Britain scolds slumlord … that is, itself
The appalling Grenfell Tower fire in London and unsafe conditions in similar housing developments across Britain has led to demands for punishment of responsible parties from appliance manufacturers to builders. But who is the slum landlord who presided over this disaster? Why, it’s … the government. The obvious solution? Apparently i t’s more government.
The New York Times pounced this past Saturday, declaring that “The incineration of Grenfell Tower on June 14 is now a national tragedy. The London police on Friday blamed flammable materials used in the facade for the spread of the blaze and said the investigation could bring charges of manslaughter. A formal government inquiry into the fire has just begun. But interviews with tenants, industry executives and fire safety engineers point to a gross failure of government oversight, a refusal to heed warnings from inside Britain and around the world and a drive by successive governments from both major political parties to free businesses from the burden of safety regulations.”
There’s a curious dynamic at play when the solution to a gross failure of privatesector responsibility is more government oversight, while the solution to a “gross failure of government oversight” is more government oversight. But the difficulty is that when governments oversee themselves, as here, they tend not to do a very diligent job.
If the problem here were simply politicians and bureaucrats who did not care about the poor and marginalized because they were cynical and callous, we could elect nicer politicians and hire nicer bureaucrats. But by and large it’s not.
To be sure, t here are cold- hearted, manipulative people in government, as everywhere. And doubtless bureaucracy can breed cynicism born of long frustration, as politics can breed cynicism born of egotistical ambition. But the general problem is that the incentives are aligned the wrong way and wear down even the most diligent and wellmeaning over time.
As Milton Friedman once put it, if you’re spending your own money on yourself, you care about price and quality. If you’re spending someone else’s money on yourself, you only care about quality. If you’re spending your own money on someone else, you care only about price. And if you’re spending someone else’s money on someone else, you don’t care about either.
It’s the sort of thing that is called simplistic. And there are people so conscientious, or obsessive, that it doesn’t apply strongly to them. But humans have only so much virtue to go around, and so it is not a good idea to put them in a position where they will require too much of it. Especially within the state apparatus.
To say so is not to deny similar temptations and failings in the private sector, from dipping into petty cash to corporate boards that wink at excessive compensation to unsavoury “crony capitalism” arrangements with government agencies including apparently in this case. But there generally comes a point at which private malfeasance runs into an unsympathetic state apparatus.
To say so is not to endorse overregulation that stifles initiative and ignores common sense. I much prefer the old common- law system where, for instance, tenants can sue landlords who do not act with ordinary decency and prudence. But both approaches involve a resort from private to state sector and a constructive tension between them. Unless the landlord is the state.
Then you run squarely into Juvenal’s old question of who is to guard the guardians. Even in small things l i ke enforcing building codes, it is hard for anyone to be judge in their own case and be fair. People in government understand the problems of government a bit too well, including tight budgets, and do not wish to be shunned or berated by their colleagues. So they bend the rules a little knowing we’re all in this together for the common good. Then a little more. And soon you have any one of the scandals that keep erupting around people in the public sector scratching one another’s backs.
Or in this case, flames erupting, real and financial. There were other obvious instances of government failure in Grenfell Towers, from safety guidelines telling residents to stay in their flats until rescued by firefighters to the whole callous paternalism of stacking the poor in “Brutalist” concrete towers and then predictably ignoring their increasingly strident safety concerns. And not just at Grenfell. The Daily Telegraph says the government now faces a bill of over 600 million pounds, possibly far more, to replace “flammable cladding” on other public housing projects after fire checks on 60 of them failed … all 60, with another 540 awaiting inspection.
This disaster was no isolated incident. The problem is, as the leftists like to say, systemic. So we need to think systematically about problems with government instead of naively touting it as the solution to any and all problems.
THE (PROBLEM IS) THE INCENTIVES ARE ALIGNED THE WRONG WAY. — JOHN ROBSON