Should I vote Green?

There's a lot to be said for the Green party. Their decision not to have a single leader is a nice repudiation of hierarchical managerialism. And the fact that their manifesto is available only on their website is a welcome symbolic rejection of the dead tree media.
And there's an awful lot to admire in their manifesto. A serious inheritance tax is a good idea, as are opposition to joining the euro and ID cards. Congestion charging and taxes on aviation fuel are sound ways of internalizing externalities. They're spot on to point out that rising GDP doesn't improve aggregate well-being. Land value taxation is, at least, an interesting possibility. And the idea of a citizen's basic income - "an unconditional, non-withdrawable income as a universal right" - is just superb (I'll say why in another post.)
Despite all this, they'll not get my vote. This isn't because of their opposition to the war in Iraq (a relevant consideration only if time travel is invented within the next four weeks) or even their optimistic intention of raising £15 billion from higher taxes on incomes over £50,000.
Instead, one of my objections is this claim: "Soon, the exponential rise in greenhouse gases will start to have catastrophic effects on the UK economy." This dubious scaremongering futurology betokens an excessive (and unnecessary) reliance on positivist science.
Secondly, they share the silly notion of the other parties that families and pensioners are legitimate targets of redistribution; they want a "citizen's pension" and higher child benefit.
Also, their opposition to the commercialization of public services is very unwise. Greens should be more in favour of allocative efficiency than everyone else. And competition among service providers is a a better way of achieving this than relying on the re-emergence of a public service ethos. 
Worst of all, though, is the possibility that this opposition reflects a basic economic illiteracy. They say:

The massive expansion in world trade is at the heart of globalization. Such trade puts power in the hands of unaccountable transnational corporations at the expense of elected national governments. As the benefits of trade go to corporations not individuals, it also undermines local economies. It is based on an outdated model of 'comparative advantage', a now discredited economic theory that Greens argue bears no relation to the current reality of trade.

If this isn't mindless babble, it's very close to it.
So it looks like I'll be staying at home on May 5th.

Comments

[Ian]

"... the exponential rise in greenhouse gases ..."

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2005/s2412.htm

[Monjo]

So basically you like the Green party for everything other than its environmental and social wealth distribution policies?

Personally, if you spell globalization (sic) incorrectly then you don't get my vote.

[chris]

The original quote spelt globalization the wrong way, with an s. I tidied up the spelling myself. -ize endings are good enough for the Globalization Institute, for Americans, for most English writers before the 20th century, and for the Oxford Review of Economic Policy:
http://oxrep.oupjournals.org/content/vol20/issue1/
-ise endings are, generally, a modern and French innovation. They are therefore to be opposed on two grounds. I refer you to the OED:
http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutspelling/ize?view=uk

[rjw]

Good post. Sadly, you are right. A mix of very reasonable policies worth serious discussion, along with a mindset that occasionally allows them to slip into idiocy.

[Phil Hunt]

"""Secondly, they share the silly notion of the other parties that families and pensioners are legitimate targets of redistribution"""

If all parties think this, why's that a reason to not vote Green? Surely, it shouldn't affect how you vote, since all parties are equally bad in this area.

[Green-Party.org.uk Webmaster]

If you're intending to link to The Green Party's web site, the URL should be http://www.greenparty.org.uk/

[Tim Worstall]

Quite agree with all of the reasons above. Some excellent policies mixed with the utmost rubbish. Who where and when discredited comparative advantage?

[Monjo]

chris: I prefer the French to the Americans. Plus I don't especially like the letter zed. Finally I live in the 21st century not the 19th or before - and I can't be asking Dickens how to spell, and let's be honest Shakespeare couldn't, and have your tried deciphering Louis Stevenson?

If we're going to debate Frenchisms then the americans drive on the right, whereas we drive on the correct Roman side of the road. The Americans call trousers pants (from the french), the americans call chips 'french fries' and they have the statue of liberty, and even made their colours red white and blue cos of the french - who stole it from the British anyway.

For Tim Worstall: driving on the left - another thing the Romans did for us :P

[Backword Dave]

"a relevant consideration only if time travel is invented within the next four weeks" Um, no. It doesn't matter *when* time travel is invented. ;)

Speaking of which, your comments are on GMT. :)

[Rob]

Re. Dave above: I am now convinced time travel is impossible, because if anyone ever invented it, there'd be some really wierd things going on.

Also, allocative efficiency, from undergraduate economics, only applies in perfect markets. Perfect markets must have neglible barriers to entry. Significant capital costs and/or restricted numbers of appropriate sites (i.e., either you build a site, by renting pay for someone else to build a site or you wait for another, already paid for site to become vacant) constitute a significant barrier to entry. Ergo, nigh-on impossible to achieve allocative efficiency in provision of health or education, because the market won't be responsive enough to change to with any shifts in demand. Also, why should we be treating education as a solely market good (which the mention of allocative efficiency implicitly does: allocative efficiency is the point at which marginal cost equals marginal benefit, which, in a market, means marginal financial cost to the supplier - a firm - and marginal financial benefit to the consumer - an individual). Why not acknowledge that education and health has benefits which are not solely quanitifiable in terms of financial resources, and which do not fall solely on those who recieve it? I've said this before, and I may well say it again, but, reducing everything to a single metric, managerialist, assertion that one model provides the best allocative mechanism, managerialist.

[Rob]

I seem to have gone into wierd rant mode today. Sorry.