Rory Sutherland’s wiki man column in The Spectator is one of the few things remaining inside that magazine that might yet tempt me to buy another print copy. In his latest he sticks a finger through one of the biggest holes in the Tories’ buckshot “Big Society” balloon of bullshit:
In one sense, it seems, the Cameronian idea of the ‘Big Society’ is already flourishing in Britain — with groups of people voluntarily grouping together in order to stop things happening or to keep things the same (including that annoying group in my village who petitioned to prevent an admirable fish and chip van visiting once a week). The member organisation for this tendency seems to be the National Trust, a vast, slightly fascist entity with over a million members that imposes a banal, uniform and static idea of good taste on everything it owns.
So here lies the central challenge of the ‘Big Society’. In Britain our spectacular capacity for collective action in opposing things (Nazism, new housing, nightclubs) is matched only by our inability to harness any will or consensus when it comes to doing something new. Worse, our resistance to change is often self-defeating, since the only people not defeated by the bureaucratic hurdles are huge organisations like Tesco — while those traditional smaller cafés and shops that traditionalists claim to love cannot summon the energy to clear them.
His solution to development comes back to Land Value Tax. Someone who finds themselves losing a view will see their house price fall (or more accurately, a fall in their land value), but with that fall would come a reduction in an annual tax on owning that land. Set the tax about right and you end up with development having no financial impact on those people nearby.
While some people would still go hunting for newts to block development, generally homeowners wouldn’t see enough of a loss that they’d care too much about new development. It may even be the case that people then see development more positively – a rise in population means that your town is more likely to support a John Lewis store or a theatre, for instance.
We have plenty of land in this country, and we could all be living far more comfortably if we used more of it.
He’s an old mate. Sat in the office next to mine in our Ogilvy days. I know you like your marketing; I think you’d enjoy his two Ted talks if you’ve not seen them already.
Those most vehemently opposed to housing being built on some squalid redundant fields near here are those who live in the housing built on the adjacent squalid redundant fields about twenty years ago. Apparently our town is now the perfect size and every square inch of countryside around it is the most environmentally sensitive site on Earth.
“Everything’s broken but nothing must ever change” could be the Big Society’s mantra….
For me, the most attractive bits of the whole Big Society idea are…
1. It’s a thing that Labour should be doing (properly)
2. It will attract all sorts of entertaining but useless Walter Mitty schemes from young ‘entrepreneurs’ (trans: broadband salesmen)
It’ll highlight the fact that we don’t actually *have* any entrepreneurs in this country. All we have is budget-maximising bureaucrats who are working in the ‘private sector’.
Tim, your Land Value Tax – that’ll only work if the cash stays in the control of the local authority, right? Or if the rates from new profitable developments stay in the local area and bring down everyone else’s rates?
Paul,
Tim, your Land Value Tax – that’ll only work if the cash stays in the control of the local authority, right? Or if the rates from new profitable developments stay in the local area and bring down everyone else’s rates?
That might work for housing, but for other development, it needs to be national. For instance, building a runway at Heathrow has a negative impact on the whole of a local area, but someone living in Newbury gains from the benefit of it. So, you have to nationally tax it for that.
I don’t know enough about local politics to know if something being revenue neutral to local people would still encourage or discourage development. Oxford seem to want to build on a tiny amount of their greenbelt in the face of opposition from various people who want the countryside as a museum.