We do need to be careful about people offering plans that we can now newly do which aren't, in fact, so wonderful. An example is this idea that there should be a proper system for dealing with jhut. The idea is twofold, that the wastes -- that jhut -- from the textiles industry should be properly recorded and controlled by a bureaucracy. Also, that the textiles industry itself should become a circular industry, one that consumes its own waste outputs. Both of these are very silly, really extraordinarily silly, ideas.
The idea comes from a report with Swedish and German backing and that's possibly one reason why the ideas are silly. “Alles ist in Ordnung” -- all is in order, is organized -- is a societal base for both countries and cultures. It's also why they've both never really got to grips with the idea of a market, rather than bureaucratic, economy. That is, both cultures think that there should be a bureaucrat in charge, a piece of paper proving that all are following the rules, before things can be done properly.
We Britons rather prefer the muddling through method, markets that is. If the job's being done then the paperwork, well, who cares? As for the bureaucrats, where are those nice high cliffs to push them off?
So, societally, culturally, I'm going to be against this idea that there should be a bureaucracy checking on what happens to jhut. Let alone any political or economic analysis.
But to argue about that bureaucracy. There's a suggestion that every piece of jhut should be tracked through the system -- so that we can make sure it is properly dealt with.
Now I recall when a similar system was introduced for lead acid (like, car) batteries in Britain. Under the influence of that Nordic, German, idea that everything must be tracked, checked, paperworked. The problem was that a car battery, at the garage that took it out of the car and replaced it, was worth about 50 pence. When delivered to the lead recycling factory, about £5. This is always true of any recycling, it's the collection at the plant to recycle it which costs all the money. At the time 50p was about the price of a beer. So, you could get the mechanic at the garage to put them by waiting for the once a week truck to pick them up -- he got a free beer!
The same report about jhut says “a negligible amount is landfilled.” So pretty much everything is used, in that way a market economy will do
Now add bureaucracy. And, of course, the bureaucracy wants to feed off the business it is administering. So, each movement of batteries required a document. Each document cost £25 -- gotta pay the costs of the bureaucracy, right? So, an entirely free market, functional, recycling system was bankrupted, over night (I know the guy who used to run it, this is not just some story), by the bureaucracy coming in to administer it.
We don't want to do that. And the same report about jhut says “a negligible amount is landfilled.” So pretty much everything is used, in that way a market economy will do. If there's money to be made out of it then someone will. Great, problem solved -- until, obviously, someone decides there should be a bureaucracy to check on this.
So, let's not do this. Those hopeful and would-be bureaucrats can go and do something useful for a living instead. Anything useful for a living.
But one step up from this there's also this idea that a circular economy requires that each industry is circular. Now, me, I'm entirely unconvinced that we need a circular economy in the first place. Cotton? It's a plant, we can just grow some more next year, what are people worrying about? But ok, let's accept that circularity is required. It's the economy as a whole that should be, not each and individual line of industry. So, cotton waste from making clothes ends up as kapok, stuffing for pillows? And? Old airplanes get made into Coca Cola cans (this happens)? It's not necessary that old cars get used to make new cars, but old steel to make new steel seems sensible enough. Really, it's the whole society that needs to be circular, not any one activity -- assuming that a circular economy is needed at all.
Yes, it's entirely true, bright new dawn and all that, everything is possible. But let's avoid doing those things which simply shouldn't be done. It isn't true that there needs to be a bureaucracy checking everything. That there is nearly no textile waste going into landfill shows that all is already being used to do something value adding, something useful. So, we need no change there then do we?
Tim Worstall is a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute in London.
