Sir: Mr Maude (21 July) accuses Dr Mishan of being
obsessed with noise. Mr Maude, in turn, appears to be obsessed with the physical damage being done to our environment.' I think he has lost his sense of proportion. Nature recovers in due course what man has taken from her, and one useful living tradition is of more value than thousands of relics of the past in the form of old houses and buildings and well able to survive them. The suggestion that those living today are less reluctant to destroy those relics than their pre- decessors is, I think, unhistorical. It is more likely that the latter did not find it worth their while to replace them.
Yet his complaints about the use and abuse of land are legitimate and proper. The framework of private, public and administrative law within which to regulate the use of land is defective, and tech-
nological progress tends to magnify those defects. Mr Maude should study the work of Dr D. R. Denman, Head of the Department of Land Economy at the University of Cambridge, and the principal pioneer of individualist thought on the subject of land tenure. As a legislator he could do more than most of us to ensure that Dr Denman's work bears fruit.
Mr Maude's article 'Growth for what?' is, how- ever, intended to be much more general than an attack on the abuse of land. He is treating what is really a special problem as an excuse to attack technological progress itself. No one reading the article can fail to suspect that he is a collectivist at heart. He also exhibits the symptoms of paternalism turned sour. He attacks the way in which people spend their money and earn their living. (Dr Mishan, however, notwithstanding his use of the phrase `interests of society.' his call for stricter laws and his dissatisfaction with the work- ing of the market mechanism, is essentially an individualist.) Mr Maude is entitled to select any feature of contemporary living for his approval or disapproval; but he does not explain how, except in a collectivist state, be can get the kind of world he wants.
Dissent from Mr Maude's views does not imply sympathy with the growthmen. Dr Mishan is essentially right. It is absurd to treat growth as something to be pursued for its own sake like beauty, truth and goodness. An economically ideal legal framework would make a person pay all costs of his decisions, whether those decisions foster growth or not and whether they are imposed on the decision taker or on someone else.
Finally Mr Maude shows that his outlook is somewhat narrow by virtue of his belief that this age is not producing anything of lasting value. Mathematics, science and technology are mutually sustaining. The first two of these have as good a claim to be branches of culture as all the plays of Shakespeare. I take it that Mr Maude is neither a scientist nor a mathematician, but it is possible that future generations will be as familiar with these disciplines as the present can read and write.
Previous page
