Oxford University Bans Clapping At Student Union Events To “Stop Triggering Anxiety”
What kind of grudge do British universities have against clapping? Roughly one year after the University of Manchester Student Union banned clapping at its events – choosing to instead ask audiences to use ‘jazz hands’ to show their appreciation for a performance – students at the University of Oxford are working to “replace clapping” because it could “trigger anxiety.”
Like their peers in Manchester, they will ask audiences to use silent hand-wave motion called “jazz hands”.
The motion to “mandate the encouragement of silent clapping” successfully passed in a vote taken by the school’s Student Union during their first meeting of the new school year.
The ruling will apply at all student union events, and if successful, might spread to over organizations and events at the school.
“Jazz hands” is the British Sign Language movement to express applause. It is considered a “more inclusive” gesture.
“The policy was proposed in order to encourage the use of British Sign Language clapping during our democratic events, to make those events more accessible and inclusive for all, including people who suffer from anxiety,” said Sabbatical Officers Roisin McCallion.
And “inclusivity” is one of the universities’ founding virtues, Metro UK said.
This is a guest post, but an incomplete one. You can download the full report at the above link. What follows is from Eric Dor.
Diverging Patterns of the Flows of Funds Between the Center and the Periphery of the Euro Area
Since the start of the financial crisis, funds have had a tendency to migrate from peripheral countries to center countries. These financial flows have been caused by various factors, including a general distrust of the banking systems of peripheral countries or the famous redenomination risk.
In creditor countries, there is also a fear that, in the case of a euro breakup, the central banks of the leaving countries would default on the Target 2 liabilities that are denominated in euros. As a consequence the ECB would incur huge losses that would be imputed to the remaining national central banks. The president of the ECB has indeed officially stated that “If a country were to leave the Eurosystem, its national central bank’s claims on or liabilities to the ECB would need to be settled in full”. But the national central banks of leaving countries would surely lack the necessary reserves in euros to settle their liabilities to the ECB. There is a debate about the impact of the resulting losses on the functioning of the NCBs of the Eurosystem. It must indeed be pointed out that the loss absorbtion capacity of these national central banks is very big.
The banks of the periphery and those of the center of the euro area widely differ in their funding needs and excess liquidities. The national banking systems having huge excess liquidities, and paying the most part of the negative interest rate penalty, are different form the national banking systems massively borrowing from their national central banks.
The banks located in countries of the center of the euro area already have abundant liquidities, without having to borrow much additional liquidities from their national central bank. Banks located in France and Germany own 61% of the liquidities deposited at the Eurosystem, on the current accounts and the deposit facility. But they only benefit from 28% of the outstanding LTRO and TLTRO loans granted by the Eurosystem to banks.
On the contrary, banks located in the periphery of the euro area have a very low level of liquidities deposited with their national central banks, but massively borrow from them. Banks located in Spain and Italy only own 9% % of the liquidities deposited at the Eurosystem, on the current accounts and the deposit facility. But they benefit from 56% of the outstanding LTRO and TLTRO loans granted by the Eurosystem to banks.
[Essentially these are subsidized loans on the ECB’s belief they would stimulate bank lending.]
[Rumors have circulated the ECB will run out of bonds to but but ECB president Mario Draghi says “don’t worry”.]
The new system thus essentially benefits to the banks of the periphery of the euro area, where exces liquidities of banks are low. In the countries of the center of the euro area, where liquidities are abundant, the reduction of the cost is relatively small.
It must also be pointed out that the reduction of the direct cost will quickly be eroded by the consequences of the relaunch of the QE. Indeed the net purchases of assets by the Eurosytem will mechanically increase the amount of liquidities deposited by banks on their current accounts with the national central banks. It will thus increase the deposited liquidities that will be taxed by the negative interest rate.
Non-Performing Loans
The banks of the peripheral countries of the euro are remain excessively loaded with bad quality loans, even if they are decreasing. The banking sector of the euro area remains fragmented. [emphasis mine].
Flow of New Loans
It is also striking to observe that, since the start of the recovery in the euro area, bank lows have strongly grown in France and Germany, but remain depressed or are even decreasing in Spain and Italy, despite several years of extreme monetary policy accommodation. [emphasis mine]
It is thus logical than in the countries of the center of the euro area, where bank loans are dynamic, many people question the usefulness of negative rates and a new launch of the QE. It also normal that, in view of the poor result of the ultra- accommodative monetary policies in the periphery, some critics also doubt that such a policy is the right way to address the structural problems of these countries.
Domestic Sovereign Exposure
Most countries of the euro area banks remain very exposed to the public debt of their country. In percentage of their equity, this exposure however varies widely.
It is worrying that this exposure is extremely high for banks located in Italy, the debt of which is the riskiest in the euro area. In Italy, a Greek style restructuring of the debt would fully wipe out CET1 [common equity tier 1] capital of the domestic banks.
Inflation Heterogeneity
Another feature of the fragmentation of the euro area is the extreme geographical heterogeneity of the inflation rate, based on the HICP. On average over 12 months, it ranges from 2.9% in Latvia to 0.5% in Portugal.
Even the efficiency of monetary policy is threatened by this heterogeneity. The problem is that policy interest rates are the same for the whole euro area. To the extent that there are similar divergences between the expected inflation rates, a same [sane?] nominal policy interest rate implies very different real interest rates in the different countries.
Real Interest Rates
The common policy implies higher real interest rates in the periphery than in the center of the euro area, which is exactly the contrary of what should be achieved.
It is a big problem for the transmission of the monetary policy of the ECB.
Real Disposable Income Divergence
Real disposable income per capita remains depressed, and much lower than before the financial crisis, in Italy and Spain. On the contrary it has risen in Germany and France. It is thus clear that the degree of monetary policy accommodation that is necessary to support real activity widely differs between the euro area countries. It can be confirmed by looking at the labour market.
Unemployment Divergence (Under Age 25)
While the unemployment rate is very low in countries like germany or the Netherlands, it remains very high in many peripheral countries, specially Italy. It is also very high in Spain and Greece. The most striking divergence is related to the unemployment rate of the young workers.
Mish Comments
Thanks to Eric Dor for another excellent article.
Fundamental Flaws of the Eurozone
I have comment on much of this before.
I sarcastically labeled interest rate policy as “One Size Fits Germany”. Policy that is appropriate for Germany is not appropriate for Italy, Spain, and Greece. Yet, here we are.
Target2 policy is another fundamental flaw of the Eurozone. How can Italy pay back 444 billion euros to creditors, primarily Germany? Spain owes over 400 billion. Germany is owed nearly a 900 billion euros.
Agricultural policy centers around saving the French farm to the detriment of literally everyone else.
Work rules vary widely. Italy and Greece are basket cases. So is France, just arguably no as bad.
Tax policy varies.
The EU leaders want a European army. Germany does not want to budget for it.
To be more precise Anne Kunz and Holger Zschäpitz co-authored an excellent article for Welt (in German) called the Interest Rate Business Model is Dead.
There are only two answers. One of them is very unsettling.
Ignorance
On Purpose
How is it that Draghi cannot see the damage negative interest rates do to German banks?
Both Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank have complained about negative interest rates.
And why can’t Draghi see that negative rates helped neither the Eurozone, nor Japan?
Alternatively, Draghi can see that negative rates hurt but he either doesn’t care or actually wants that outcome.
Counterproductive Policy
On September 10, Eric Dor, Director of Economic Studies at the IESEG School of Management in Paris emailed an article with some interesting charts regarding the Counterproductive Interest Rate Policy of the ECB.
Shortly after posting Dor’s take, Lacy Hunt at Hoisington Management, pinged me with these comments.
“Dor’s article is outstanding. This is consistent with the great theoretical economics of the late Stanford economist Ronald McKinnon who argued that even before interest rates fall below zero, the counterproductive feedback loops outweigh the benefits of the lower rates even if the interest rates are lower in real as well as nominal terms. If you are not familiar with McKinnon’s economics, I strongly urge you to do so.”
DiMartino asks “Can someone, ANYONE, please raise your hand …“
Before answering, please ponder a different question: What better way can there possibly be to get Germany to commingle debts and bail out Italy than to destroy German banks, putting the bailout on the backs of German citizens?
We have come around to the same spot with the same question but with more supporting charts from Dor.
A new round of food tariffs totaling $7.5 billion—imposed by the Trump administration last week on foods hailing from European Union member countries—is already impacting your wallet, USA Todayreports.
Targets of the new tariffs include Scotch, liqueurs, wines, pork products, cheeses, fruits, and seafood.
Those tariffs, paired with others already in place, are hitting American consumers where it hurts most. Even before the latest tariffs, food costs were nearly two percent higher last month than they were a year ago.
“New 25 percent U.S. tariffs on Italian cheese, French wine, Scotch whisky, British biscuits, Spanish olives and thousands of other European food products will lead to higher prices ahead of the holiday season and cost American jobs,” Reuters reports.
While awful, these tariffs could have been even worse. The Trump administration, ahead of the WTO ruling, signaled its intent to slap 100 percent tariffs on a host of E.U.-origin foods, including wines, cheeses, and olive oils, Salonreported last month before the WTO ruling.
The negative impact of these tariffs is already apparent.
A policy brief published last month by the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonprofit that focuses on trade issues, found the Trump “administration’s tariffs will have cost the average household $1,315 over a two-year period.”
The tariffs are sowing uncertainty at home. The Dallas Observerreports U.S. restaurateurs and grocers that sell E.U. goods are unsure who will eat the 25 percent tariffs—them, importers, consumers, or, as seems most likely, all of the above. Regardless, experts say they’ll hit U.S. small business particularly hard.
Unsurprisingly, the tariffs are also bad for E.U. food producers.
“French vintners are begging for government aid,” ABC News reports. “Italian farmers are scrambling for new export markets.”
The WTO’s green light for the U.S. to impose tariffs on E.U. goods was meant to punish the E.U. for illegally subsidizing aircraft maker Airbus. But with the WTO yet to rule on a European complaint about American government subsidies for U.S. aircraft maker Boeing, it’s likely the E.U. will soon get the green light to impose its own round of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. food producers.
This tit for tat doesn’t have a logical end point. Consider that the E.U. imposed tariffs on some American food products last year in response to U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs.
In addition to the E.U. food producers, the victims of these tariffs include American consumers—who now pay more for European goods—and U.S. producers, who will likely face their own tariffs down the road if the WTO rules, as expected, in the Boeing case.
In 2018, I lamented the fact Trump administration’s plans to impose a host of tariffs on Chinese goods—particularly food. Retaliatory Chinese tariffs followed. Tariffs, I wrote, “cost jobs; hurt domestic and foreign producers, consumers, and taxpayers; put the petty interests of government over those of the public; and are prone to spinning out of control.”
Then, in a column this summer, I noted that Trump already had doubled down on his anti-China tariffs, hurting U.S. farmers and consumers alike.
I also cautioned that things could get worse on the tariffs front. This month, they’ve done just that.
To be fair, the E.U. and China are just as wrongheaded to impose tariffs on U.S. foods as the U.S. is to impose tariffs on foods from the E.U. and China. Trade is good for everyone. Trade wars, like most real wars, ultimately don’t benefit anyone, save the saber-rattling populists and protectionists who support them.
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A new round of food tariffs totaling $7.5 billion—imposed by the Trump administration last week on foods hailing from European Union member countries—is already impacting your wallet, USA Todayreports.
Targets of the new tariffs include Scotch, liqueurs, wines, pork products, cheeses, fruits, and seafood.
Those tariffs, paired with others already in place, are hitting American consumers where it hurts most. Even before the latest tariffs, food costs were nearly two percent higher last month than they were a year ago.
“New 25 percent U.S. tariffs on Italian cheese, French wine, Scotch whisky, British biscuits, Spanish olives and thousands of other European food products will lead to higher prices ahead of the holiday season and cost American jobs,” Reuters reports.
While awful, these tariffs could have been even worse. The Trump administration, ahead of the WTO ruling, signaled its intent to slap 100 percent tariffs on a host of E.U.-origin foods, including wines, cheeses, and olive oils, Salonreported last month before the WTO ruling.
The negative impact of these tariffs is already apparent.
A policy brief published last month by the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonprofit that focuses on trade issues, found the Trump “administration’s tariffs will have cost the average household $1,315 over a two-year period.”
The tariffs are sowing uncertainty at home. The Dallas Observerreports U.S. restaurateurs and grocers that sell E.U. goods are unsure who will eat the 25 percent tariffs—them, importers, consumers, or, as seems most likely, all of the above. Regardless, experts say they’ll hit U.S. small business particularly hard.
Unsurprisingly, the tariffs are also bad for E.U. food producers.
“French vintners are begging for government aid,” ABC News reports. “Italian farmers are scrambling for new export markets.”
The WTO’s green light for the U.S. to impose tariffs on E.U. goods was meant to punish the E.U. for illegally subsidizing aircraft maker Airbus. But with the WTO yet to rule on a European complaint about American government subsidies for U.S. aircraft maker Boeing, it’s likely the E.U. will soon get the green light to impose its own round of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. food producers.
This tit for tat doesn’t have a logical end point. Consider that the E.U. imposed tariffs on some American food products last year in response to U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs.
In addition to the E.U. food producers, the victims of these tariffs include American consumers—who now pay more for European goods—and U.S. producers, who will likely face their own tariffs down the road if the WTO rules, as expected, in the Boeing case.
In 2018, I lamented the fact Trump administration’s plans to impose a host of tariffs on Chinese goods—particularly food. Retaliatory Chinese tariffs followed. Tariffs, I wrote, “cost jobs; hurt domestic and foreign producers, consumers, and taxpayers; put the petty interests of government over those of the public; and are prone to spinning out of control.”
Then, in a column this summer, I noted that Trump already had doubled down on his anti-China tariffs, hurting U.S. farmers and consumers alike.
I also cautioned that things could get worse on the tariffs front. This month, they’ve done just that.
To be fair, the E.U. and China are just as wrongheaded to impose tariffs on U.S. foods as the U.S. is to impose tariffs on foods from the E.U. and China. Trade is good for everyone. Trade wars, like most real wars, ultimately don’t benefit anyone, save the saber-rattling populists and protectionists who support them.
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Sikh Workers At Mafia-Backed Italian “Slave Farms” Are Starting To Fight Back
Sikh workers at mafia-backed “slave farms” in Italy are starting to speak out, according to a new article by The Times UK.
One worker who spoke to The Times and went by the name Ranju, said that he came close to suicide when he was forced to “drink from the cattle trough and eat scraps left for the hens”.
46 year old Ranju, an immigrant from Punjab, said:
“The owner beat me, showed me his gun and told me, ‘I’m with the mafia, and if you ever talk I will bury you in a ditch where your body will never be found’.”
Ranju is among about 22,000 other Sikhs who pick fruits and vegetables on farms around the city of Latina – many of whom are now starting to fight back against “slave-like” treatment by farmers, many of whom have mafia backing.
“There are plenty more out there like me who are afraid,” Ranju said.
After his employer was arrested, he joined a strike in Latina days ago where 3,000 Indian farm workers banded together and demanded an end to “years of exploitation”.
The strike came as a result of an incident on a farm near Terracina where the owner was accused of pressing a knife up against the throats of his Sikh workers. He was also accused of firing his shotgun at them while he forced them to work inhumane hours.
The area of Latina was drained by Mussolini and turned into farmland. One inscription in Sabaudia says the area was lifted from “thousands of years of lethargy and sterility”.
In the 1980’s, farmers in the area found cheap labor from migrants from Punjab, like Ranju. Ranju had initially left Punjab hoping to make more money for his wife and three children, but wound up as a prisoner after his employer took his residency documents and paid him just €100 per month.
After a Sikh strike in 2016, he finally went to the police. Marco Omizzolo, a sociologist who has held evening classes to inform the Sikhs of their rights, assisted him.
Omizzolo said: “Police found a pistol at the farm thought to have been used in the Calabrian mafia massacre in Duisburg in Germany in 2007, suggesting the owner really did have mob links.”
Omizzolo earned a medal from Italy’s president for helping the migrants – but standing up to the mob has its ugly points, too.
“In the last two years I’ve had animal blood dumped outside my house, cars destroyed and I need to keep the police informed of my movements. Farmers who aren’t involved with the mafia will often use mafia methods,” he said.
Sicilian, Calabrian and Naples mafias are all active in the area.
Fabio Ciconte, the head of charity Terra, which assists farm workers said: “Clans are also interested in making money from the entire farming sector, particularly the transport of food.”
A recent report estimated that mafia revenue from agriculture came in at €24.5 billion a year.
Gurmukh Singh, 46, the head of the regional association of Indian migrants in Sabaudia thinks that the Indian workers’ efforts are being undermined by other immigrant groups willing to work for low wages in the area. He said: “The Indians are standing up against exploitation but as long as the Bangladeshis and African asylum seekers accept €2 an hour we will be weak.”
Ciconte continued: “The Sikhs have understood they need to fight. But they have the advantage of living permanently in the area and picking greenhouse produce all year round. Contrast that with the Africans, Romanians and Bulgarians in Puglia, where 80 per cent of the picking is tomatoes outdoors, meaning the work is temporary and the workforce migrates. It’s much harder to organize.”
Near Foggia in Puglia, immigrants live in “filthy shanty towns which are regularly demolished by police.”‘
Near Sabaudia, Sikhs have converted a warehouse into a large temple. At the foot of their altar lies axes, arrows, swords, daggers and a sword – symbols that remind the temple’s congregation of past Sikh struggles in India.
“These show how we are a strong community with a big heart and can defend ourselves.”
Europe’s birthrate is among the lowest in the world. At 1.59 per year, the European Union’s current births are too low to sustain its survival. And while native birthrates have declined, Europe’s overall population continues to grow due to mass immigration.
For the younger generation in Europe, employment is either non-existent or so poorly paid that it doesn’t allow them the means to support themselves, let alone a prospective family. But Europe’s declining birthrate is by no means just a result of work precariousness—there’s a much deeper cause.
A 27-year-old conservative thought-leader in Italy and Europe, Francesco Giubilei, publisher of Future Nation magazine, says this crisis stems mainly from cultural and social factors. Today’s youth is taught by its parents, of the anti-traditionalist ’68er generation, that there is little intrinsic value in building a family. The consequence has been a generation that’s planning its lives without any aspirations to have children. Additionally, European youth are moving from rural areas to large cities in search of study and job opportunities. This has contributed to them leading atomized lives detached from community. Today’s youth feels that it doesn’t belong anywhere, and so why should they leave anything behind for a future generation?
“There is a total lack of perspective in my generation’s way of approaching life. They don’t see a future for themselves beyond the present moment,” Giubilei said.
“Furthermore, there’s the added factor of our provincial, rural areas disappearing into our cities. Our youth moves to study or to build work opportunities in a city, but the family isn’t factored into this equation. Many of them end up living individualistic lives with no proper direction beyond their careers.”
For politicians, the crisis of meaning among European youth isn’t an issue worth addressing. They see declining birthrates as a natural result of post-industrialized economies, where people living comfortable lives do not feel the need to have children. And importing a new generation of young people from abroad seems like a convenient solution to an aging European population that isn’t able to sustain itself.
As the German migration researcher Wolfgang Kaschuba, who works for the Berlin Institute for Empirical Integration and Migration Research, recently warned:
“If Germans want to maintain their economic well-being, we need about half a million immigrants every year. We need to guarantee that our society stays young, because it’s aging dramatically.”
Among European politicians, only the populists have been challenging this issue. In doing so, they’ve gained popularity among disaffected, working- and middle-class people.
These new leaders have no qualms about using the words “replacement migration” to describe how ruling elites prefer to address declining birthrates. Unlike in the United States, where such contentions are still controversial, European conservatives have brought them into the mainstream.
The leader of the Dutch conservative Forum for Democracy, Thierry Baudet, told The American Conservative:
“It’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s a state of belief of European leaders.”
He noted that “it’s important that we don’t replace the European population with foreigners.”
Similarly, a European member of Parliament for the anti-immigrant League party in Italy, Francesca Donato, told The American Conservative:
“We are not in favor of the replacement of the Italian population with foreigners. We want to preserve our national identity, culture, and history.”
She clarified that while “multiculturalism is welcome, it shouldn’t translate into complete replacement.”
The leader of the Spanish Vox party, Santiago Abascal, argued that immigration is a political euphemism for the trafficking of cheap labor into Europe so that multinational companies and financial interests can increase their profits:
“The establishment argues that our system must be maintained in the face of an aging population, but mass immigration renders work increasingly precarious.”
According to Abascal, the 2015 refugee crisis was used as a pretext to further the economic ambitions of Brussels bureaucrats at the expense of Europe’s working population, especially its youth.
Baudet also argues that establishment politicians push for immigration because they favor a globalized worldview under which national identities will disappear:
“They genuinely believe we should move beyond religious and national identities to become global citizens.”
Baudet, however, thinks such policies would be disastrous, not only because they risk plunging Europe into “tremendous conflict,” but also because they risk creating a “brain drain” from Africa and the Middle East.
The solution to this problem, many of these conservative leaders say, is to provide motivation and assistance to Europe’s young people so they have their own children. Abascal uses Hungary as a model, where, under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, families that have three or more children are given government grants to buy houses and no longer have to pay income tax. The state finances free nurseries, allowing women to re-enter the workforce without having to worry about childcare costs. In addition, Hungary has inscribed Christianity in its constitution to create a strong religious identity, providing its youth with a sense of direction and meaning.
The problem of low birthrates ultimately lies internally, within Europe’s culture and social life. A young generation that doesn’t aspire to have families and that’s increasingly alienated from any sense of community has driven much of the crisis. Whether Europe can be salvaged and revived is yet to be seen.
Bitcoin Tags $10.5k In “4th Largest Gain In History”
Starting around 9 am on Friday, a monster bid came into the crypto space, more specifically into Bitcoin, and launched the coin more than 40% in 16 hours to 10,490 by 1:50 am Saturday.
As of 6:30 am Saturday, the entire space is a sea of green…
Less than 24 hours ago, Bitcoin was trading under 7,600, consolidating in the range of 8,500 to 7,500 for 29 days, after a late Sept. plunge of more than 21%.
One Twitter user said: “$BTC has moved +42% today – 4th largest gain in history and largest since May/10/2011 (if comparing against daily returns). – 15th largest two-day gain in history, Nov/18/2013. Thank you China. President Xi is the true Crypto Dad.”
Some crypto traders have said the latest consolidation pattern is part of an over symmetrical triangle that could lead to higher prices in the future. Resistance is seen on a diagonal declining supply line, as made evident in the 1H19 +230% ramp, which found resistance around 11,000.
Bitcoin on a weekly timeframe holds a 50-day exponential moving average.
Beyond technical circles, the mood suggests a catalyst is needed to overcome this. This week, investor Mike Novogratz told mainstream media that new custody solutions for institutional investors could be the clinching factor.
“It’s going to need new energy to really make the big move,” he said in an interview with CNBC.
And how is Wall Street positioned? According to a new report from US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Friday, the market is net short Bitcoin futures for the week ending Tuesday. Non-commercial investors held a net short position of 770 Bitcoin futures contracts.
Finally, we note that this sudden surge comes as the hash-rate reaches record highs, suggesting miners remain bullish…
And Twitter/Square’s Jack Dorsey could not have been clearer: “We love you Bitcoin.”
No is an underrated word. When properly deployed, it has the potential to bring many extended and pointless conversations to an end. Conversations, for instance, over the merits of restrictions or policies that you would never obey in a thousand lifetimes.
But that means it must be a definitive no, not an ambiguous French non.
“Answering ‘non’ gives you the option to say ‘oui’ later,” explains the comedian Olivier Giraud about his countrymen’s often squishy refusals.
An ambiguous non isn’t a line in the sand; it’s a bargaining position for a better offer or a more generous bribe. That’s not the sort of no we’re discussing here. We’re talking about a hard no that offers a clear border defining the limits of what you’re willing to tolerate, beyond which you’ll resist by every means at your disposal.
When you’re invoking this sort of no, you shouldn’t get bogged down in debates over terminology, or effectiveness, or constitutional interpretations.
“The definition of what you want to ban is incoherent. You need to refine….”
“What does the research show about…?”
“Your take on the amendment ignores the long history of….”
When the stakes are high and you’re dealing with a non-negotiable matter of principle, what do you care about the opinions of social scientists, legal scholars, or expert nitpickers? You’ve already decided that compliance with this latest bit of presumptuous stupidity is out of the question. You’re not going to obey it, even if it makes it through the legislative or administrative process and even if it survives judicial review. Moreover, you plan to throw sand into the gears of the machinery of enforcement. Say so!
That no can be a matter of individual resolve, committing yourself to a course of refusal and noncompliance, or it can be a collective statement, which has the potential to magnify its clout. It might be a bit of both when great minds—or at least shared values—come together.
Canadian gun owners were largely on the same page when they refused to cooperate with their government’s effort starting in 1998 to register every long gun in the country. Officials spent years nagging recalcitrant citizens to fill out the required paperwork, even as the cost of the new bureaucracy—following the tradition of government expenditures worldwide—soared past original estimates of C$2 million to exceed C$1 billion by 2005, according to the government itself. In 2012, the registry was abolished amid questions as to why regulators were spending so much just to be ignored.
Joining with their Orthodox Jewish counterparts in 2018, New York Catholic leaders ordered their schools “not to participate in any review carried out by local public school officials” in response to a state scheme to give public school boards approval power over the curricula of the private schools with which they compete. As independent institutions boycotted the review process, they also battled regulators in court. This pushed the earliest possible implementation of the plan back to 2023. At which time—if they hold firm—their unified no will continue to frustrate meddling state officials.
From the New York example, we see that a line in the sand need not be an exclusive tactic. It’s possible to refuse to compromise or conform while also fighting on other fronts. This not only increases the likelihood of victory in the battle of wills but demonstrates to your opponents that scoring political and legal points will do nothing more than deliver them back to your original obstinate refusal to give them what they want.
Of course, there are many times when discussion and compromise should take precedence over saying no. Not every disagreement is a matter of fundamental principle. Some debates should hold out the possibility of meeting partway and splitting the difference. As a result, there are times when terminology, research, and interpretation do matter and should be subject to rigorous examination.
But in a world in which terms like common sense too often serve as covers for coercion and in which compromise is frequently a stand-in for slow-motion surrender, the power of no is underappreciated and underused. It’s a statement that not only are you unwilling to give your opponents a nibble of what they want so they can come back for more later—you’re prepared to extract a price from them if they continue their efforts.
So think it through and decide when and where your principles really matter. Then lay aside the phony arguments: Just say “no.”
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