Comment Central - Times Online - WBLG

A big welcome to Oliver Kamm

I am delighted to let Comment Central readers know about The Times's newest blog - Oliver Kamm has a new home.

Oliver joined the leader team last month and now his blog has been ported over to this site.

I have long regarded the Kamm site as one of the most stimulating on the web - intellectually acute, witty and almost always right (or correct as Oliver would rather I said).

It is a wonderful addition to the family.

Complaints Department

From time to time I receive emails and posts concerning my grammar or kindly pointing out typos. They are, just once in a while, a very tiny bit, erm, pompous.

Yesterday produced my favourite complaint so far:

Do you use a spell check when you right?

The author was not being ironic.

If George Orwell had blogged...

The author of 1984 may not have made it into cyberspace but you can still read his digital diaries.

Harry's Place gives a nice nod to the online Orwell project.

Definitely worth a look.

The first bloggers?

(Hat Tip: Gawker)

How popular is your name?

I'm past my peak.

Check out this amazing new tool to discover how popular your name is.

Check out this post

This is priceless

Well, this just hurts....

Hat Tip: Wonkette

A new arrival at The Times

If you've been reading Comment Central for a while you will be aware of my admiration for Oliver Kamm, as a columnist, author and blogger.

So I am really pleased to announce that Oliver will be joining the leader writers here at The Times from next Monday.

We will announce plans for his popular and respected blog in due course.

One to read at Red Box

We somehow missed this great snippet from Sam Coates. Could you help inspire Alistair Campbell?

When fighting the last war helps with the next

I can't quite work out, as a regular reader of Coffee House, how I missed this, but I did.

After my column last week, James Forsyth asked whether, politically, I am fighting the last war.

The assumption behind this question is that fighting the last war is a poor strategy. It is not at all clear that this assumption is correct.

When, say, predicting the outcome of a football game to be played at some point in the future, you know that the result will be the product of signal (which is the best side) and noise (the luck that may change a game over 90 minutes). It is impossible to be certain what the result might be, but the best way of predicting is using the results of previous games, properly weighted, over say two years.

In other words, given all the uncertainties that exist you are better basing your prediction of the future on your view of the past.

Fighting the last war is inferior to fighting the next war with full information on the next war. In practice you don't have such information. Therefore fighting the last war is often the best you can do.

Huff blows in and out of town

Arianna Huffington has been in town for a few days and posts on the trip.

Among her anecdotes is this:

The party's chairman, Caroline Spelman, is currently embroiled in Nannygate, accused of using public funds to pay her nanny to look after her children.

I got all the details on the scandal in the green room waiting to go on Newsnight, the influential BBC show that broke the story. Michael Crick, Newsnight's political editor predicted that Spelman wouldn't survive the controversy. "She's claiming the nanny handled administrative duties for her," he told me. "Can she type?" I asked.

Read the rest here.

Huff blows in and out of town

Arianna Huffington has been in town for a few days and posts on the trip.

Among her anecdotes is this:

The party's chairman, Caroline Spelman, is currently embroiled in Nannygate, accused of using public funds to pay her nanny to look after her children.

I got all the details on the scandal in the green room waiting to go on Newsnight, the influential BBC show that broke the story. Michael Crick, Newsnight's political editor predicted that Spelman wouldn't survive the controversy. "She's claiming the nanny handled administrative duties for her," he told me. "Can she type?" I asked.

Read the rest here.

One to listen to

This is a good thing, this is.

The Huffington Post has a new feature on its Off the Bus section. It is posting all the campaign press conference calls, allowing you to listen in, for instance, to Obama's (already near legendary) strategist David Axelrod spin the line.

A blog to bookmark

Be still our hearts. Whitehall's Most Fanciable MP has joined the blogging fraternity.

Click here for musings by Jeremy Hunt, Shadow Culture Secretary, on Britain's Got Talent, localist principles and Hamlet.

Hat Tip: Iain Dale's Diary

Vital statistics

A record month on Comment Central.

We had 608,143 page views and 491,351 visits.

The biggest story was the Obama vice presidential top ten picks.

A must-read this morning

The always brilliant A Don's Life blog excels itself today with this post.

What exactly should Londoners expect now they have a Classicist in County Hall?

Comment Central is murder

The New York Times thinks blogging is killing people.

(Hat Tip: Brett)

Listing on the Right

Forgive me, I want to take you back a couple of days to a truly excellent post I forgot to link to.

It was written by Tim Montgomerie on the Centre Right section of his Conservativehome site. And it tackles that most difficult question - when is it appropriate to treat a politician's private life as a matter of public concern?

I think Tim gets the balance just right. More usefully still he produces a checklist.

I have for some time been using a brilliant Malcolm Gladwell post to help make judgments about individual racial gaffes. I will now use Montgomerie in the same way.

Web warfare

Here's a new twist to celebrity blogging.

Rob Lowe - or Sam Seaborn as I prefer to call him - has published his ex-nanny's text messages on the Huffington Post.

Lowe and his wife are taking legal action against their nanny and the star has decided that he is going to use the internet for a full on attack. He sets out the truth as he sees it and even quotes the family Rabbi.

You can tell he's been working with Aaron Sorkin:

Everyone knows we live in a time where public figures are targets. But I also know of many people in everyday life who are paying the price of a climate where anyone can accuse anybody of anything, anytime, and hope for a big cash pay-off at the end. "Hush money" to just go away.

Well I won't go away. No one intimidates my family. My wife and I have many former and long term employees, all of whom know this woman, who can and will refute any claims of anything inappropriate in our home, or anywhere else. We will defend ourselves with vigor and without fear.

I could almost hear the West Wing theme music in the background.

It's an interesting turn this. Perhaps celebrities will start using blogs to try and take control of the way they are covered.

It's also an interesting turn for the Huffington Post. And some of those leaving comments don't like it.

But I was cheering him on. It's just what the web's for.

(Hat tip: Nicholas Troen)

An attack on British journalism

Was The Scotsman right to reveal that Samantha Power had called Hillary Clinton a 'monster'? Tucker Carlson thinks not.

Watch the political pundit take British journalism to task for low standards. And tell us your thoughts.

Hat Tip: Srabani

Alice Fishburn

A taxing mistake

Matthew Elliott of the Taxpayers Alliance has posted on Conservativehome in response to my article on Tory spending plans.

He says he tells his staff:

Our mission will be complete when the Comment Editor of The Times writes an article in favour of lower taxes.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh.

Look, there's really no point having a debate unless we are listening carefully to each other's points.

I am constantly arguing for lower taxes.

What I am arguing against is the Tories going into an election offering an upfront overall tax cut. This is, for heaven's sake, an entirely different point.

If you're happy and you know it....

An interesting observation from Andrew Sullivan. As he notes, one for the 'duh' category.

A very good spot

This is hilarious.

Stats for February

Just a quick note to let you know that February was another record month for Comment Central.

Readership has been climbing rapidly and last month there were 425,003 page views from 258,391 unique users.

The most read post was Which of these people did the photographer think was a hero?

Laugh along with the blogging bureaucrat (yes...really)

Here's a new blog for you to enjoy - Civil Serf.

The author is a 33 year old former private sector employee with what I would guess is an upper middle ranked Whitehall civil service job. The blog is her diary - reflections on boring meetings, poor management and so on.

It's really witty and observant, both entertaining and an insight into the bureaucratic world. As well as making me laugh it told me things I should have known but didn't - for instance that civil servants in different departments are paid different wages to do the same job.

I started with a post on expenses and just kept going.

(Hat Tip: Hugo Rifkind)

Update: I really must keep up

A new political term - the Fundamental Heffer Error

Debating his recent "John Redwood must be Shadow Chancellor" column with Iain Dale, Simon Heffer says this:

The only person John Redwood frightens are the thickos currently in the Shadow Cabinet who are terrified of his intellect.

This is plainly and obviously untrue. And it is an untruth of a type one frequently encounters in the debate on the future of the Conservative Party.

Simon is confusing what he wishes were the case with what is actually the case. He may wish that John Redwood did not frighten anyone politically, but plainly and obviously he does. Simon's belief that such people are thickos does not change the fact that they exist in large numbers.

You see this mistake repeated often. People argue that a policy is popular when what they really mean is that they believe the policy is right. But a policy can be right and unpopular.

I, for instance, believe in a one-off state payment to encourage co-habiting people to get married. I know, however, that polling suggests this doesn't enjoy widespread support. I might argue for it, then, on the grounds that it is good policy, but not on the grounds that it would help the Tory opinion poll rating.

I have decided to call confusion between believing a policy to be right and believing it popular the Fundamental Heffer Error.

Bloggers of the world, unite!

Jay Adelson wants to hear your voice. And mine.

The chief executive of Digg talks to Times Online about the importance of blogs and the democratisation of information today.

Listen here. Then let us know what you think. And him. Hey, the World (Wide Web)'s your oyster.

Mine didn't

Was there ever a more Iain Dale headline than this?

My Shakespearean drama: Act II

Oh dear. Stephan calls me a rat. And now Iain Dale amusingly calls us both camp old queens.

Iain does his best to make us both look ridiculous, and probably succeeds. But I don't agree that, as his blog suggests, that we were arguing over nothing.

To recap - I argue against making a specific, upfront, overall tax cut promise. Stephan disagrees.

Iain puzzlingly says this:

I am pushed to remember any party in this country which has EVER promised up front tax cuts in its manifesto. If I am right, it seems this spat is over nothing.

Well, er, I remember and without being required to rely on any great reservoirs of historical knowledge.

The Conservatives promised specific, upfront, overall tax cuts in 2001 and 2005. That, Iain, is what we are arguing.

The critical point about George Osborne's tax promises so far is that while they are specific and they are upfront, they are not overall tax cuts. He pledges offsetting increases. And Osborne's general lower tax pledge is overall, but not specific and upfront.

It seems from his post as if Iain is an ally on this. I wish he was right that no one else disagreed with it.

And as for Iain's request that Stephan and I "kiss and make up", would it be alright Iain if we just made up?

The rat's right of reply

In a short, but remarkably undignified, post on Conservative Home, Stephan Shakespeare (who is 49 years old and owns a business and everything) calls me a "rat", a "former jobber for the left", a "careerist" (uh?) and a "chameleon". Among other things.

And I love you too, darling.

Aside from remarking that this is the sort of rhetoric that demented Marxist sects sink to just before they disappear, I will resist the temptation to reply in terms.

Instead let me deal with the substance of the argument.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a column for The Times on the changing face of the right all over the world. Stephan is writing in reply to this.

He starts by saying that I appear only to be interested in winning, not in principle:

Just once I want to hear the chameleons argue as if they care about something other than the mere game,

as he charmingly puts it.

Would that it were possible merely to engage other conservatives on policy and principle. Sadly, there are so many misconceptions about electoral reality that they have to be tackled.

Dispelling illusions about the desires of voters is a vital part of the argument.

Those who wish conservatives to resist any change, persist in arguing that a traditionalist position is a vote winner. It isn't. And that has to be stated robustly. 

Stephan goes on to write something that unintentionally rather makes my point.

He states that:

There is something bordering on intellectual dishonesty in Danny Finkelstein using John Howard's election defeat as evidence that a lower tax agenda should be sidelined.

Hilariously, in a sentence about intellectual dishonesty he hasn't correctly represented my argument. What I actually said was this:

Always an automatic crowd-pleaser in the past, it [tax cuts] isn't working quite as reliably as it used to. John Howard, for instance, lost in Australia despite his promises.

This is simply a fact. But it is one that many don't wish to acknowledge. Why? Because they are absolutely, but incorrectly, convinced that making an upfront tax cut promises (that is specific promises to cut the overall tax burden by a set amount) is a run away winner.

Any fact that gets in the way of this argument is denied. It is frequently, and ridiculously, asserted, for instance, that William Hague and Michael Howard didn't really campaign to cut taxes.

Here though is the kicker - one of the reasons why the upfront tax cuts promise wouldn't work electorally is that that making such a promise would be wrong. In other words you can't simply separate electoral and principled considerations.

Conservatives have gone to the country twice promising to net off tax cuts in the first budget against extremely shaky savings proposals. This did not amount to a proper strategy for lowering tax. And I doubt very much the ability of an opposition party to create a robust budget while out of power.

This, incidentally, was a major reason why Margaret Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe did not make such a promise.

The alternative idea, of promising tax cuts on the assumption that they will pay for themselves through increased growth  (a particular favourite of Conservative Home), would not work electorally either. Why? The voters would doubt that the politicians could be confident of making up the revenue. And they would be right. Again - principle and electoral considerations.

And the same applies on issue after issue.

Good insults though, Stephan. "Rat". I love it.

Red Box, Red Box, read all about it

I hope you are reading Red Box, the new blog of my colleague Sam Coates. If not you will miss priceless post intros. Here's how a post on the latest speech by the Chief Secretary of the Treasury begins:

When Andy Burnham's now wife went on ITV's Blind Date many years ago, she picked Will from Surrey. It didn't last, and he went on to become a Tory party communication chief.

Tony Blair and a delegation of darts players

I hope you are enjoying Sam Coates's new Times blog direct from the lobby of Parliament.

I like this Red Box story:

As Parliament prepares for one of the most important Prime Minister's Questions since the last one, a tip for MPs who get chosen to ask a question: when you're on your feet, make sure you ask Gordon Brown for a personal meeting. He will find it very difficult to say no.

At one such recent meeting with three Tory MPs, the Prime Minister regaled them with a tale of how he used to do exactly that while Margaret Thatcher was in Number 10.

Brown, then a cunning backbencher, would test her courtesy to the maximum by standing up every six months (the minimum gap stipulated by her office) and ask to see her.

He would then go in, talk to her, issue a press release and make a big deal of the meeting to his constituents and party. Brown said she probably later regretted pledging always to say yes to personal meetings, but couldn't find a way to get out of it.

When I worked on PMQs we once playfully asked Tony Blair to see a delegation of darts players and listen to their representations. He had to agree.

As Parliament prepares for one of the most important Prime Minister's Questions since the last one, a tip for MPs who get chosen to ask a question: when you're on your feet, make sure you ask Gordon Brown for a personal meeting. He will find it very difficult to say no.

At one such recent meeting with three Tory MPs, the Prime Minister regaled them with a tale of how he used to do exactly that while Margaret Thatcher was in Number 10.

Brown, then a cunning backbencher, would test her courtesy to the maximum by standing up every six months (the minimum gap stipulated by her office) and ask to see her.

He would then go in, talk to her, issue a press release and make a big deal of the meeting to his constituents and party. Brown said she probably later regretted pledging always to say yes to personal meetings, but couldn't find a way to get out of it.

Gross news about the Saudis

I always pay attention to Tom Gross and his MiddleEast Dispatches. There are always interesting pieces of information to be hoovered up.

Take a look for instance at this.

A poll of 1,004 Saudis shows 81.7 per cent have a very unfavourable opinion of Jews, 51.3 per cent oppose any peace treaty with Israel and want to go on fighting until it ceases to exist and 52 per cent want Saudi Arabia to have nuclear weapons.

Oh great.

The complete Playboy list: Can you find a weirder Wikipedia entry?

Now let's see, how did I come across it? I've forgotten. But Wikipedia has a list of models who have appeared in Playboy, sorted by place of birth.

So I now know that the one Belgian model to appear in the magazine, Hedy Scott (Playmate of the month June 1965), was born in Walloon Brabant and appeared in an episode of The Munsters.

Can anyone find a more pointless Wikipedia entry? Post your discoveries.

What's the world's longest blog post?

I am on the hunt. I want to find the world's longest blog post. That is the post where the text and the comments together exceed the word length of any other.

The search is prompted by the motto post, now 22,000 words long. I was informed that though more than 1,000 comments may be a Times record, the length doesn't come close.

Ruth Gledhill's Dawkins debate post is 110,000 words long (with comments), Charles Bremner has reached 60,000 words and Ed Gorman 47,000 words.

Yet nothing on our site reaches the length of Errol Morris's three-part post about two photographs from the Crimean War, which ended up at 212,000 words including comments.

That's nearly half as long as War and Peace.

So I am looking for nominations from all over the world. Between us we will track it down, I'm sure.

Is this the world's most distinguished blog?

Following the news I relayed yesterday - that Gary Becker is to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom - I find that Becker is not just a Nobel prize winner. He's also a blogger.

Together with federal circuit judge Richard Posner, Becker's blog answers the big questions you've been discussing over breakfast. Here are some sample post titles:

Rising Food Prices and What That Means

Should Hosts Be Liable for Serving Liquor to Guests Who Cause Accidents While Driving under the Influence?--And Other Issues of Third-Party Liability

Globalisation and Inequality

Now this blog isn't one of those post-every-three-months-affairs. The pair posted ten pretty solid original articles in October, each several hundred words long.

Can any reader point to a more distinguished blog?

More on the figures...

I think a reasonable rule of thumb in politics is that when Chris Dillow and I agree on something we are right.

So I was pleased to see his post on the sums adding up.

What, really?

Tyler Cowen, master of the Marginal Revolution blog, has found this amazing story in the The Boston Globe about suicide help-lines:

In 723 of 1,431 calls, for example, the helper never got around to asking whether the caller was feeling suicidal.  And when suicidal thoughts were identified, the helpers asked about available means [like whether they owned a gun] less than half the time.  There were more egregious lapses, too: in 72 cases a caller was actually put on hold until he or she hung up. Seventy-six times the helper screamed at, or was rude to, the caller. Four were told they might as well kill themselves.

There were 33 evident on-line suicide attempts, yet only six rescue efforts, sometimes because the caller ended the communication.  In one case, a caller who'd overdosed passed out, yet the helper hung up.

Jaw-dropping.

Murad Ahmed

Given the choice...

The wonderful Marginal Revoultion blog links to a great post from a fun blog with a great title:

From The Archives - blogging about bureaucracy until it gets me laid

Enough superlatives? OK, I'll stop. Good though the post is, the blogger has missed the point.

From The Archives is writing about choice in healthcare. She argues that the case collapses once you begin to model the behaviour of individuals properly:

People live in denial, do not do good risk analysis (as evidenced by my erratic use of bike helmets.) They do not conscientiously save against medical emergencies, even though they could.

They do not have the capacity to compare fancy-dancy medical treatments (I should figure out what chemo regimen is best for me? I DO NOT WANT TO, because that is outside my expertise and BORING. I want to trust an expert, if it comes to that), especially if the pain has already started. They do not have any interest in comparing not-fancy treatments.

When I broke my arm, I realized I had no information whatsoever on which of the four local emergency rooms had good reputations. None. I had never cared until it was too late. I derive zero utility from comparison shopping for health care; I want someone else to handle it.

I figure people are roughly like me, non-savers, bad risk assessment, more than willing to delegate their health care. (I am not willing to delegate my fitness or nutrition, but that is different from disease or injury.)

You know what makes good sense for that model of the individual? Government based health care that does a decent job by me. You know what doesn't make sense? For profit insurance agencies who do not have my best interests at heart.

This all makes perfect sense. And choice advocates should read and understand.

Choice-advocates routinely present choice as if it something people want.

Wrong. Choice is a cost not a benefit. What the consumer wants is the perfect product, tailored to them, at a price just right and chosen by someone else.

But this won't happen, of course.

So while From The Archives understandably can't be bothered to make a choice, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be asked to do so. Only if they painstakingly make the choice will the outcome be satisfactory.

Giving choice to consumers is loading a task on them. The benefit to them is improved healthcare or schooling. If we choice-advocates understood this better we might stand a better chance of winning the argument.

Is John McCain really over?

In case you don't get time to read Republican guru Peggy Noonan today (she's writing about the latest candidate debate), this was funny and interesting:

John McCain seems liberated by loss. Once he was the front-runner, then he was over. Unburdened by the pressure to do well, he has rediscovered the pleasures of the trail. The other day when a student was impertinent, he pleasantly responded, "Thanks for the question, you little jerk."

It reminded me of the time Mayor Rudy Giuliani told an insistent radio caller who pressed for the legalization of ferrets that he probably cared about the issue because he was insane.

It's a long shot, I grant, but it does make me wonder whether it's really over for McCain. He is ill-suited to being a front runner but makes a brilliant insurgent. Circumstances have forced him back into that role.

When you look at the Republican race and see Rudy Giuliani out in front, you have to calculate that there is at least one shock out there before we get to convention time.

Why not a resurgent McCain?

Now Jay Cost argues that being a moderate can work in the primaries but that being a maverick doesn't. Voters need a swift way of understanding what a candidate stands for. They haven't time for a maverick.

That's true unless Republican voters are actually looking for unpredictability, surprise, excitement, being different. Being a maverick may be a poor shorthand description if you're trying to pin down the candidates, but it is a good shorthand for unpredictable excitement.

Is it so impossible to believe that Republicans arrive in the Spring dissatisfied with their front-runners and pessimistic about victory and conclude that a gamble might be worth it.

I know, I know. But I'm just saying it could happen.

Check it

Clive Davis has found a video of Ali G interviewing "Norman" Chomsky. Watch it here.

The economics of Senator Craig

Senator Larry Craig is out of the door, following his antics in a public toilet. He is said to have signalled he was up for the cup by tapping the foot of the man in the next cubicle. Who was a policeman.

But over on Marginal Revolution Tyler Cowen isn't concerned about the salacious details. He's wondering how such conventions get started.

More and more on Diana

If Diana fatigue hasn't set in yet you might enjoy the miscellany of articles on the Britannica Blog's Diana and the Cult of Celebrity Forum

Robbie Millen

Driven to distraction, but not to death

From the Marginal Revolution blog I learn of an interesting new study. Here are the first two paragraphs of the press release:

It's conventional wisdom that talking on cell phones while driving is risky business, but two University of California, Berkeley, graduate student economists report that a spike in cell phone use in recent years and on weekday evenings is not matched by an increase in fatal or non-fatal car crashes from 2002-2005.

Their findings, published on the Web site of the American Enterprise Institute-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, run counter to the conclusions of more than 125 other studies, 70 percent of Americans in a 2003 Gallup Poll who said drivers on cell phones cause accidents, and the reasoning behind complete or partial bans on using cell phones in at least 14 states. The issue is on the agenda in several foreign countries as well.

The paper itself can be found here.

The authors of the research sound shocked by their findings. And anyone who has used a mobile phone while driving, however briefly, will be surprised too. Holding your phone and calling is very distracting.

So why the finding?

Two simple words - risk compensation. A study of the direct effect of phone use on driving does not take into account what drivers do when not using their phones. They may, for instance drive faster and more dangerously.

Memo to Tories

Tim Montgomerie plays host to some of my words of advice to David Cameron.

The politics of Planet Osborne

Fascinating post by Tim Montgomerie on Comment is Free. He starts by endorsing (as I do) the need for a low tax economy and then concludes:

Why George Osborne is right. Speaking on this morning's Today programme, the shadow chancellor declined to say that he would embrace John Redwood's proposals. If John Redwood believes that lower taxation is essential to provide growth, Mr Osborne wants to wait until the proceeds of growth are available before he'll start to do something about the highest tax burden in British history.

Although I'm intellectually on Planet Redwood, I think the politics of Planet Osborne are more sensible.

For the last 18 months, Osborne and David Cameron have consistently said that there will be no upfront promises of tax cuts unless they are paid for by commitments to increase taxation on other things. We may therefore see promises of tax breaks for marriage and businesses, but they will be offset by increases in taxation of, for example, alcohol and air travel. Mr Osborne cannot embrace Mr Redwood's recommendations immediately without looking weak and inconsistent.

Big tax cuts will have to wait until the Conservative party is in office and then Chancellor Osborne will start to share the proceeds of growth between lower taxation and higher public spending. That's what I hope for anyway.

Why is this significant? Because it has been the subject of a long standing debate between Tim and I. We've done it online. We've done it on the radio.

And now, if I haven't misunderstood, it seems as if he has shifted his position. I am pleased because he's both thoughtful and influential, and I think his endorsement makes it a great deal easier for the Tory Party to pursue a sensible strategy.

I'm a situationist. Are you?

Norman Geras and Chris Dillow, two of the best bloggers out there, are having a disagreement and I feel I ought to step in and sort it out.

Chris defends Margaret Thatcher's assertion that said "there is no such thing as society". Chris says:

I'm surprised this line arouses so much hostility, as it's the only intelligent thing the wretched woman ever said.

He argues that everything starts with the individual.

Norm replies with an analogy:

Is the game of cricket - or, for that matter, a game of cricket - no more than what the individuals playing it do? I would say not; because it is also constituted by a set of rules, such that if you change one of these rules the game becomes different. True, it's individuals who apply and interpret the rules and who follow them. But the rules aren't the people, and the rules are part of what the game of cricket is. This is not reducible, therefore, to individual actions and nothing but; and there are other things than individual actions that have real social effects, even if only via those individual actions.

I have to side with...Norm. And here's why.

I am a situationist. I believe that understanding an individual's disposition does not lead directly to an understanding of how they will behave. For that you need to understand their situation. Behaviour is a result of all sorts of pressures and incentives derived from your relationship with others. If you want to change behaviour you might (might) be better tackling institutions and group norms than trying to alter the disposition of each individual.

Thus, the statement "there is no such thing as society" is profoundly unhelpful in terms of understanding behaviour and changing it.

More useful tips

How to escape from a sinking car.

(Hat Tip: Rebecca's pocket)