Your Daily Census

Neil Reynolds makes an argument common among those few that support the government's move to a volountary census long-form:

Yet, as The Economist noted, the census is essentially recognized as obsolete in a growing number of countries – a conclusion that arises from the intuitive fact that the world is so filled with statistical data that it would be a greater public service to lessen the quantity than to increase it. Britain will hold its last census next year, as will Germany. Denmark hasn’t had a census for decades. Sweden, Norway and Finland retain only a rudimentary census. With its constitutional requirement of a room-by-room head count, the U.S. government spends $11-billion to count its population – $36 a head. Finland spends 20 cents a head.

I'm lazy this morning, so I'll just cut an paste a response from the comments at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative:

The Scandinavian countries can do this because they have central population registries where nearly all personal data can be found. The equivalent would be to merge health insurance databases, electoral rolls, drivers' registrations, social insurance databases, real estate records, and I'm sure plenty of other databases that I've forgotten. Not only does it go completely against the government's own privacy rationale, the mishmash of jurisdictional conflicts between the feds, provinces, and municipalities would be an operational nightmare.

And, operational nightmare or not, remember we're not being offered anything like the Scandinavian option: we're just getting the same old census, but made worse.

Anyway, that's the high-point of the Reynolds column. The rest is down hill, invoking Austrian Economist/Philosopher Frederich Hayek to argue that, basically, society should not think too much, and go with its gut on issues of vital importance. The simple answer to that is bullshit; when the Bank of Canada starts wondering if the census changes will impact their work of managing the Canadian economy via monetary policy, offering up quotes from a dead philosophers isn't going to satisfy.