that congregate in the nation’s school staff rooms. Well, at least an adviser is now advising the same. Sir Cyril Taylor, chair of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, has said:

We’ve got 400,000 of our children attending low-attaining schools; 75,000 leave schools at 16 with hardly any qualifications at all; five million adults are functionally illiterate. That’s a serious problem.

Clearly. I don’t think it’s that major a problem that people leave school without being able to analyse Shakespeare’s sonnets, but reading is slightly more important.

The head teacher that is good can take the necessary action; you get the wrong people off the bus and get the right people on the bus in the right seats.

Get off the bus and on your bike? I likesies. But the lefties are, quite predictably, angry. After all, the fewer socialist bums there are picking up taxpayers’ money, the… fewer socialist bums there are picking up taxpayers’ money. Good old self-interest.

But the main point of ROFLMAOing as far has to be the head of the NUT, John Bangs, who said:

I cannot understand where he’s got those figures from. We have the best teaching force we’ve had for years and years.

If anyone in the country thinks state sector teachers are better today than they were a generation ago - achieving worse standardised results with vastly more money and better technology - they’re kidding themselves. If anyone overseas looks over at the UK and envies our teachers - who can’t control a class or teach the most docile of grammar school students - they have similarly poor judgment.

The fact is that the introduction of a stick by which to beat bad teachers around the head can only be a good thing. A carrot, in the form of truly performance-related pay, would be a nice addition, but striking the fear of God into teachers with a massive stick with spikes in sounds like more fun.

For, you see, children, that’s called incentivisation. It’s what makes the free market so damn good: rewarding productivity and success and not rewarding inefficiency and failure. I know, the lefties will tear this policy apart with their fearsome argument of reductio ad capitalisum. But it’s true, and the opposite system, of teachers being rewarded for failing to teach 16-year olds to read, sounds a trifle absurd.

So, there you go. Unions prefer state schools remaining inefficient bastions of tenured teachers, depressing teaching quality and hindering the advancement of those pupils that the state forces to attend such inferior schools that they see fit for the taxpayer to fund. Sadly, unlike his heroine Baroness Thatcher, Gordon Brown hasn’t got the best track record of standing up to public sector trade unions, so you can bet your bottom dollar that he’ll pay no attention whatsoever to Sir Cyril. The result can only be 17,000 useless teachers, and 400,000 betrayed pupils.

Apparently, ‘caveat emptor’ means something completely different as far as the Guardian is concerned. Meera Selva seems to be very confused when it comes to what Africa’s major problem is when it comes to employing its mineral resources.

Apparently:

China has been quite rightly criticised for exploiting Africa, buying up mining concessions and primary goods in opaque deals that benefit African leaders but not necessarily their people.

And that’s the fault of the African governments, not of the Chinese companies. May this be a very timely warning to the lefties that populate the hills and vales of Guardiland: sometimes (read: “always”) government’s objectives aren’t the same objectives as their peoples. Maybe smaller government is the answer?

Elsewhere, Chinese self-interest is genuinely helping African economies. This week, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China bought a 20% stake in the Standard Bank group, Africa’s largest bank. The deal helps China diversify its financial services and sends a signal that Africa’s nascent investment banking and insurance industries are worth investing in. The deal also treats Standard Bank as an equal, not an institution that needs to be lectured by a more powerful group.

That’s because Standard Bank, unlike the other investments the Chinese are making, is a private company. Chinese self-interest helps Africans in this case because the Africans are interested in helping themselves. The invisible hand only works to the benefit of all when there’s a profit motivation.

If the regulatory system is such that there is illegitimate profit to be made, as is the case with “l’État c’est moi” dictators siphoning off billions to their own bank accounts, the invisible hand leads to illegitimate profit. The only way one can avoid such illegitimate profit is by privatising industry and guaranteeing private property rights more effectively than is the case in most African countries.

Africa is still being lectured to by western institutions that offer aid with one hand and put up trade barriers with the other. China on the other hand, sweeps in offering to do business. Guess which side Africa would rather deal with?

They’d rather deal with the sanctimonious Western governments that feel they have to spend their taxpayers’ money to soothe their guilt over slavery. However, since we don’t ask for anything in return, the Africa governments can deal with the Chinese at the same time. It’s not either-or; because of our ineptitude in forcing institutional reform in Africa, the Africa leaders can give Western aid to their people, and funnel Chinese investment into their Swiss bank accounts.

On the plus side, at least she supports free trade, right? Actually, she probably doesn’t understand what it even means, because that implies just as much institutional reform in Africa as it does in Europe. There are more barriers to trade between African countries than between Africa and other continents, and trade between African countries is derisory 10.5% of the continent’s total trade. Another example of government failure in Africa.

The fact of the matter is that Africa is the poorest continent in the world, the continent hit by the most debilitating military conflicts, and the most afflicted by the health and social problems that afflict it because it is governed by bad people doing bad things. The way to combat all the ills of the continent is to combat its tinpot dictators. If Meera Selva is truly interested in helping the world’s neediest, she’ll help them, rather than help their oppressors.

OK.  This is going to get me hit over the head with a very big mallet by a lot of libertarians.  Screw you guys; I’m gonna talk about it anyway.  Well, actually, I’m not, because Alex Singleton did it for me on the Grauniad’s website:

We should scrap green taxes on flying and replace them with compulsory carbon offsetting. Like a tax, offsetting would add to the price of a journey. The difference would be that the money would go to actually improve the environment.

Alex is head of the Globalisation Institute, worked at the Adam Smith Institute, and previously set up the University of St Andrew’s Liberty Club (kinda like us, but they’re still waiting on global warming up there, while it’s all beach parties down here by the Thames).  So we’ve established that, despite writing for the Grauniad, he’s not a communist.

But why is he writing about climate change, then?  Let’s face it; most libertarians are smarter than the average bear, so we’re realise that debate cannot be closed by a very loud Nobel Prize-winning Vice President on a yo-yo diet.  Many of us remain unpersuaded, and (indeed) grow in skepticism every day.

But that’s not the point.  If you want an argument that climate change isn’t happening, go to this excellent site.  The point and fact are both that, if climate change does happen, and is caused by anthropogenic causes, the government will have failed its only reason to exist, its only justified task: to protect the rights of its citizens from others.  If climate change does happen, it will be just as much a government failure as if the state refused to punish thieves.

That is, unless it remedies it by an alternative method.  The traditional libertarian argument follows: we can’t be forced to accept climate change by the majority belief of society and a few scientists, so we accept the consequences of our own actions; if we’re wrong, and we do end up flooding Bangladesh, we will have committed a tort against them, and impinged the Bangladeshis’ rights to their life, liberty, and property; let them sue us individual polluters to seek compensation, as is their moral and legal right to do.

But that involves too many transaction costs, and is completely implausible.  How do they know whom to sue?  How do we know how much to compensate them?  If the government relies on that system, it seems too unwieldy, and is yet another example of a government failure.

So, for the sake of argument, let’s say that climate change is happening, is caused by humans, and can’t be ’solved’ by legal compensation to the victims.  Let’s also rule out technological cures; I’m not saying they won’t happen (I personally think a one-two of cloud-seeding yachts and fusion power is the answer: an answer that could be provided by private industry), but I am saying that it makes it a more philosophical question to eliminate the temptation of a deus ex machina solution.

In that case, we have to get involved in the debate.  We don’t have to shut up about criticising the flaws of the anthropogenic model of climate change.  We don’t have to stop yelling from the rooftops about the new technological marvels that could save the environment at the same time as saving us money.

But we also have to talk about the intellectually consistent conclusions that we would reach if we accepted the other side’s premise; if we’re truly libertarian, if we truly care about small government, we have to defend small government in the most difficult circumstances, and articulate the form that that government would take.

The current system is a crock of shit, so it’s only fair that people like Alex step up to the plate and give better, and more reasoned solutions than the arbitrary ‘climate levy’ that doesn’t achieve, well, anything.  Alex argues for compulsory carbon dioxide offsetting.  This, at least, allows companies to cut emissions in the most cost-effective way, rather than not being given an option.  It’s a flawed idea, because it allows no room for any net emissions at all: which makes its expansion across other industries an impossibility.

But, again, that’s not the point.  We need ideas.  More ideas.  Better ideas.  We need libertarians to dominate the agenda of ideas to resolve this intellectual problem.  That may be all it is - intellectual, rather than actual - but we need to be able to prove that our system stands up to the rigours of the most impossible challenge that the leftists present us, with all the ifs, buts, caveats, and restrictions that I placed above.  The worst that could happen is we get a system that’s marginally less bad.

If we can prove that we can reason within their premises, even if we don’t accept them, we can surmount the biggest threat to our ideology.  We can prove that it’s grounded in the same concerns that non-libertarians have: only grounded as well in finding both the most efficient and moral solution.  Besides, if it gets column inches from the Grauniad, it can’t be a bad thing.

Even put within the context of his own error-strewn career, Conservative mayoral candidate Boris Johnson’s statement that he wants Hillary Clinton to be elected President, argued at length in the Telegraph, must go down as one of the most stupid things he could possibly say.  I assume it’s just one of his japes.  I hope it’s one of his curiously charming bounder’s comments that he made without regard to the actual words that he propagated.

But let’s say that he actually means it.  The crux of his argument is that Bill Clinton would make a better presidential spouse than the maritally-challenged Rudy Giuliani could possibly afford.  Wait for the incredulity to kick in.

He readily concedes - and rightly so:

She represents, on the face of it, everything I came into politics to oppose: not just a general desire to raise taxes and nationalise things, but an all-round purse-lipped political correctness.

He concedes - and rightly so - that the most important issues are:

Who should have their finger on the nuclear button? Who should be Commander-in-Chief of the American military, the hugest and most lethal killing machine in history?  The world may still face all kinds of economic upheavals, as the panic from the American subprime mortgage sector spreads around the world, like a kind of financial BSE. Whose brain can we rely on to protect us?

For all the importance of the President’s position as Commander-in-Chief of the America’s military might, for all the significance of his role as head of state of the world’s largest economy, and for all the powers enshrined in the constitution of the presidency, Boris makes his decision based on who sleeps in the presidential bed.  And, like Boris, I slap my forehead in astonishment.

Clinton is economically naive, spouting nonsense that is only believable because it’s placed in the wider context of a very left-of-centre Democratic nomination race.  She has lauded the New Deal, called the free market the “most radically disruptive force in Americna life”, and lobbied for heavy tariffs on (of all things) candlemakers.  Her support of more stringent campaign finance reform, a ban on flag-burning, and computer game censorship threatens freedom of speech.  She has offered each 18-year old $5,000 to pay for beer college.

This doesn’t sound like a programme that Boris should support.  When he spoke to UCL last October, he asked people to guess who his political hero is.  Margaret Thatcher?  Winston Churchill?  Robert Peel?  No, no, et mille fois non.  His answer was the mayor from Jaws, because, in Boris’ words “he did absolutely nothing: just as government should.”  Wonderful answer, illustrating a sound libertarian philosophy underpinning his characteristic umming and erring.  So what the hell is he doing endorsing her?

I hope that it’s just political posturing.  I really, really do.  Just as Ken Livingstone monopolises the left-wing vote, so Boris has his staunch supporters to the right.  The mayoral race therefore hinges on who can cannibalise the Liberal Democrats’ voter base: winning their second-choice votes.

Due to the timing of the mayoral race, Boris can easily change his tune after he (hopefully) wins, cite events in the primaries, and switch to Giuliani or whoever else.  If he does that, he can claim ‘no harm, no foul’, and move on to replacing bendy buses or whatever else he wants to do with the GLA’s £10.7bn budget.  If he doesn’t, and this is a sincere and honest statement in favour of Clinton’s candidacy, and therefore the principles that she espouses, it must go down as Boris’ most stupid gaffe to date.

Forget Byron (or that German horse-hugger), because it seems Karl Marx was the 19th Century writer that was most insane.  It seems that , after so very long of asserting that the founder of communism was a madman, we’ve finally proven it.

Karl Marx suffered from a skin disease that can cause severe psychological effects such as self-loathing and alienation, according to a British dermatologist.

Self-loathing, alienation, and he had bad skin?  He’s sounding more like an angst-ridden acne-riddled teenager by the second.  If you’ve read any poetry written by your average depressed emo, you won’t be surprised that his writing was shit.

In 1867 he wrote to Friedrich Engels of the boils “on my posterior and near the penis”.

Teeheehee.  I know, I’m very mature.

“In addition to reducing his ability to work, which contributed to his depressing poverty, hidradenitis greatly reduced his self-esteem. This explains his self-loathing and alienation, a response reflected by the alienation Marx developed in his writing.”

Given how socialist countries have fared economies, I think the depressing poverty may have been caused by the fact he’s a loony leftist from beyond the moon, but I digress.  His ’self-loathing and alienation’ is the key.  He loathed himself.  He loathed himself.

I can never quite understand how one can hate oneself; we can criticise aspects of ourselves, but to hate oneself altogether is a fundamentally, well, stupid position.  We’re individuals, we can do what we want (we might be locked up for it, but we can still do it).

We reserve the right to loathe other people - although that’s something we choose not to do unless one’s name is Jong-Il, Robert, Fidel or Hugo - but oneself is the last person one should despise, as it’s the one person over whom one has complete control.  If one does descend into self-loathing, it is certain that one must also loathe the process by which oneself is created: freedom.

Since this loathing of himself, hence of freedom, was “a reaction reflected … in his writings”, we can now explain an awful lot of the literary diarrhoea that emanated from the man’s mind.  He came to his conclusions based on the preconception of freedom as destructive, due to his own perception of his own self as being destructive.

Such is the basis of the world’s most successful system of slavery: a few skin boils on the arse, an insane German man, and his loathing of all that makes slavery so abhorrent: the self.

NB I’m not a psychology or medical student, so I can’t say with complete authority that Marx’s writing was hindered by the insanity brought on by hidradenitis.  I can say, as an economics student, that it was hindered by some sort of insanity.

Today’s Times contained a bitter and, quite frankly, evil editorial by Carol Sarler on the issue of consent within the democratic system.  The issue is a challenging one for libertarians - split between legalists and activists - but I hardly think anyone that supports the cause of liberty can claim to be a Sarlerist.

It must have been mightily crowded last week: standing room only, up there on the higher moral ground, crammed with the bristling self-righteous who prefer, as they always put it, to “opt out” rather than to compromise a “principle”.

The fact that she puts the word ‘principle’ in quotation marks is a damning indictment of her lack of principle.  If she considers principle to be to illusion, maybe she should shut her mouth rather than preach her own principles to those that realise the value of morality.  But onwards to find out what principles she lacks…

Now, jostling for position, comes the JP who is fighting for the right to opt out of family cases that might involve same-sex adoption, the conscience-smitten family doctors who wish to opt out of the entire “process” of abortion – including even referring a patient to a doctor of different stripe – and the sanctimonious couple who have fostered 28 children but are opting out because they have been told they are legally bound to let children think that homosexuals are OK people too.

Snarling Sarler gives us more rhetoric claptrap that belies her complete lack of interest in moral activity or consistency.  I would wager that most doctors are doctors exactly because they are ‘conscience-smitten’, and consider caring to be a vocation.  Certainly, no doctor would work in this country, with its NHS-depressed wage structure, for the paycheque alone.  The same is true of the foster parents; it’s caring that makes them do anything.

I disagree fundamentally with these opt-outs (I think that, to quote a female friend, abortion is the best thing since sliced bread).  However, it is perfectly right for the individual to have opinions, right or wrong, that differ from the majority, and it’s the individual’s right to act upon his or her opinions.  When it is those opinions that make any opt-in possible, like the doctor or foster parents, to criticise compassion is to prove the sanctimony and stupidity that underline Sarler’s bile.

The whole trend is, frankly, social sense stood on its head. Such is our growing timidity of causing offence in the face of the doctrines of minorities that all anybody has to do is to invoke “morality”, “deity” or “principle” for it to appear that it is they who are pristine of spirit and the rest of us who occupy a lower dimension.

I don’t quite think these people are doing it for sanctimony’s sake.  They’re doing it for principle’s sake.  They have a belief that you don’t have - like the well-formed opinion that Carol Sarler is a f***wit - and they don’t want to give it up.  The only way you could be in a lower dimension than them is if you don’t believe in morality or principle.  Oh, wait, the quotation marks again?  Taxi to the seventh circle of hell for Ms Sarler.

The higher moral ground, in a democracy, belongs to consensus drawn from the values of the majority and implemented by the flawed beast that is the law. Those who would exempt themselves from it, no matter how enjoyable the fleeting fame of their martyrdom, deserve no more endorsement or admiration than any other petty delinquent.

As its name might suggest, the moral high ground belongs to those that act morally, not those that follow the word of the immoral man.  By opting out of others’ actions, they don’t necessarily act morally or immorally.  However, to coerce others, regardless of principle or belief, to follow the unprincipled and unbelieved word of the immoral man, is immorality defined.

That is the supposed ‘high ground’ that the majoritarian absolutist occupies.  That ground commands no heights.  It provides no defence from the superior arms of the individualist.  It does, however, pose a threat only by its prevalence as a belief, and by the fact that it is backed by the literal guns of the immoral man.

In the fact of that, these people are made martyrs against their wishes, when all they want to do is exercise a small opt-out that allows society to benefit from their large opt-in.  They don’t do it to become martyrs.  They do it for principle: the very thing that Sarler derides, and the very thing that Sarler lacks.

This morning’s Sunday Times report that a member of the Royal Family has been blackmailed is provoking and amusing in equal parts.  Provoking in that it illustrates (yet further) the fragility of one of the central institutions of the state.  Amusing in that it illustrates (yet further) that not even the monarchy, the font of all legal justice, is content with the law’s definition of ‘justice’.

However, it also provokes me because it illustrates as well a fundamental flaw in blackmail.  That is, if blackmail requires the exchange of money for the non-release of information, that information must be worth something to both parties.

Indeed, because it may instead by released to a third party, that third party must also value that information.  That is, there is a market for that information.  So let’s evaluate that market.

In this case, the blackmailer is said to have tried to extort £50,000 from a member of the Royal Family to prevent the release of the details.  This, it seems, was regarded as a reasonable price by the blackmailer, and an unreasonable price by the royalty.  The end result is that the blackmailer insisted that the price was too high, and went to the police.

Instead, consider the third party, which economists in this country call the ‘News of the World’.  They value the story for the opposite reason.  However, they also value it for vastly more than the blackmailed party does.  Nothing sells tabloid newspapers like a scandal involving the Royal family (unless it involves Keeley).

Let’s say that the appearance of a Royals story boosts the single-day circulation of a tabloid by 200,000 newspapers.  That is, at a retail price of 75p, the News of the World can expect to earn something like £150,000.  When one considers the boost to advertising, one can more than double that.

The News of the World can offer a price up to this and still make a profit off the back of it.  They can offer £300,000, and be better off as a result.  No surprise that they say that some stories can be worth “hundreds of thousands of pounds if not millions“.

Hold on.  That £300,000 that the News of the World could be offering is clearly more than the £50,000 that the blackmailers supposedly sought from the royal in question.  Since this is a market, the blackmailers have a choice between the two, and by resorting to blackmail, they clearly made the wrong choice for their own economic wellbeing.

In cases like this, when the affected party is an individual and the third party is a national newspaper, blackmail is simply a stupid thing to do.  Blackmail is separated from the distinct offence of extortion by the fact that the act threatened by an extortioner is illegal, whereas a blackmailer is threatening to do something entirely legal.  Thus, extortion should clearly be illegal.

But blackmail is simply the offer of a service to a consumer in the market before anyone else.  Put like that, there is nothing morally wrong with it whatsoever.  Indeed, because the criminalisation of blackmail denies the right of the accused of a right to defend him or herself according to the value that he or she places on the information, the current regime is destructive.

Having examined the true nature of blackmail, one can only conclude that it ought to be decriminalised entirely, before this prohibition does any more damage to both individuals and society.  It’s time to end this unwanted and unwarranted censorship.  It’s time to clear the black name of blackmail.