Postcode lotteries
I've been reading
Postcode Lotteries by G. R. Steele, an article in the current issue of
Economic Affairs.
The first two sentences:
An internet search delivers over a quarter-million hits for "postcode lottery". Almost all are British.
Why British I ask myself.
Steele points out that postcode lotteries are generally to be found in the public sector, which is ineffective in distributing goods and services. Competition tends to cause the private sector to distribute more evenly although that process is constantly challenged by technological and entrepreneurial advances - to our advantage.
I believe that the reason why the concept of the postcode lottery is essentially British is a direct result of the extraordinary degree of centralisation of both the British state and the British media. When the likes of the Daily Mail reveal that Mrs Smith in Sunderland doesn't have access to the same drug as Mr Brown in Bolton, the readership and the political class respond. It's a "National" Health Service so we must all get the same deal, whether it's good or bad.
This is quite in addition to the fact that we have a separate NHS here in Scotland. The implications of differing "national" NHS systems seems to cause consternation down south. When they realise that there are different systems of course - which is not very often.
In federal countries like Germany or the US one generally reads a paper published in the local big city, not in Berlin or Washington. Similarly, government services are administered locally to a degree that would be unthinkable in Britain. It follows then that a German or an American would expect public services to vary across the country, and not be surprised by that. Furthermore, the individual German and American states are all of equal status whatever their size. How very different from the UK.
Here we have a "national" broadcaster, funded by coercion, that's quite unable to grasp the nature of the British state as we saw in the Dimblegate affair. Similarly the "national" newspapers are really English ones with just the occasional confused foray into Scotland.
This "national" media is staffed with assorted statists who are as unaware of economics as they are of the make-up of the British state. Just as "all must have prizes", so "all must have the same healthcare" (sic, or is that sick?), and "all must enjoy the same national wage scales" no matter how much they pauperise the "provinces". (How I hate that word.)
To end Britain's championship of the postcode lottery concept we need to do one of two things. Preferably we should reduce the role of government to such an extent that state-created postcode lotteries disappear naturally. Failing that, we need to decentralise government along the German or American model. Neither's going to happen of course. Scottish independence will probably be one of the outcomes. Hopefully we'll not be stupid enough to constantly compare our (hopefully small) government expenditures with those of England. Or "Britain" as Mr Dimbleby will no doubt call it.
posted by David Farrer at 11:09
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