William Watson: ‘Free’ but dumb vs. freedom

0813 mg rod liddle — With Rod Liddle gone, it falls to much lesser lights to describe the deficiencies of those who govern over us. (Credit: Colin McPherson/Corbis via Getty Images)

My favourite columnist died last week, Rod Liddle, 66, of The Spectator, the venerable British magazine once owned by Conrad Black and edited by Boris Johnson, who went on to be London mayor and then British prime minister. The current editor is Michael Gove, former Conservative education minister, justice minister and Tory leadership candidate. The current Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, was director of digital at The Spectator as recently as 2015. She contributed a tribute to Liddle — a smart, well-written one — to last week’s memorial issue: “Rod was outrageous, dark, rude and extremely funny … deliberately provocative … poking fun at the po-faced moralizers who want to lecture everybody while leading hypocritical lives themselves.” Though he also challenged unhypocritical ones who were wrong nevertheless.

In his tribute, Gove — whom The Spectator voted “minister of the year” in 2011 after his education reforms restored emphasis on writing, spelling, math and science — said what he heard most often from Spectator readers was that, “Rod is the first page I turn to every week.” Yes, that was always tempting. Or you could save him for later, like keeping your favourite colour Smarties for last. Always a hard choice. Whichever you chose, a Rod Liddle column seldom disappointed.

He took on all the hard subjects, the ones that could lead to cancellation — though “took on” puts it mildly: he charged at them directly, swinging a battle axe over his head. And he wrote exactly what many people thought but were afraid to say, certainly in print but also not within hearing distance of Siri or Alexa. Nor did he shrink from gleefully insulting the intelligence of those who disagreed with him. Personal denigration usually devolves to simple-minded surliness that diminishes everyone involved. Think talk radio. But Liddle wrote with such slashing, swashbuckling panache you couldn’t help but laugh — out loud, often enough. I expect even some of his targets appreciated the skill with which they had been carved up by a pen that some of his memorialists compared (exaggeratedly, I think) to Jonathan Swift’s.

Anyway, with Liddle gone it falls to much lesser lights to describe the deficiencies of those who govern over us. Without agreeing they are “a convocation of the third-rate” (as Liddle described them in his final column, Kemi Gives Me Hope, about that self-same Kemi Badenoch) it can be said that one of the main ideas pushed forward by this generation of politicians, that more and more things should be “free,” is very dumb. And that “free”/dumb is a real threat to what is truly valuable, namely freedom.

Why is “free” dumb?

Nothing is truly free. Not lunch, as a famous economics aphorism tells us. The salty lunches not charged for in 19th-century saloons stoked a person’s thirst, prompting the conclusion there was no such thing as a free lunch. Today, many “free” conference lunches require listening to a speech. Free love? “Grief is the price we pay for love,” a wise woman, Queen Elizabeth II, observed after 9/11. Dermatologists remind us of other costs. Free speech? Never without consequence, as often to the speaker as those spoken to. Free will? Choice has consequences, not all pleasant. Free radicals? Wikipedia tells me these electron-deficient molecules do harm to membranes and molecules they run across.

One of Andy Burnham’s first acts in Boris Johnson’s old job as U.K. prime minister was to cap, Canute-like, the price of bus trips at two pounds. That’s not quite free. But almost. And it will grow closer to free every year there’s inflation — which is to say, every year.

But operating the buses will still require energy, drivers, managers and, of course, buses, functioning ones that have to be serviced and maintained. Somebody will pay for all that. Estimates are that it will all cost 500-million pounds to start with.

With real prices declining over time, the number of rides demanded will rise, which will require more buses, drivers, energy and so on — either that or force standing room only if budgets aren’t elastic. Making government the biggest bus customer will draw forth union power. Private bus companies might hang tough through a strike but the minister of busing, facing hard questions from the opposition and the press, won’t stand firm, so wages will rise and subsidies and taxes will have to rise with them. Rising taxes will slowly strangle the rest of the economy. With fares capped, no new companies will enter the bus industry, while the exit of old ones will eventually lead to government ownership.

We have seen this movie time and again before, most seriously and infamously in our hospital emergency rooms. When we were removing market incentives for the first or second time, we may have been genuinely surprised by unanticipated consequences of the sort just described. But we’ve been through it so many times there’s no longer any excuse for unanticipation.

The Fraser Institute published a report earlier this week confirming that in 2025, for the 44th year in the last 45, Canadians spent more of their income on taxes than on necessities. Which means more of our consumption choices are made by governments than by ourselves. “Free” (dumb) trumps freedom.

Yes, we are all free to participate in the democratic process that determines how government spends and taxes. Personally, I feel much more influential and empowered dealing with Amazon than with my local MP.

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