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Perhaps it is the little things that gradually turn people against the priggish, curtain twitching statists who cannot bare the idea of people doing as they please.

People generally shrug wearily at the annoying impositions and regulations that grow by the year but that is why it is important that folks like us and journalists like Tom Utley let it be known that it is not alright that these things happen. We also need to convince people that those who enforce and apologise for the endless regulations are not alright either, they are psychologically twisted by compulsions to impose their will on others. Perhaps it will be when enough of society see the idea of prohibiting people from doing peaceably doing consensual things as the psychologically disordered behaviour that it is will real progress be possible.

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In a land where Mormons, Muslims, and masochists walk side by side, and none is specially positioned to certify the correct concept of value, the role of government is not to pick a philosophy and shove it down our throats. It is to provide a reasonably neutral framework that allows each of us to pursue our ends peacefully in the light of our own convictions about the good. There’s a reason liberal democracies get top marks in happiness

- The always highly readable Will Wilkinson, of the CATO thinktank and blogger, dissecting UK economist Richard Layard's argument in favour of more state intervention and higher taxes to make us all happier (yes, really).

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Guy Herber's excellent article The public mood (while the public moo-ed) got me thinking about the nature of the 'Radical Centre'.

The Radical Centre seem to have the same obsession with control that the fascists and communists had but unlike them, it is control for control's sake rather than in the service of some clear ideology: there is no Blairite or Clintonite (or even 'Bushite') 'The Communist Manifesto' or 'Mein Kampf'. They do not seek the triumph of Volk or the dictatorship of the proletariat, they just seek to replace all social interactions with politically mediated interactions. They seek to regulate everything via a total state that does not organise mass rallies or collectivise farms, it just wants a world in which nothing whatsoever is private, everything is political. Their symbol is not the Hammer and Sickle or the Swastika, it is the CCTV camera.

Perhaps this also explains the radical centre's transcendent hatred of the USA's system of checks and balances: the US Bill of Rights takes whole sections of civil society and tries to place them outside politics (free speech, the right to have the means to defend yourself etc.). Sure, it fails miserably as often as it succeeds but at least the notion that not absolutely everything is subject to politics is part of the American cultural DNA and that, rather than the US government's policy towards, well, anything, is what makes the US anathema to the Radical Centre (including the US Radical Centre).

The Radical Centre has also been called 'Authoritarian Populism' because it seeks to impose the popular will by force and it does not much care what that will is. Just as liberty for liberty's own sake is the objective of the Classical Liberal/Libertarian rather than some 'overarching narrative' as was the case with the radical statist left and statist right in the corpse filled 20th century, the Radical Centre seek control for control's own sake with no particular grand reason in mind other than to perpetuate a political class whose reason for existence is to make decisions about other people's lives.

The reason they dislike us so much is that to attack regulatory statism is to attack these people's very reason to exist and we challange them on a profound psychological level. They need to control other people just as we need to control our own lives.

The Radical Centre is our demonic reflection.

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I am feeling less of a lone loony than I did. After a decade of my saying the key thing wrong with the demon eyes campaign was that the slogan ought to have been: 'New Labour: Old Danger' because the electorate should not have the purported newness reinforced, more and more people in the chattering classes seem to be accepting that there is a danger. Even such fringe lefty agitators as Clifford Chance LLP have offered severe warnings about the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. Too late?

The War on Liberty may never end, but it became a general action only in the 90s - just about the time, the Wall being down, and the net routing round borders and censorship, we free-lifers had begun to feel we were winning. Now I find I am doing my bit with NO2ID and we are gearing up for a ten-year campaign. Grand constitutionalist coalitions are being proposed left, right, and centre (which I'm sure are meritorious). The differences between Peter Hitchens and Mark Thomas begin to be indistinguishable when the establishment is of the extreme centre...

What worries me is that this ferment is still superficial, a speck of mould on Mr Blair's Horlicks. It concerns the tiny minority of the population that reads the serious press, say 10% - and of those only the avid followers of politics, maybe a quarter of that. The readers and writers of blogs are fewer still, and more introrse.

The mass of the population of Britain is nescient, complacent, and has no interest in the abstractions of liberty, or the threats from power assumed only to be threats to others, to bad people. Many people are happy to claim the status of an 'ordinary' person, with "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" from officialdom, while being paradoxically susceptible to fears of everything else. Passively concerned with material welfare, security against virtual risks, and gossip, they graze and are milked as the livestock of the state.

This is Foucault's concept of governmentality in action. Not, pace his fans on the left, a neo-liberal order, but a post-liberal order in which the foundational institutions of liberalism - liberty and individuality, rule of law, the separation of private and public life, a civil society and a political sphere distinct from one another - have ceased to have a meaning for even the bulk of the middle-classes.

Where is the cattle-prod that will change the public mood?

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I am just as keen on universal civil liberties as the next Samizdatista, however I must concede that the case of India vis-à-vis the Danish cartoons made me briefly question my blanket commitment to the freedom of the press. I yearn for a major Australian newspaper to have the stones to print these cartoons in self defence and defiance, however I would argue that any editor of an Indian publication who allows them to be published is astonishingly irresponsible, given India's history and continuing record of bloody communal violence. If these cartoons found their way into a publication with a moderate degree of circulation, the question would not be "will there be deaths?", but "how many?" Upon reflection, I certainly do not believe that government censorship is the answer, however it is marginally more justifiable there than in any other nation I can think of. Because of this, it is crucial that Indian editors exercise their judgement wisely - and not publish the cartoons. Hopefully there will come a time when India is not the exception (regarding this issue) amongst countries governed by the rule of law.

I should mention that I have huge faith in the wisdom of Indians.

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Mick Hartley yesterday blogged, in response to this, about the slippery slope that the smoking ban is towards the top end of:

My point isn't that there's no truth in this. Of course there is. We know nicotine is addictive, never mind the whole nervous what-to-do-with-my-hands-in-this-tense-social-situation stuff which adds to the compulsion. But when you start going down this road, where do you stop? The more we find out about neurology and psychology the more we discover all these compulsions and genetic predispositions and all the rest of it, and behaviour which used to be seen as a matter of moral choice gets therapeutised as a manifestation of some syndrome or other. Antisocial bastard? He's got mild Asperger's Syndrome. Greedy pig? A compulsive eating disorder. Arrogant sod? Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Carry on and ultimately, at some level where Buddhism meets neurophysiology, maybe all our decisions are illusory, and the active responsible agent who's supposed to be making all these personal choices just disappears.

Great stuff, but I'm not sure that I entirely agree. If this was indeed the slippery slope involved, I would be with Mick Hartley in wanting us to stay at the top of it. But I don't think it is. I think the smoking ban is about pollution, and about the way that pollution is seen as not being a property rights issue, but instead as a criminal assault issue. Blowing smoke at someone is now seen as like stabbing them. The result is similar; it just takes a little longer. Next on this slippery slope are not individual behaviours, like being a greedy pig, so much as other smoke-belching activities, like driving cars and airplanes, with the rules of what exactly constitutes "smoke" being ever more tightly written.

After all, smoking has been turned from a mere habit into a crime by this ban. And crimes are all about the individual responsibility of the criminals who commit them. I do not hear anyone saying that smoking is an illness, the way they do about drinking alcohol too regularly and too much.

You can argue, and I do argue, that "passive smoking", like smoking itself, is something you do, and consent to doing, by being near smokers rather than keeping away from them, which you can do if property rights are allowed to operate, and to create areas where smoking is forbidden by the property owner. As Mick Hartley says, in circumstances like that,: "you turn around and go elsewhere".

But what about people who are obliged, in various degrees, to consort with smokers? Does the fact that a battered wife "consents" to being abused (by not earlier abandoning the abusive relationship) excuse the abuser, when the battered wife finally gives up on the relationship, and calls in the police and presses charges? And what about children raised by smokers? Is that not like beating them every day for no reason? That is the parallel that we now find ourselves arguing about.

And if the argument is that cars and airplanes stink up the entire planet, nobody has anywhere to go to escape from that kind of repeated assault, if that is what it is. So there is no consent argument against banning those nozious practices. Collectivists love pollution, because pollution often is collective, that is, hard to avoid.

So if you want to apply the "what next?" argument to the smoking ban, think noxious fumes, and also things like evil electrical effects from phones, power stations, heaters, carpets, etc. Actually don't. Don't give them ideas.

Where neurology arguments might push us down a slope is in those areas and arguments where it is said that this or that crime should actually be less of a crime than it is now. Things like small robberies committed by the unemployed, by ethnic minorities, or by the physically handicapped, etc. Then, I think that Mick Hartley's argument would be spot on. But smoking is not that kind of issue at all. Not at the moment anyway.

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On the Adam Smith Institute blog, Eamonn Butler points out that millions of people in the USA who vote Republican and Democrat nevertheless subscribe to values which are broadly 'libertarian'.

And of course when you add in the millions who decline to vote at all not (just) because of apathy but because there is no party which really reflects their world view (and that may well include the US Libertarian Party), it does make you wonder at the disconnect between those numbers and what you see reflected in the media and political system.

I am often asked why so many libertarians/classical liberals/minarchists are averse to pursuing careers in politics and I usually reply that the question is like asking why so many honest people do not pursue careers in mugging and armed robbery.

This is why we are at an inherent disadvantage against statists when playing by their rules and why I have long suspected that the idea of small-state parties may be a waste of time*. The type of people who are attracted to politics are almost always psychologically predisposed to solutions which are force based as a preference to some social solution, particular as it is rare for force to be effectively directed back at them personally in a non-abstract way. As I have said before, people who go into politics generally have more in common with members of street gangs (although with less need for personal fortitude) both psychologically and morally than with most of the people who vote for them. Do Tory or Republican politicians really want to wield significantly less power over the nation when it is their turn in power compared to their Labour or Democrat counter-parts? It is very hard indeed to be a genuinely decent person and a politician.

* = I would be more than happy to be convinced I am wrong on this

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To impose some perspective: it would take 58 terrorist attacks with the mortality rate of the 7/7 attacks for the toll to reach 3221, which is the number of Britons killed on the roads in 2004. It would take many more terrorist attacks to approach the number killed in the Blitz.

Our jitters about boarding underground trains may obscure, but they do not remove, the fact that the 'war on terrorism' is for us a very low casualty operation when compared to, say, the great wars of the twentieth century. If 7/7 evoked the Blitz spirit, it did so with an ounce of the Blitz threat. Our leaders and parts of the media, then, proffer a fear of death that is far removed from the chances of us dying. If we understand that the enjoyment of life in a democratic society comes from our liberties, we should see any reduction in our rights not as a sacrifice to security but as a give-away to those obsessed with death.

— Ben Walford on Spiked.

How many 7/7s make a Blitz? Roughly 775.

Totting up the figures given by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, gives us the total murders achieved by the most sustained bombing campaign directed against any liberal state. Deaths since September 1993 (not counting the bombers): 855. Real wars kill more in a single air-raid. Israel has over 500 deaths in road accidents every year. Even there, you are in more danger from your car than a suicide bomber.

Me, I am taking the tube.

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The contributors and most of the commenters to this site actively defend the free speech rights of fanatics, bigots, blasphemers and pornographers. Where the shield wall falters, that is where we go to fight. I think we have the right to be proud of that.

But I wonder if even we do not still have our sacred cows - sacred cows that need to be slaughtered.

I am fully aware that the disclosure I am about to make may cause outrage even among people who think of themselves as absolutists when it comes to free speech. I must apologise in advance to Perry and the others who have extended me the hospitality of this site for what may seem to be an abuse of it. I realise that there are some people who may think that, having said in public what I am about to say, they can never associate with me again. Forgive me. I feel I have to say this.

"Mornington Crescent" is not a real game. The rules and strategies you hear quoted by players are made up on the spot. Its only purpose is to have a laugh at the expense of those not in the know.

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"Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. No one can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the real historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us."

Ludwig von Mises, Socialism, (as quoted in The Wisdom of Henry Hazlitt, page 347, also well worth reading).

That passage, while written in the 1940s, carries a certain resonance now, I think.

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Toby Baxendale and I are working on an internet portal called The Liberal Online. It needs writers – maybe you could be one of them? The portal's intellectual starting point is with the philosophical radicals and Manchester liberals from the 19th century. Its motto is "For free markets not corporatism".

We are looking for a mix of article sizes. We would really love 800-1600 word essays which will be featured on the home page. But we are also after shorter, blog-length pieces too. There are going to be themed blog sections: there's one already called Rip Mix Burn which discusses intellectual property. There is going to be one on war (we're thinking of calling it War and Peace: is there a better name?) but from a Cobdenite point of view. Think Sean Gabb and Peter Oborne, not that fat guy who does films. Nutty wierdness is not what we are after, but well-argued radicalism.

We would like to get new talent, undiscovered people of great brilliance. Contributions are unpaid. If you would like to get in touch, drop an e-mail to alex @ theliberalonline.org

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A Samizdata editor sent me a communication from his current secret mountain lair, drawing my attention to this item from the Boston Review The Drifters: Why the Supreme Court makes justices more liberal by Jon D. Hanson and Adam Benforado.

Justices O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy—though they remain tied to their conservative mainstays on certain issues, such as federalism—both seem to have embarked on similar leftward journeys, particularly with respect to individual rights and liberties. Appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, O’Connor struck a resoundingly conservative chord in her early opinions on women’s and racial-minority rights, only to join with liberal colleagues in cases touching on the same issues over the last 15 years—most strikingly in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld Roe’s central holding, and Grutter v. Bollinger, which vindicated a law-school affirmative-action program. Kennedy, also a Reagan appointee, was initially celebrated by conservatives as “Bork without the beard.” Yet he later provided key votes to knock down anti-sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas and overturn the death penalty for juveniles in Roper v. Simmons—prompting Dr. James C. Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, to rechristen him “the most dangerous man in America.”

[...]

Virtually everyone who dons the judicial cloak recognizes that, like most uniforms, it carries significant responsibilities and behavioral expectations—what social psychologists call a role schema. A judge’s role schema includes requirements of objectivity, balance, and restraint that powerfully frame a judge’s actions. As Justice John Roberts put it in his opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee during his nomination hearings, “Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules; they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire.” To guard her own legitimacy and that of the judiciary, a judge must create the impression that her decisions are the inevitable consequence of fair, non-ideological legal reasoning. A nominee who was a fervent advocate before becoming a judge will often learn to present decisions as neutral and arising naturally from the rule of law.

It is an interesting piece, which repays reading the whole thing. As the extract shows, the authors are taking tips from Roland Barthes.

It is a continual source of interest to me that American conservatives are so much distressed by social liberalism, wanting iron rules upheld in personal lives, when they are happy with particularistic treatment for collective entitities (and even pseudo-entities, such as religions, nationalities). But then I want judges to be socially liberal, without being "liberals" in the US sense.

I think the comparative law points are mistaken, but interestingly so. They do not make the error that British journalists often do, of supposing judges in Civil Law systems are just like Common Law ones. But they don't seem to want completely to acknowledge the radically (literally: at root) different legal and institutional context.

Perhaps this is because it is an uncomfortable fundamental truth that 'drift' is the soul of Common Law. Common Law adapts principles derived from facts to new facts. And facts are messy and infinitely varied. Common Law is compromise. "If the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"

The hidden assumption of conservatism here is that there is an eternal right answer ex cathedra, against which sinful people must be measured. It is not too far from the way Civil Law purports to apply first principles to every case. And I submit it has a similar consequence: the elevation of the prejudice of the authorities, the suppression of the authority of considered precedent and of real life.

Soi-disant 'conservatives' detect enemy action in compromise. They complain about "activist judges", but define activism as failure to enforce the extra-legal norms that they endorse. Give me Justice Roberts' conception of the judge's role as limited, arbitral, pragmatic: dealing with cases, not causes. If you abandon the rule of law and make the justice system into an instrument of social control (as in this more explicit example), you abandon the open society.

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As the report stage of the Identity Cards Bill approaches in the Lords, a reminder of one highlight from the first day of the committee stage Hansard, 15 Nov 2005, Col.1012:

Lord Gould of Brookwood: Both the previous speakers—the latter with great emotion—were arguing for freedom. We have to ask what greater freedom is there than the freedom to place a vote for a political party in a ballot box upon the basis of a mandate and a manifesto. That is the crux of it: the people have supported this measure. That is what the noble Earl's father fought for. But that is too trivial an answer. I know that. The fundamental argument is that the truth is that people believe that these identity cards will affirm their identity. The noble Lord opposite said that he likes to be in this House and how he is recognised in this House because it is a community that recognises him. That is how the people of this nation feel. They feel that they are part of communities, and they want recognition. For them, recognition comes in the form of this identity card. Noble Lords may think that that is strange, but it is what they feel. This is their kind of freedom. They want their good, hard work and determination to be recognised, rewarded and respected. That is what this does.

Of course it is right and honourable for noble Lords to have their views, but I say there is another view, and it is the view of the majority of this country. They want to have the respect, recognition and freedom that this card will give them. Times have changed. Politics have changed. What would not work 50 years ago, works now. It is not just me. I have the words of the leader of your party:

"I have listened to the police and security service chiefs. They have told me that ID cards can and will help their efforts to protect the lives of British citizens against terrorist acts. How can I disregard that?".

This is not some silly idea of the phoney left. It is a mainstream idea of modern times. It is a new kind of identity and a new kind of freedom. I respect the noble Lords' views, but it would help if they respected the fact that the Bill and the identity cards represent the future: a new kind of freedom and a new kind of identity.

This is the sort of rhetoric that makes my blood run cold. Here's a prefiguring example:

In our state the individual is not deprived of freedom. In fact, he has greater liberty than an isolated man, because the state protects him and he is part of the State. Isolated man is without defence
- Benito Mussolini

Terry Eagleton (from a review of Paxton's Anatomy of Fascism in the New Statesman) elucidates the connection:

Conservatives disdain the popular masses, while fascists mobilise and manipulate them. Some conservatives believe in ideas, but fascists have a marked preference for myths. If they think at all, they think through their blood, not their brain. Fascists regard themselves as a youthful, revolutionary avant-garde out to erase the botched past and create an unimaginably new future.

All supporters of the old-fashioned conception of individual liberty, whether they think of themselves as left or right, conservative or progressive, must do what can be done. Resist. We should not expect any quarter for outdated ideas under a new kind of freedom.

[cross-posted from White Rose]

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There are a variety of juicy multimedia files available on the Libertarian Alliance site, including some from Samizdatista David Carr (who is threatening to resume blogging on Samizdata when pressures of work permit).

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I have been rather puzzled that no one has written about events on Sark. And it has finally occurred to me that, rather than sitting about saying "why has no one written anything?", I should write something myself.

Sark is an island (or technically a small group of islands) in the English Channel. It was part of the holdings of Duke William of Normandy (William the Bastard) and since his conquest of England in 1066 the fortunes of Sark and (what is now) the United Kingdom have been, in some ways, linked.

Although Elizabeth II is the head of state of Sark it is not part of the United Kingdom (people who are from Australia, New Zealand, Canada or some other places will not be surprised that one can have the same head of state without being part of the same country), but the government of the United Kingdom does stick its nose into the affairs of Sark in some ways.

For some administrative purposes Sark is part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey (which is also not part of the United Kingdom). However, unlike Guernsey, Sark has not introduced such things as income tax. Guernsey introduced a nominal income tax at about the time of the First World War and then an income tax of 20% at the start of the Second World War - sadly never repealed.

Nor is Sark a democracy (as Guernsey is). The hereditory "Seigneaur" (the Channel Islanders origninally spoke Norman French after all) is assisted by a council of 40 land tenents (the "Chief Pleas") which undertakes the duties of government. In the 1920's 12 elected deputies were added to the Chief Pleas but (as far as I know) they have never sought absolute power for themselves (sorry, absolute power for "the people").

Thus Sark has avoided democracy (and many of the "postitive" welfare rights that so many people now seem to believe must go with it). And is indeed known as one of the last strongholds of so called "feudalism" in the world.

Sark has had problems over the centuries (invasions by pirates, the occupation by the Germans in World War II and so on), but its most serious problem has turned out to be the coming of the Barclay twins.

These two brothers (who own, amongst other things, the Telegraph newspaper group) bought the tenancy of the island of Brechow some years ago. This is an island just off the coast of the island of Great Sark and part of the Sark group of islands.

Like all tenants the Barclay twins were required to swear loyalty to Elizabeth (their supreme feudal overlord) and to pay a 13th of the price they had paid for the tenancy to the Seigneur (their direct feudal overlord).

Sadly the Barclay twins have not been loyal to the Seigneur. Perhaps they feel justified in being disloyal because they have more money than him, or perhaps it is because they know that it is no longer a common practice to physically punish people who betray their lord.

The first sign of the disloyalty of the Barclay's came when they appealed to international "human rights law" for the right to leave their tenancy to a female if they so choose. (Sark has had a female Seigneurs, such as the famous "Dame of Sark", Sybyl Hathaway, who stood up to the Germans during World War II - but the laws on landholding do favour males.)

Now (last week) the Barclays have gone further. Again using international "human rights law" (with the help of the United Kingdom government) the Barclays have demanded that Sark introduce democracy.

Why should a libertarian care about any of this? Indeed why should not libertarians support the Barclays? After all the Barclays' use the word "freedom" a lot and present themselves as proud individualists standing up to an oppressive government.

I admit that partly I just resent the end of old custom (the idea that a little place is governed by old traditions - a variation in a bland world), and I also happen to dislike the Barclays.

Leaving one country (to reduce your tax bill) is fine - but it is not fine (in my book) to then toss your weight about in your new country demanding that the ancient laws be changed and calling external powers (including the very United Kingdom government you moved to Sark to get away from the taxes of) to back you up.

But it is more than this.

No one has to stay on Sark. It may be "feudal" but there is no Serfdom there (as far as I know there has never been Serfdom on Sark) and the people do not want this new system of government (for all the patronising talk from the Barclarys about wanting good relations with the "common people" and desiring to educate them about modern political doctrines - "forcing them to be free"?).

Finally consider the off the cuff remarks of the Seigneur (Michael Beaumont) "nothing much is human rights compliant here" and "of course we will have to have a lot of civil servants now".

I think this tells us what we need to know about a lot of modern conceptions of "human rights" and "democracy".

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I have just spent the day at Liberty 2005, the Libertarian Alliance run conference being held over this weekend at the magnificent National Liberal Club. As well as listening attentively, I snapped photos.

Here is speaker number three today, Syed Kamall MEP, in action:

And here is Gabriel Calzada who will be first up tomorrow morning:

Syed was most impressive, and I am confident Gabriel will be too. No time to elaborate now on what is actually being said at this gathering, but I hope I will manage to later.

These two pictures, and another eighteen, at my place.

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The headline really says it all:

'Safer Cigs' Condemned

But I will copy and paste the first few paragraphs of the story anyway:

Anti-smoking campaigners are fuming at the development of a "safer" cigarette designed to reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease.

British American Tobacco (BAT) is planning to use a new filter system which removes more toxins but still allows nicotine to enter the lungs.

The new brand - which could be launched next year - would look and taste like normal cigarettes.

But John Britton, a professor of epidemiology at Nottingham University, told The Daily Mirror: "These new cigarettes could be more like jumping off the 15th floor instead of the 20th.

"Theoretically the risk is less - but you still die."

Whereas, we happy persons who do not smoke may confidently expect to live for ever. Oh yes.

My thanks to Mark Holland for the link to this piece.

This argument reminds me of the one that also rages about contraceptives, 'safe' sex, and so on. On one side you have people saying that surely safe sex is better than just plain old sex. On the other, you have people blaming contraceptives, because these are by no means totally safe, and only serve to excuse and encourage the evil thing itself, sex intercourse, with all its attendant dangers.

Both arguments have some force. But if you think that with that comparison I am trying to put all obsessionally controlling puritans in the same box, labelled "Obsessively Controlling Puritans", you are quite right.

Still, I suppose it is better to have people roaming the earth pursuing their moral equivalents of war than to have people actually fighting wars.

You could argue that we here at Samizdata do the same, but that we just pick on different sinners, such as obsessionally controlling puritans, and different sins, such as obsessionally controlling puritanism.

The difference is that we are correct! Oh yes! All violations of freedom of choice are dangerous, and it is no excuse to say that you have found a way to violate freedom rather less than before so that's alright then! Oh no! Let virtue reign unsullied!!

Amen and have a nice day.

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The ever-perceptive Harry Hutton makes a good point:

The West is losing the War on Arson, along with the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, the War on Fare Dodgers, and some other wars I don't remember right now. Is it time to consider decriminalisation? Making it illegal just drives it underground and gives it a false glamour, like filleting haddock on a wooden surface*. If burning stuff down were legal it could be taxed and controlled, as in Holland. There was a most interesting piece about it in The Economist.

The filleting haddock thing is explained thus:

*Banned by the 1990 Food Safety Act, since when cases of food poisoning have obviously rocketed.

I have never liked the "it gives it a false glamour" argument against banning drugs, for precisely the reason Harry pinpoints, which is that the same thing applies to bank robbery, arson, and so on, and they are falsely glamorous but so what? I prefer the simple "it's wrong to ban something that isn't an aggressive attack on the rights of others" argument. Terror is an attack on others' rights. Fare dodging is stealing, ditto. Haddock filleting on a wooden surface you can avoid, by not doing it, and by avoiding restaurants where they do it, if you really mind it that much.

Personally I think that the old ways of preparing food are less poisonous than the kind that the EU now demands, and I think those figures that Harry Hutton links to back that up, as he implies. But why has reported food poisoning abated since 2001? Have people stopped bothering to report it? Have some of those vulnerable to it died off? My guess is that the restaurants that poisoned their customers have been identified and shunned by those wanting a meal. After a period when new and safer rules were introduced and new and safer food preparation methods mandated, which was obviously extremely dangerous, the worst excesses of the new regime are now starting to be avoided, but obviously not yet as successfully as happened before the new and safer safety regulations were introduced.

If there must be laws against food poisoning, let them be laws against actual food poisoning, rather than against practices which, in the opinion of EU officials who just want to regulate stuff for the pure pleasure of it, might be poisonous, although less poisonous than any imaginable alternative.

The other argument I like to use about alleged crimes without actual victims which ought not to be crimes is the practical point that these are harder for any policemen to find out about. If you commit the crime of filleting a haddock on a wooden surface, and you and your dinner guests happen to prefer haddock filleted thus, why would any of you inform the authorities? Laws against victimless "crimes" are easily broken, by otherwise law abiding persons, and thus lower general respect for the law.

The trouble with that argument is that many real crimes are a source of shame to their victims, and they will not tell the police for that reason. Banks, for instance, do not want the fallibility of their security systems to become too public. Many property thefts are, as our current Government never tires of telling us, our own fault, and we are justly punished for allowing such thefts to be committed. Dare we bother the police with news of our trivial and self-inflicted misfortunes? But that is insufficient reason to make stealing that the victims are ashamed of legal, even if in practise that is pretty much how things are.

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Glenn Reynolds recently interviewed Ray Kurzweil, the futurist thinker who has recently come out with a new book, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. I first came into contact with Kurzweil's ideas when I read his earlier book, The Age of Spiritual Machines. In this, he expounds his idea of the Law of Accelerating returns, which holds that technological progress grows at an exponential rate.

If you are not familiar with the idea of the Singularity, the Wikepedia page is a good place to start.

It must be emphasised that the ideas and predictions made by Singularity enthusiasts should be examined with caution. I myself am hugely optimistic about the possibilities, however, I should point out that futurists have a patchy record. This is not because they are bad; it is rather a reflection that our technological society is now so complex that understanding the various trends of our society is becoming too much for a single individual. Singularity enthusiasts concede this, and part of the reason why the term 'singularity' is used is that beyond the 'singularity' we can not really comprehend what will happen. (Just as an event horizon clouds everything within a black hole.)

However there are some features that most futurists agree will occur as progress nears the Singularity, and my purpose is to ask some questions about how they will affect issues dear to the heart of this blog.

The first question concerns artificial intelligence. As Kurzweil says:

The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light.

Basically, the point is that we are going to build machines that have artificial intelligence, that can learn and become self aware. This idea has been kicking around Hollywood for a long time and, indeed, is screening at the moment (Stealth). While Hollywood invariably presents such technology as being hostile to its own creators, there seems no logical reason for a self-aware machine to be hostile. However, it might well decide that it is alive, and demand rights, as in Bicentennial Man. The issues that movie raises about the definition of 'life' and 'rights' could provide enormous headaches in this century, and could keep lawyers busy for decades.

The prospect of this may cause governments to interfere to prevent the development of self aware technologies.

Complicating this is the prospect of not only machines becoming like humans, but, humans becoming more like machines. Geeky technophiles are likely to fall in love with the idea of using technology to enhance themselves. I would love to have memory implants and the like myself. So the definition of 'human' and 'robot' possibly will get cluttered; fear, uncertainty and doubt from the wider community will be another huge issue.

Another issue that the Singularity might well bring into sharp political focus is healthcare. Life extension technology is one of the promises of the Singularity; ageing is likely to be reversible. The prospect of immortality, a human dream since the dawn of time, could be realisable within the lifetime of many of us.

This is sure to attract more political attention. The temptation of governments to interfere, to attempt to 'socialise' medical progress as an attempt to spread the benefits could well be irresistible. It is the natural way of things that wealthy people are best place to take advantage of new technologies, and this may cause considerable political stress in democracies and give new powers for the State in non-democracies. Consider the prospect of an immortal Robert Mugabe.

There are bound to be many more problems and questions that the technologies of the Singularity will bring to us. I have not even touched on the huge privacy implications. The sooner that friends of liberty start to ponder these questions, the better chance free societies will thrive rather then suffer.

Like all past technologies, the question of whether or not they are a blessing or a burden is likely to be decided by how humans decide what to do with them, rather then by the technology themselves. Although, with self-aware machines, this might be the last time we have to answer such questions alone.

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James Waterton of the Daily Constitutional sees the need for more hardcore activists to spread the word for classical liberal values... and he also sees the need for more people to read his excellent articles. We agree with him on both counts

I was having a chat today with two friends about the nature of a market society. Both guys are intelligent, open minded and lacking ideological zeal. After talking about this and that, the discussion turned into me defending the free market of commerce and culture. Neither of them are heavily interested in politics, however they both articulated their positions with cognisance and we had a good discussion.

Because of the above discussion and the assumptions my friends held of the free market, I came to realise that - as enthusiasts of the free market - we do very little to actively promote the cause and its benefits. We hope our continually improving lives do the talking for us. Trouble is, these benefits can be twisted by people who do not agree with us. We are getting rich, says Green Left, at the expense of those in the third world and/or in our underclass. This is rubbish, of course, but it is an easily grasped concept, no matter how misguided. A group like Resistance goes out to a lot of schools to talk to students about the beauty of socialism. It is rich pickings for them there, because the simplistic truths of socialism appeal to minds that are neither sullied with the realities of human nature nor self-supporting adults. It is not hard to make a teenager feel bad about our society. Ask them if they lead a comfortable life. Show them a few pictures of starving African children. Let them join the dots. Child's play.

Trouble is, as we all know, widespread socialism was a dismal failure, and the few countries that continue to fly the banner are collapsing failures. However kids - especially compassionate kids - are still easily conned. Okay, maybe conned is the wrong word. They are just not offered an alternative point of view, and what they are being shown by our leftist friends is easy to understand and makes sense prima facie. I was a high-minded socialist back in the day, and I believed a whole manner of things that I find utterly repugnant today. For example, I considered that an absolute majority was always right. Someone backed me into a corner once and posed the following scenario - if an absolute majority decided that it was okay to kill me, would I have a problem with that. I sacrificed sanity for consistency and answered, no, I would not, if that is what the majority wanted.

I have found that this kind of woolly thinking is common in politically aware teenagers, and I believe it is because they are never offered an alternative. Socialism appears to make sense. No one tells them how it produces undesirable outcomes. Even when the aforementioned teenagers embrace adult reality and do away with socialism and the chimeric solutions it offers, most still retain a general distrust of free markets into their adulthood, even though they more often than not have trouble justifying their position if prodded. In regards to my friends, I was presenting a model that they did not know a great deal about. They knew its ostensible failings, but knew little of its strengths. They would possibly never considered, and certainly never accepted, the moral argument for a free market. They knew my case was logical, however the conditioned response of the average young adult to free markets made them still suspect that "something was wrong" with capitalism, free markets, individual responsibility etc. even though more often than not they could not put their finger on what it was. This syndrome is politically important, because when multiplied across society, it has implications on policy and how far the remaining vestiges of the socialist state can be rolled back - for the good of all.

If someone had have presented me with the case for free markets when I was in high school, I would have probably dismissed it out of hand. However, planting the seed is half the job done. As it happened, I changed my stance a couple of years after graduation. It took about one and a half years of a relentless bombardment of logic from a bunch of Objectivists to bring me round. I am not an Objectivist myself, however they certainly influenced my current liberal outlook. The people I was talking to earlier today are probably where I was when I encountered the Randroids. Those guys took a year and a half to convince me; I wouldn't have even started to turn my friends around. On the whole, people do not radically alter their views easily. However, this process would be a lot easier and quicker if the pre-existing cynicism towards the free market that my friends held was not there.

Which is where we free market enthusiasts come in. The morality of Adam Smith's invisible hand is more sophisticated and is not as easily digested as the ostensibly moral "perfect equality" socialist model, however Free Marketeers should debate Green Left, Resistance and those of their ilk at schools or wherever they appear. Just taking a quick peek at their publications and arguments, it is quite obvious that anyone with even a thimble of debating flair could wipe the floor with these lefty halfwits and their demented, unreal truisms. Their creed is barren, it lost its dynamism long ago. However, it could rear its ugly head again with enough support. There are signs that it's happening already with governments across the world reversing the Thatcherite/Reaganite trend towards smaller government. I believe this has something to do with the fact that socialism's pallbearers are much better at spreading their message than the unknowing footsoldiers of capitalism toiling in banks, brothels, barnyards or any business large and small. The beneficiaries of the free market - that is pretty much everyone, even though realistically I could only expect enthusiasts to rally - need to understand that their right to trade freely is not inextinguishable. We should be making a stronger effort to communicate the superior free market message to the youth, if only to ensure that our way of living continues. The free market system is the hope of the world. Those who understand that should spruik its benefits to the neutrals and unbelievers. We should try much harder to sign up the former and sway the latter.

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'Just let us put in place our hierarchy of rights. The right to live. The right to go to work on the underground. The right to have an ID card. The right not to have data abused.'

Freedom has no natural place in a "hierarchy of rights". Freedom used to be what was left over when other people's rights to their choices were taken into account. But the priesthood seems keen to ensure that there are "rights" everywhere, with no space for anything else, and that "rights" are not options, they are compulsions. Lenin would be proud.

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A commenter in an earlier article here responded to someone arguing that Muslim immigrants should never have been treated as 'immigrants' in Britain but as 'guest workers' the way the Germany treat Turks in their country, making them much easier to deport when the powers-that-be decide it is time for them to go. His reply was:

...but removal of those guest workers is one hell of a job isn't it?

Quite so. Moreover it seems obvious to me that a significant number of Muslims in Britain have successfully integrated into British society just fine and I see no reason to pretend otherwise. Yet clearly we do have a major problem with an equally significant number of Muslims who have not assimilated, show no sign of doing so and are manifestly a source of recruits for Al Qaeda.

Endlessly blathering on about how "Islam is a religion of peace" or alternatively to call for expelling 'Muslims', simply because they are Muslims, is the sort of wilful blindness and one size fits all collectivism of a sort I would rather leave to socialists of both left and right. Anyone who values western liberal civilisation needs to think a little harder than that, avoiding both atavistic collectivism and a head-in-the-sand refusal to see we have a serious problem that will not go away on its own.

If what we are trying to defend is a pluralistic tolerant society, then we have to make sure that the message is not just "throw the wogs out!" but rather "You are welcome here if you are willing to assimilate to a sufficient degree."

But how does one define what that 'degree' is exactly? I am not talking a Norman Tebbit style "cricket test" but rather a willingness to tolerate 'otherness'. We do not need Muslims to approve of alcohol or women in short skirts or figurative art or bells or pork or pornography or homosexuality or (particularly) apostasy. We have no right to demand that at all and obviously not all Anglicans approve of some of those things, so why require that Muslims must? No, what we do have the right to demand (and that is not too strong a word) is that they tolerate those things, which is to say they will not countenance the use of force to oppose those things even though they disapprove of them. In fact it is not just Muslims from whom we must demand such tolerance.

If we can get them to agree to tolerate those things, then it does not matter if Muslim women wear burquas because as long as they are not subject to force, a woman may elect to say "Sod this for a game of soldiers!" and cast off that symbol of misogynistic repression... and if she does not do so, well that is her choice then... but she must have a choice. They do not have to look like us (I do not hear calls for Chinatown to be razed to the ground), they do not have to share our religion(s), or lack thereof, but they do have to tolerate our varied ways and if by their actions or words they show they do not, we have every right to regard them as our enemies and take action to defend ourselves.

For decades the supporters of multiculturalism have used tax money and government regulations to actively discourage assimilation of immigrants into the broader society, preferring to see communities develop which favour 'identity politics' better suited and more amenable to their own collectivist world views. And now we are paying the price for that. We will not be able to defend ourselves physically or preserve our liberal society unless we stop tolerating intolerance, and that includes not just fundamentalist Islam but also the anti-western bigotry of the multiculturalists.

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Surprise surprise. Today, the headline above this story, on the front page of the Guardian caused me to actually buy the thing. But I learned little I did not already know.

The profit margins for major traffickers of heroin into Britain are so high they outstrip luxury goods companies such as Louis Vuitton and Gucci, according to a study that Downing Street is refusing to publish under freedom of information legislation.

Only the first half of the strategy unit study led by the former director general of the BBC, Lord Birt, was released last Friday. The other half was withheld but has been leaked to the Guardian.

It says that the traffickers enjoy such high profits that seizure rates of 60-80% are needed to have any serious impact on the flow of drugs into Britain but nothing greater than 20% has been achieved.

The study concludes that the estimated UK annual supply of heroin and cocaine could be transported into the country in five standard-sized shipping containers but has a value which at a conservative estimate tops £4bn.

Or, as I remember a visiting American policeman saying, in some argument about drugs that I took part in about a quarter of a century ago: These guys don't count their money, they weigh it.

The trouble is that our political class has persuaded itself that it simply cannot legalise this trade. People might kill themselves by taking too many drugs. (The perfect punishment, I would say.) The politicians already ban lots of other things because they are unsafe. (Stop. Let people take their own risks and their own chances.) "Middle England" would not stand for it. (Middle England stands for lots of other things it dislikes.) But, but, but, we just can't. (Why not?)

Well, why not indeed? What is going on here? Maybe the root cause, if there is such a thing, of the utter refusal of the present generation of politicians to legalise drugs is that they have got it into their heads, as have an appalling proportion of their voters, that it is the job of politicians to look after the voters, in the manner of parents looking after their children. To legalise drugs would be to send out a message that the politicians simply cannot bear to send out, namely: We don't care about you! Look after yourselves! If all you can think of to do with your lives is take drugs, you will get no money from us to pay for them. And if you wreck your lives with them, and find yourselves ill and starving, tough. The only way you will get our attention is if you commit crimes under the influence of drugs, or because you can think of no other way to make a living, in which case we catch you and punish you some more.

Meanwhile, the rest of us can help by discriminating against people who damage themselves with drugs, by denying them employment, friendship, romantic attachments, respectability. That way drug abusers, if abusers they be, will have the necessary incentive to pull themselves together.

Drugs are dangerous, although it is clear that lots of people manage to use drugs regularly while nevertheless keeping these dangers at arm's length. As this report makes clear, the stuff is pouring in, yet our civilisation trundles on, and when it comes to civilisational collapse, alcohol surely now does far more damage than (the other) drugs. Nevertheless, there are dangers attached to these drugs, and I for one have never doubted it, which is why I have refrained from ever using them, timid soul that I am. Even cannabis – much talked up as harmless by some of the people I went to university with – actually seems to have quite severe mental health risks if you use it too much. To put it bluntly, it is now quite widely believed by scientists and doctors that it can drive you mad – which is just what my recollections of the characters of some of the people recommending cannabis to me all those years ago have long caused me to suspect.

But, however harmful – or harmless – all these drugs may be, there is no sensible future in the government treating their sale and use on a par with the kind of genuine crime where someone else is immediately hurt or attacked or has their property harmed or stolen, and is accordingly immediately ready to help the authorities with any inquiries they might be inclined to make. How is the government supposed to learn about the drug trade? Who is going to tell them about it? (Even when compiling reports about the drug trade, with no thought of arresting anyone, all they can do is "estimate" what is really going on.)

But alas, such commonsensical questions are mere pinpricks when they come up against the entrenched mental positions of virtually all our current rulers. What is needed is more than a policy upheaval. A mental upheaval is required, and those are an order of magnitude harder to contrive. Meanwhile, it does not matter to our rulers – not enough to make any difference in how they behave – how much absurdity and expense they inflict on us in order to sustain their paternal illusions, and to sustain the corresponding illusions of all those of their voters who share them.

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No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
- 5th Amendment: US Constitution

Today is the 4th of July, when Americans celebrate their independence and much talk of freedom and constitutions occurs. This day is in many ways an orgy of self-congratulation, much of which is entirely justified (I make no secret of my pro-Americanism Atlanticism).

But perhaps, just perhaps, the 'shot heard around the country' that was delivered by the Supreme Court of the United States with the Kelo verdict will snap a great number of Americans out of their understandable but entirely misplaced complacency regarding the benevolence of their own nation-state.

Not only does Eminent Domain now pose a threat to anyone whose property happens to catch the eye of a well connected property developer, the USA also has outrageous 'asset forfeiture' laws that allow suspects to have their property taken by the state, reversing the burden of proof and making the accused (but un-convicted and usually un-tried) person prove their property is not the proceeds of some crime in order to have the property returned (they cannot prevent it from being taken in the first place). So much for 'due process'.

Americans would do well to remember that it was the use of British sedition laws to seize private property from political activists was a major cause of disaffection in the colonies in the lead up to the Revolution in 1776. Moreover those sedition laws were far less capricious and more respectful of due process than modern 'asset forfeiture' laws (colonial era sedition laws at least required you to actually be convicted).

The fight against Al Qaeda and any who ally with them must go on but the greatest threat to liberty (and in the long run that inevitably means life) facing the people in the United States comes not from without but from within. Until the entire scope of what government can do is radically cut back, Kelo is pointing the way to a grim future. I hope that the Supreme Court's destruction of the 5th Amendment by allowing the state to take private property for the private use of property developers, will be reversed long before it requires the active use of the 2nd Amendment to make private property secure against those who would rather use political power rather than markets to enrich themselves.

Happy birthday America.

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At Hyde Park, Dido just introduced as the "African Ambassador for Music from Senegal", Youssou N'Dour*, who she was "in awe" of, "not just because he has a wonderful voice, but because of his wonderful beliefs". He came on stage to say:

"The debt cancellation is OK. The aid is OK. But, please, open your markets."

There will be an awful lot of well-intentioned nonsense given unquestioning, reverential coverage today, with ignorance and platitudes dressed up as profundity. Maybe, however, for perhaps the first time at an event of this type and on this scale, a kernel of truth will wriggle its way onto TV.

I consider this a small but notable victory for the notion that, if you permit free speech and are prepared to tolerate every misguided and moronic idea, eventually the truth will out.

* [edit]: add correct spelling and link.

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Samizdatista Paul Marks lets rip in the comment section of the new Tory leadership blog at Conservative Home on the topic of that Orwellian doublespeak term 'social justice'. Check it out.

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Only a wilful fool would dispute that racism moved from being the unremarkable default mainstream view in the western world to being a prejudice which scarcely dare speak its name. I would argue that this did not come about just because a few anti-discrimination laws got passed. A great many things are illegal and yet doing them does not put you 'beyond the pale' in polite society. In most circles lighting up a spliff or speeding or paying your builder/nanny/housekeeper in cash are matters of little or no account and few people would think less of you if they discovered you were doing so. Overt racism on the other hand has precisely that effect because regarding that there has been a cultural shift. To be a racist is not just wrong, it makes you a jackass in the eyes of others. Most racists are now more prone to keep their views to themselves, not because someone will call the cops and have them hauled off to a re-education camp, but because they can no longer safely assume others will share their meta-context.

And so with that in mind, it may seem trivial to rail against people who display or wear images of Che Guevara but what is at stake is far more than a battle for mere tee-shirt space. The fact that a person wearing a Himmler or Hitler tee-shirt would attract scorn is quite appropriate, and so it is really quite intolerable that fans of the mass murderers of the left get to think images of their favoured mass murdering thug makes them look cool. Why just let that slide?

Groups like the 'animal rights' activists PETA provide a fairly good example of 'going to the culture' with some success at portraying people who wear fur coats as wicked and getting that meme into the zeitgeist fairly effectively at least in the USA and UK (though rather less successfully elsewhere). So do not shrug off efforts to portray people who wear images of communist mass murderers as jackasses rather than 'cool' as wasted effort over something something of no account. Little things like this add up and if you believe, as I do, that the single biggest factor determining the triumph or defeat of liberty is a cultural expectation of liberty, then fighting for the cultural issues really does matter. And if the lumpen wearing the Che Guevara tee-shirt does not even know who he was, as will often be the case, then tell him in no uncertain terms so that next time he looks at his pile of shirts, perhaps he will think twice before putting it on and maybe, just maybe, look at other people wearing those vile tee-shirts a bit differently.

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Get into a discussion with any self-described anarcho-capitalist and it is only a matter of time before you are directed to David Friedman for an answer to the conundrum posed. I have generally considered such appeals to authority as tacit admissions of defeat - if an argument is any good, it ought to be easy to summarise and explain. Conversely, it is often the least defensible arguments which require complex exposition (and by a third party to boot!). I was recently referred to Friedman by Scott Scheule during a discussion at my own blog and promised that Friedman would deal with the thorny question of what differentiates the "Free market protection agencies" predicted by anarcho-capitalists under anarchy from the real world "protection agencies" we observe in conditions approximating anarchy such as mafias and warlords. Friedman sketched out this scenario:

I come home one night and find my television set missing. I immediately call my protection agency, Tannahelp Inc., to report the theft. They send an agent. He checks the automatic camera which Tannahelp, as part of their service, installed in my living room and discovers a picture of one Joe Bock lugging the television set out the door. The Tannahelp agent contacts Joe, informs him that Tannahelp has reason to believe he is in possession of my television set, and suggests he return it, along with an extra ten dollars to pay for Tannahelp's time and trouble in locating Joe. Joe replies that he has never seen my television set in his life and tells the Tannahelp agent to go to hell.

The agent points out that until Tannahelp is convinced there has been a mistake, he must proceed on the assumption that the television set is my property. Six Tannahelp employees, all large and energetic, will be at Joe's door next morning to collect the set. Joe, in response, informs the agent that he also has a protection agency, Dawn Defense, and that his contract with them undoubtedly requires them to protect him if six goons try to break into his house and steal his television set.

The stage seems set for a nice little war between Tannahelp and Dawn Defense. It is precisely such a possibility that has led some libertarians who are not anarchists, most notably Ayn Rand, to reject the possibility of competing free-market protection agencies.

But wars are very expensive, and Tannahelp and Dawn Defense are both profit-making corporations, more interested in saving money than face. I think the rest of the story would be less violent than Miss Rand supposed.

The Tannahelp agent calls up his opposite number at Dawn Defense. 'We've got a problem. . . .' After explaining the situation, he points out that if Tannahelp sends six men and Dawn eight, there will be a fight. Someone might even get hurt. Whoever wins, by the time the conflict is over it will be expensive for both sides. They might even have to start paying their employees higher wages to make up for the risk. Then both firms will be forced to raise their rates. If they do, Murbard Ltd., an aggressive new firm which has been trying to get established in the area, will undercut their prices and steal their customers. There must be a better solution.

The man from Tannahelp suggests that the better solution is arbitration. They will take the dispute over my television set to a reputable local arbitration firm. If the arbitrator decides that Joe is innocent, Tannahelp agrees to pay Joe and Dawn Defense an indemnity to make up for their time and trouble. If he is found guilty, Dawn Defense will accept the verdict; since the television set is not Joe's, they have no obligation to protect him when the men from Tannahelp come to seize it.

What I have described is a very makeshift arrangement. In practice, once anarcho-capitalist institutions were well established, protection agencies would anticipate such difficulties and arrange contracts in advance, before specific conflicts occurred, specifying the arbitrator who would settle them.

The problem I see with this scenario is that little assumption I highlit. It is certainly true that the profit-making corporations Tannahelp and Dawn Defense have an ultimate interest in a stable, peaceful environment where disputes are settled by arbitration. Unfortunately they also have a proximate interest in ripping everyone off and possess the means to do so. Unlike corporations who provide widgets, there is no proximate method for the market to constrain a predatory protection agency. Tannawidget and Dawn widgets may have a proximate interest in ripping everybody off but are prevented from doing so by the possibility of undercutting competitors entering the market. They are not in a position to either coerce their customers or new entrants. Not so for the "free market protection agency"

It occurs to me that this resembles the tragedy of the commons. Under common ownership, everyone shares an ultimate interest in, say, preservation of livestock, but a proximate interest in grabbing everything for oneself, if only to prevent others from doing exactly the same. If you possess the means to coerce people to give you their money - arms and a gang of heavies - you have no particular reason to respect property rights. From your point of view, everything might as well be under common ownership. If you don't rip people off, other protection agencies will do so. It shouldn't be a surprise to see this pattern emerge in areas where the ordinary rule of law has broken down, but apparently, for some, it is.

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There is an interesting article in The American Conservative by Robert Locke called Marxism of the Right, by which he is referring to libertarianism. The 'money quote' being:

If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism. Society in fact requires both individualism and collectivism, both selfishness and altruism, to function.

Like most right-statist (conservative) criticisms of libertarianism, this one fails on several levels. In this article's mitigation, libertarianism (like conservatism) means different things to different people and so no doubt some self-described or de facto libertarians believe that 'pure' selfishness and individualism are all a society needs to function (that said, I reject the implied semantics suggesting that selfishness and altruism are mutually exclusive as I do not accept the Randian definition of altruism that Locke rather amusingly seems to use). Yet most well considered libertarians do not really take such a simple view of things as Locke suggests.

He asks libertarians many questions:

What if a free society needed to draft its citizens in order to remain free?

Then is it in fact a 'free society' to start with? Or is it just 'less un-free' that some alternative? More correctly however 'society' does not draft its 'citizens' (and I prefer the more honest term 'subjects'), only states do that... and the two are not the same thing at all.

What if it needed to limit oil imports to protect the economic freedom of its citizens from unfriendly foreigners?

But whose 'economic freedom' is really being talked about here? I find it bizarre that in 2005 this argument is still being made about a fungible globally traded commodity.

What if it needed to force its citizens to become sufficiently educated to sustain a free society?

I would be curious to know if Locke feels that society in the United States was hugely less free before the introduction of educational conscription. I also wonder if he feels that the low quality state education imposed on children in the blearier parts of many large US cities has made those people more free and if so, why?

What if it needed to deprive landowners of the freedom to refuse to sell their property as a precondition for giving everyone freedom of movement on highways?

And yet Japan, a nation of extraordinarily high land prices, manages to create a rail system vastly superior to that in the USA without legal powers of compulsory purchase. There are always alternatives.

What if it needed to deprive citizens of the freedom to import cheap foreign labor in order to keep out poor foreigners who would vote for socialistic wealth redistribution?

But surely here the problem is not the origin of voters but rather unconstrained democracy. This is not an argument for controlling immigration but rather for sensible constitutional constraints which set the acceptable limits of politics.

I am ambivalent about the whole libertarian label to be frank (I prefer 'social individualist') but I suppose it has the virtue of differentiating minarchist classical liberals of my ilk from conservative right-statists like Robert Locke. Locke rightly points out that libertarians come in many flavours but contrary to what he says, it seems to me that most libertarians I know have nothing against collective action (most rather like the idea of voluntary collectives like companies and associations) or altruism (most rather like charities and organizations like the RNLI or volunteer militaries etc.)... moreover they want roads maintained, diseases combated, children educated, garbage collected and fires put out as much as socialists and conservatives do. Where they depart from both the left and right statists is that they think all these things are more likely to get done effectively and more morally when they are not done at gunpoint (i.e. compelled by law). To be a libertarian is to believe that society (which is the sum of its parts but not more than that), not the state, is what actually matters, and moreover the state, far from being society's protector as conservatives fondly imagine, is as often as not highly corrosive to many of the very values conservatives often implausibly claim to champion.

Also morally speaking, the 'altruism' that the Robert Locke article says is needed for societies to function is not really altruism at all because surely it is impossible to compel altruistic actions. If my money is taken by force and given to another, that is not altruistic of me (I have no choice), it is not altruistic of the tax man (it is not his money) nor the person receiving the money (who is just the receiver of the benefits). This is hardly a surprise as the sort of conservatism one sees in places such as The American Conservative is really just utilitarianism and thus rarely has much to meaningfully say about moral theories.

Locke says about libertarians:

They forget that for much of the population, preaching maximum freedom merely results in drunkenness, drugs, failure to hold a job, and pregnancy out of wedlock. Society is dependent upon inculcated self-restraint if it is not to slide into barbarism, and libertarians attack this self-restraint. Ironically, this often results in internal restraints being replaced by the external restraints of police and prison, resulting in less freedom, not more.

Libertarians attack self-restraint? Really? That is a new one on me! Surely self-restraint motivated by either sound moral theories or failing that, social pressures, is sure the very essence of what libertarians preach.

Society is a network of affinity and dis-affinity that traditionally, at least in the Anglosphere, has motivated behaviour far more than the state has. I want the freedom to motive people not to break into my house by virtue of the fact I want the means to put a couple 40 cal holes in their centre of mass. Thus it makes me laugh to hear so called conservatives decry moves to return to more social ways of moderating behaviours and away from the statist regulatory approach. I wonder if Locke supports an end to tax funded social welfare entitlements that in effect subsidize imprudence and a lack of self-restraint? In a libertarian society, the causal links between a lack of self-restrain and ruin will be far easier to see than in the sort of right-flavoured police heavy welfare state that, when you ask the correct questions, it turns out that most conservatives really believe in.

So the big trouble I have with Robert Locke's article is that, whilst not quite a 'straw man' argument, it is not actually taking on the true philosophical core of what he claims to critique, nor is he making particularly useful remarks about what collective action and altruism really are and how they relate to a libertarian world view. In Locke's defence I realize that trying to define libertarianism (a seeming prerequisite to critiquing it) is rather like trying to herd cats, but nevertheless claiming that selfishness and individualism, standing in opposition to altruism and collectivism, defines the libertarian world view is little more than a caricature of the reality.

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Here are a couple of recent stories, both recently linked to by Instapundit, that I think deserve to be put next to each other.

First, here is a quote I found while rootling about in the McCain/Feingold story, which Dale Amon has already posted about here. Here is the bit that interested me:

These laws are decidedly NOT aimed at online press, commentary or blogs, and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 was carefully drafted to exclude them. The FEC has now been asked to initiate a rulemaking to work out how to deal with different kinds of Internet political expenditures, and there will be plenty of opportunity for public commentary.

This denial is, of course, the result of the exact opposite having been alleged. I read it because one Winfield Myers of the Democracy Project quotes it, and notes that the quotee, a hot shot lawyer, makes very little of his past legal relationship with McCain. (Bloggers prefer it when they know where people are coming from.)

And the second quote, is from a review of a book called Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything.

McNab was a seafood importer who shipped undersized lobsters and lobster tails in opaque plastic bags instead of paper bags. These were trivial violations of a Honduran regulation - equivalent to a civil infraction, or at most, a misdemeanor. However, using creative lawyering, a government prosecutor used this misdemeanor offense as the basis for the violation of the Lacey Act, which is a felony. The prosecutor then used the Lacey Act charge as a basis to stack on smuggling and money laundering counts. You got that?

McNab was guilty of smuggling since he shipped lobster tails in bags that you can see through, instead of shipping them through bags that would frustrate visual inspection. He was guilty of money laundering since he paid a crew on his ship to "smuggle the tails." Although it turned out that the Honduran regulation was improperly enacted and thus unenforceable, the government did not relent. A honest businessman lost his property and his freedom: McNab is serving 8-years in prison.

Okay, so what do the tribulations of a seafood importer have to do with the right of bloggers to blog what they damn well please? Well, what interests me is the political process involved in both matters. How the hell do the laws and the processes that got poor Mr McNab nabbed get put in place in the first place? The phrase "not aimed at" is the point of this posting.

It may well be that the McCain/Feingold act is "not aimed" at bloggers, but the point being made is that, aimed or not, some other regulator will be able to pick it up and so aim it, and in fact may even have some kind of legal obligation to aim it thus.

I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that there is now a crisis of excessive lawmaking in the West generally, and in the Anglo-Saxon world in particular. It is not that our political class is hell bent on tyrranny, impure and simple. It is more that they have become legislative entrepreneurs, so to speak. And just as a businessman who is delighted to make a fast buck selling mobile phones does not bother himself about the grief inflicted by railway travellers with mobiles on other railway travellers, so too, lawmakers who are "aiming" at one particular group of alleged wrongdoers have a tendency to neglect what you might call legislative collateral damage. The laws pile up, and the other legislators, the ones who you would hope would be sitting there solemnly trying to limit that collateral damage, neglect that duty, because they are too busy hustling through other little laws of their own, aimed at other preferred clutches of alleged wrongdoers. Laws go straight from legislative entrepreneurs to government regulators, without no intervening process of scrutiny that is worthy of that adjective.

Which means that government regulators are then tempted to mutate into what you might call regulatory entrepreurs. They cannot possibly enforce all their laws, rules and regulations. There are not enough hours in the history of universe for that to happen. So, just like the legislative entrepreneurs, they also lose sight of the big picture (it having become too big to bother with) and decide for themselves which regulations to take seriously. How? Any way they please. In accordance with what rules? Whichever ones they decide to go with.

Add a dash of right wing fervour (a point which Go Directly to Jail apparently brings out very strongly) about crime being very, very bad and having to be fought with implacable ferocity, and to hell with those silly old legal safeguards, and you end up with a kind of anti-lottery instead of a government. Any person, at any moment, is liable to be picked on and turned into a criminal. At any moment, in the words of those British National Lottery adverts, it could be you-ou!!! And everyone is obliged to enter this one.

Being a libertarian, I was never very inclined to think of government as being intelligent. My prejudice is that it is mostly evil, most of the time, and the only question is: in what particular way is it evil at this particular time? Right now, I find myself wanting to describe government as evil because of a process of distributed stupidity, a phrase I adapt from the phrase distributed intelligence, which is how we bloggers like to think of how we work and of what we produce.

And I do indeed hope that the blogosphere will have a lot to contribute towards unscrambling the mess that is distributed governmental stupidity.

The problem is basically one of scale and of incentives. We now live in a world where legislators get their brownie points by forcing through ill-considered and half-baked laws, which do not do much to solve their original problem, but which create a miasma of other problems and subjecting the McNabs of this world to undeserved prison sentences. Other legislators could spend their time denouncing this torrent of ill-considered legislation, but fear that this would make them look lazy and negative, and get them minus brownie points. So, they legislate crazily too.

What I would like would be a world in which a legislative entrepreneur who is thinking of thrashing out yet another of these stupid laws, just so he can get his name in legal lights, would pause, and, you know, consider, for fear of a shitstorm from the blogosphere, and thus eventually, after a month or two, from the regular old media that he has actually heard of. I want a world where other potential legislative entrepreneurs, instead read the blogs to see more McCain/Feingold horrors coming down the legislative tube, and try to get their brownie points by being praised by bloggers not for making one of these laws, but for unmaking a few.

I would like a world in which the McNabs have a voice, before they are hit by these idiot laws and idiot regulators, and while, and for ever afterwards.

Well, I think and hope that we might be moving towards just such a world. The distributed stupidity of government is now, I would like to think, being challenged by the distributed intelligence of the rest of us. Previously, we masses did not have the means to distribute our intelligence, so to speak. Now, we do.

This McCain/Feingold thing looks like it could be the next Trent Lott/Dan Rather/Eason Jordan blogswarm furore-story. Like many bloggers, I am uneasy about living in a world where the blogosphere measures its success by how many high profile careers it wrecks. But how many potentially bad (McNab-nabbing) laws it stomps on? That I could live with far more happily.

I hereby propose the verb "McNab", to describe the process of innocent people being seriously screwed by crazy laws. As in: I've been McNabbed. Or maybe: I'm a McNab. By the sound of it, the original McNab deserves some good fame to set besides his horrendously bad treatment at the hands of the American criminal justice system.

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A week ago I hosted a meeting at my home, and took photos, a couple of which are, I now think on looking through them again, rather good.

This one, of Samizdatista Philip Chaston, shows him in full put-that-bloody-camera-away mode:

But I carried on snapping, and also got this rather nice pic, of the speaker that night, Patrick Crozier (left as we look) and of occasional Samizdata commenter on behalf of the Total Libertarian Correctness tendency, Paul Coulam (right – as always):

This photograph is my response to this, which, alas, was then getting into its evil stride.

Although, I recently, in a moment of disgusted introspection, found myself understanding where the mania to ban smoking comes from. A friend had asked, yet again, if I minded him smoking in my home. In truth I do mind, but tolerate it from friends. (Non-friends who smoke in my home disgust me.) So the answer is usually, as it was last Friday, okay go ahead. After all, if they want to smoke, I can either cross them off my friend list, or put up with it and stop moaning. Easy.

Well, no. What I would like would be some magic procedure which would stop them smoking, so that they could remain on my friend list without any reservations or difficulties or embarrassments or resentments.

The thing about laws is that they have little impact on criminals, but they can change the habits of the law abiding. So, if you want some of your friends to behave differently, the law can magically achieve what you alone cannot. I cannot make my smoking friends stop smoking. But the law can!

To which my answer, to myself, is: Get thee behind me Satan. I will not support legal coercion merely because it will solve a tricky little problem in my personal life. But to which, alas, the answer of many others is: We want our friends to stop smoking, but we cannot merely say that, and pass the law. So instead we must dress our tastes up in the language of care and concern, and jabber on about health hazards, and best of all about passive smoking.

The simple truth is that lots of non-smokers simply do not like it when smokers smoke in their vicinity, or worse, in their homes and workplaces. They do not like it. They want it stopped. Health, for many people is, if you will pardon the metaphor, a mere smokescreen. Personally, I do not give a damn what my friends are doing to their health. That really is their business and not mine at all. The smell of smoking in my flat, for several days afterwards, that is what I wish would go away.

No doubt there is some kind of spray on stuff that would help me, but you know how it is. That is just one more stupid thing to have to worry about. How much easier would it be if the law could just put a stop to it! (No! Satan! Go away I say.)

The serious point is: if I were to get my smoking ban, what would be next?

Digital photography perhaps? Such a ban would surely attract widespread support.

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Samizdata has been a bit quiet for the last few months, by its early standards. Partly, this has been because a lot of us have become busier, doing our various versions of real life. But partly, I suspect, it is because the big story out there during the last few months, the onward march of democracy in the Middle East, first in the form of the Iraq election, and then in the form of the demands for more democracy stirred up by the example of the Iraq election, has been somewhat of an embarrassment to us Samizdatistas. While Instapundit and his many linkees have exulted, only the occasional grudging posting here, to the effect that democracy is a step in roughly the right direction, has broken our silence on this subject.

The Samizdata view of democracy, most eloquently expressed by Perry de Havilland, is that democracy is one thing, and freedom is quite another. Freedom is freedom. And democracy means the mob doing whatever the hell it likes, which may be freedom but which is just as likely to be tyranny.

Few now talk this way. Nowadays, the tendency is to regard freedom and democracy as so closely related to one another as to amount to a new noun and a single thing: freedomandemocracy.

Freedomandemocracy has been the great ideological winner of the twentieth century. At the beginning of the century, conservatives and old-school liberals were still to be heard denouncing freedomandemocracy as mob rule, Perry de Havilland style. Then, other isms arose, full of the certainty that their preferred revolutionary and/or national (mix to taste) elite knew best and that freedomandemocracy was doomed, by its incoherence, moral mediocrity, lack of national team spirit, and general shabbiness, feebleness and decadence. But as the twentieth century rolled onwards, freedomandemocracy proved surprisingly resilient, and it was the isms that proved shabby and decadent, and morally far worse than mediocre. And freedomandemocracy now marches onwards into the new century, ready to chalk up yet more triumphs, leaving the old isms behind ...

… to face new isms, in the Middle East. So now, freedomandemocracy, under the canny leadership of President George W. Bush, is busy threatening to knock over more dominoes.

Why does democracy work so well? And why do people insist on lumping it together with freedom?

In this posting, I will try to expand on ideas which I have already touched upon in a previous posting here. I am not, in this posting – together with any on freedomandemoracy that may follow (I promise nothing), aiming at most people, because most people do not need to be sold on democracy, or on why it feels so much like freedom. This posting is aimed at people who, like me, have embraced libertarian political axioms, to the point where we have become so acutely aware of the differences between freedom and democracy that we prefer to speak of freedom versus democracy. We need to know why and how democracy is proving to be such a formidable enemy of our ideas, and in what way it is also a formidable ally. Because my point here is: those most people have a point, in fact lots of points. Freedom and democracy do overlap in lots of ways, which I will now try to start itemising.

The first and greatest argument in favour of the connection between freedom and democracy is that democracy is preferable to civil war, and that civil war is extremely bad for freedom.

That war of any kind is bad for freedom is surely uncontroversial, certainly among libertarians, and civil war can be particularly horrible, because it can get so personal. Regular wars often merely involve leaders being persuaded with a little bit of bloodshed to behave differently. Civil wars are all too likely to be someone trying to kill you, and you behaving similarly to that someone, in sheer self defence.

Democracy, when it works, spares us all from regular bouts of such horrors, by offering the contending parties a process which is a lot like civil war, but without the dead bodies.

Democracy is often denounced by its remaining enemies for being so relentlessly military in tone. But that is actually a lot of the reason why it works so well. All the people who would have thrived during a real war have an arena of conflict where many of their martial virtues, or vices if you prefer, can have free play. All that posturing and backstabbing, manouevre and counter-manouevre – all those "killing grounds", to use a phrase that a political wonk friend of mine is fond of – that democracy and war have in common, metaphorical in the one and literal in the other, these are all part of why democracy works as well as it does. It finds alternative work for warlike hands.

There is no mystery about why the winners of elections favour democratic procedure. Of course they do. The clever bit is that the losers are likely to be reconciled to the result of an election also. This is because them losing an election is a pretty good clue to the fact, which it probably is, that they would have lost a real war also, had there been one.

There is another reason why democracy's losers have a habit of taking their defeats peacefully, which is that the verdict of democracy is never final. There will always be another election. In deciding whether to try to overthrow the result of an election, the losers have to choose between doing that, and trying to win the next election. Given that your average democratic footsoldier – canvasser, party worker, humble party member and donor – does not relish getting killed in a battle where the glory will all go to much grander people, the massed ranks of the demcratic armies, for all their dashed hopes the day after the election, are inclined at that moment to lick their metaphorical wounds and keep them metaphorical, and focus their attentions on the next election.

This rule about how there will be a next election is fundamental.

Critics of democracy make much of the fact that Adolf Hitler was democratically elected, as indeed he was. But he was only a democratic leader for as long as the next election remained in place. What Hitler actually did was cancel the next election, pretty much as soon as he was elected, and so at best, he scores one out of two in the democratic test, and democracy in Germany ended when that next election was cancelled.

Vladimir Putin recently cancelled a lot of local elections in Russia, I believe. But has he cancelled the next national election, the one that might unseat him? Because that is the one that matters. If he does, then that is goodbye to Russian democracy, until such time as someone else contrives to stage another such election. For as long as Putin does not cancel that next election, he remains a democratic leader. Tyrannical, but democratic.

Pinochet of Chile, usually denounced as totally undemocratic, also, like Hitler, scores one out of two. Unlike Hitler, he was not elected. He deposed the duly elected boss. But what Pinochet left behind was an electoral process for choosing future leaders. Having destroyed democracy, he then re-established it.

If the electoral war settled everything, then the electoral war would, time after time, be followed by the real thing. That elections never settle everything, only things in the meantime, enables losers to live in hope and to stay peaceful, thereby not trampling all over people's freedom and provoking their electorally victorious opponents into doing the same.

Similarly, the prospect of future electoral defeat can work wonders for the civility of the victors.

So it is that democratic arrangements create agonies of uncertainty for all ideologues – ideologues being defined as everyone who knows better than the electorate. Democracy is obviously disgusting, because it enables the mob to overturn the rule of virtue and of the virtuous. Yet, despite all their protestations of ideological purity, the Virtuous get sucked in, despite themselves, if only because all those damned sheep voters seem to prefer their damned democracy to Virtue. Once sucked in, the Virtuous find themselves involved in a huge and diverting and exciting game, full of intricacies and stratagems and cunning plans, and they are liable to forget all about their Virtue. This makes the sheep bleat more about the spendour of democracy – it de-virtued the Virtuous, hurrah!

As I read distant reports and commentaries about what is now happening in the Middle East, I believe that I observe all these processes in action.

Democracy, says the Islamist, allows people to vote against God, so it is plainly evil. And yet … maybe we should pretend to accept it, for the sake of getting power, if not now then soon.

But then comes the greatest agony. Having installed the rule of God by winning an election, do the Godly then leave in place the means by which God may, at the next election, be voted out of office? That is the tough one.

I recently put the analogous question to a fellow libertarian. If you and your pals (egged on by me) surprise us all and form a "libertarian government", would you then cancel the next election, Hitler style, and if not why not? I really enjoyed the look on his face.

There is every chance that, purely for reasons of tactical calculation ("I remain a Virtue-ist, with every fibre of my body, blah blah blah"), the Virtuous will leave that next election in place, and that if they then lose it, that they will accept that, and live to fight another day, metaphorically speaking. TheV virtuous do die eventually, of course, but of natural causes.

The Virtuous will still not be believers in democracy. Except that, since they believe in playing by all the rules of democracy, they actually will be a believers in democracy.

Gotcha.

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Even if we take only two nations, the United States and the United Kingdom, this question is complex.

If we take the old John Dewey definition of liberty (at least the definition of liberty that John Dewey tended to use in his youth - as he got older he became a more interesting man), the answer is 'right now'. Never before have average incomes been higher, most people can buy more things (and so on) than people could in the past.

However, for those of us who reject the Pragmatist soft-left FDR 'freedom from want' definition of liberty or freedom (no, I am not going to go into possible differences between 'liberty' and 'freedom') more thinking is required.

First the United States.

Slavery may be against natural law (if there is such a thing) as even the Romans accepted (although slavery was not against 'the law of all nations' or Roman law itself), and it may be (as authorities for centuries have claimed - for an American example see Salmon P. Chase) against the principles of the English Common Law, but it certainly was not against the statute law of many States.

So if we define (as libertarians do) liberty as the non-violation of a person or their goods by another person or group of persons ('the nonaggression principle') then the United States was more of a free country after the slaves were freed than before. So the United States after 1865 (not in the first years of the Republic) is at its most free.

Government taxes and regulations actually decline after the Civil War (or War between the States, or War of Northern Aggression - or whatever you want to call it), and statism does not seem to rise again till after the Interstate Commerce Commission of 1887 (it is pity that a good free market man like Grover Cleveland was responsible for that - but he thought of himself as using federal regulation to ward off worse regulation by individual States, a rather Madison style move that did not work out well in the end).

Oddly enough the Jim Crow laws in the South were not fully underway by the mid 1880's either (although they were on the cards - it depends which State one is talking about). So the early 1880's would seem (for all their faults) were about the peak of liberty for the nation as a whole. The trade tax (or 'tariff' if you prefer) was increased in 1890 and 'antitrust' came in the same year, and Jim Crow got worse and worse.

However, even by just before the First World War Federal Government spending was only between 2 and 3 per cent of the economy. Indeed even as late as 1928 Federal Government spending was only about 3&percent; of the economy and total government spending only about 12&percent;. Of course there was the vile Federal Reserve System of 1913 (which took over from the less vile, but still vile, National Banking Act system put on the books during the Civil War) and there was Prohibition and... Well, it is too depressing to think about modern history.

Of course the Federal (or 'federal' as some people like to write it) government was bigger after the Civil War than before it and it never quite fell back (for example the fed taxes on booze remained - America was never again the land that Jefferson had boasted of after he got rid of the excise, the land were the fed tax-collector 'was never seen') and there were State debts and State taxes to think about - so if one is considering an individual State (rather than the whole United States), the peak of liberty (if it was a free State and in existence) is likely to have been before 1861.

If we take the example of New Hampshire (the first State that springs to mind) its peak must be after 1819 (because there was a town church tax before then), and there was a Fed trade tax increase in 1824 and the crazy one of 1828 (I mean crazy, various low tariff people voted for deliberately mad amendments to the bill in Congress hoping to turn votes against the measure, but instead of falling the bill got into law - this is not the first time that a clever free market person plan has gone very wrong, try and avoid cleverness in politics).

So liberty in New Hampshire was at its peak in the early 1820's.

This is true of most non-slave States. The regulations and state education schemes of colonial times had decayed and the new ones (established by such men as H. Mann in the 1830's and later) had not got off the ground (although Rhode Island established a State school system, of sorts, in 1828).

However, in some semi-free States (i.e. States where there were very few slaves) there is little sign of an increase in government power till the Civil War (I am told that New Jersey is a good example of this).

Now for the United Kingdom.

Well if we leave aside the stories of 'Celtic liberty' ('P Celt' or 'Q Celt') and the stories of Arthur, and we leave aside the stories of Pagan Anglo Saxon hero Kings like Penda - well we come (after a couple of centuries) to the stories of Alfred, his daughter Ethelfleda (warrior ruler of Mercia) and his son Edward the Elder.

These are interesting people. Most 'feminst' historians seem to have missed Ethelfleda (of course they spend so much time 'doing theory' that they do not have much time left to learn about what happened in the past), but she was an interesting person - who led her army in battle after battle, crushing the Vikings in war and gaining their submission at the conference table (she was rather better at this than Edward the Elder). The Irish and Welsh annuals remembered her - but we do not.

Then there is Alfred himself, seeing all English Kingdoms (including Wessex) fall to the armies of the Norse (who were certainly not the 'competing protection agencies' of libertarian theory - at least they competed in 'non-market ways' and were not above collecting goods and people without consent [in the same way that the sea is not above the sky]), and yet he fought back and defeated his enemies in the end - and without murdering or enslaving the Vikings who gave in (a rare humanity by the standards of the time). Yes they did have to covert to Christianity - but it is difficult to practice full religious toleration with folk who believe in human sacrifice (the Blood Eagle was probably no myth, neither are the other practices)

But we know so little about the basic society of the time. We know there were no formal Church taxes (they come in with King Edgar - most likely at the suggestion of Archbishop Dunstan).

But we do not know how much was taken by Kings from their subjects (as a percentage of their subjects income in money or kind) in peacetime (although King Athelstan is known to have been interested in pomp and luxury than Edward the Elder or Alfred had been).

Nor do we know (with any certainty) what percentage of the population were free and what percentage were either slaves or bound to the soil (a practice that went back at least to Roman times). In later time Kent was known for its free men as was (to be fair to the Norse) the Danelaw north - but numbers, numbers we do not know the numbers.

The ancient Saxons and Fresians seem to have not practices serfdom (or whatever you wish to call it) amongst their own people, or gone in for mighty lords (the Saxons were known for the 12 man councils that ran their villages - a different root for the jury to the Norman root?). And Saxon law (like the Welsh law) recognised the property rights of women.

But this may tell us little about 'Saxons' in England, and the Angles had a different culture (not just concerning lords, the Angles less also less concerned with the rights of women). Still forget Angle, Saxon or Jute (or whoever) everyone was English, Welsh, or Norse (either Norman or Dane) by Alfred's time.

For the non-aggression principle all we can say is that Alfred's family (his brothers and forefathers as well as his children) was virtually the only Royal House in Europe that were not in the habit of killing each other. That, by the standards of the time at least, made them the good guys - people that folk would follow (even when things seemed hopeless).

Well what about the times when we do have 'the numbers'?

Well the calculation is simple enough. Central government spending reaches its low point (and what regulations that were to be repealed in the 19th century were repealed, and women's property rights to some extent accepted) by 1874 - so for the areas of the country that had not set up School Boards (for example my own town of Kettering) the high point of freedom comes in 1874. For those towns that had set up school boards, under the Act of 1871, the peak is the year before they do. It is mostly down hill for freedom from there (although even as late as the 1960's some nasty laws are repealed, such as the ones that threatened homosexuals with prison - but, of course, many new regulations were added). Total government (national and local) was about 10% of output at most in the early 1870's.

But "the numbers" only take us so far. Where did the orgy of statism of 1875 (Trade Union Act, Slum Act, 40 different local government Acts codified and made compulsory on towns and cities) come from? A clear blue sky?

No, the principles of statism (that government should give money to education [1833], that government should have police [London 1829, other towns and rural areas - compulsory by 1856], that public health should be a local government concern [almost as soon as local government was reformed in 1835] and so on) had already been accepted. Government only continued to shrink (from its high point in the ways with France - when it reached perhaps 25% of output), because economic growth was higher than government growth - after 1874 that was no longer true.

If you want a time when people like John Stuart Mill (saying 'liberty' with every other breath, whilst stating in such works as Principles of Political Economy that "everyone agrees" with such and such bit of statism) did not influence British life you really have to go back to the 1820's.

Taxes were higher overall (including Poor Law taxes) but the principles that the state must be at least involved in just about everything were not accepted (taxes were for the war debt, the military, and the local rates for the old Poor law - in Scotland there was no large scale Poor Law, but there was some government education). Taxes were cut most years (and had been since 1815) and regulations were reduced, statute after statute being tossed on the fire.

1820's for both Britain (in principle, if not in the raw numbers) and for the non slave States, and early 1870's and early 1880's. for overall.

Perhaps the United States and the United Kingdom are not so different.

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Maybe I am making too much of this, but see what you think.

This is the blurb, from a leaflet that fell out of the latest edition of the Radio Times (so no link), for a movie that has just come out on DVD about the musician Ray Charles:

MUSICAL BIOGRAPHICAL DRAMA The early life of celebrated musician Ray Charles, from 1930-1966. Charles loses his sight at the age of seven – two years after his brother's tragic drowning. Encouraged by his mother, he forges a successful career as a pianist and singer, fusing together gospel, R'n'B and soul. But despite overcoming his early setbacks, Charles becomes dogged by drug problems and the complications arising from his numerous affairs.

The bit I object to is where it says that Ray Charles was "dogged by drug problems". I do not know the exact circumstance in which Ray Charles turned to drugs and do not know to what degree he is to be blamed for his drug problems, but one thing is surely true, namely that these problems were set in motion by things which he himself did, and by choices which he himself made. Yet the blurb writer (who I do think is blameworthy) makes these "problems" read like entirely separate creatures who sneaked up behind Ray Charles and mugged him, without him doing anything to provoke them at all. To use the phrase "dogged by drug problems" to describe Charles' drug misfortunes is to imply that these misfortunes were not in any way self-inflicted. It is to switch from the active to the passive, from responsibility for action, to excuse. At least those "complications" that arose from his affairs are described as arising from his affairs, rather than just from thin air. And of course Ray Charles gets all the credit that he surely deserves for forging (in a good way) his career, for fusing this music with that (ditto), and for overcoming early (and horrendous) setbacks. So why the "dogged by drug problems" stuff? Why not "problems caused by his drug-taking"?

You hear this kind of language - the passive evasive tense, and the relabeling of forces actually set in motion by the victim of them, into external life forces with minds of their own - a lot. (I recall this man referring to such language a lot - link anyone?) And this matters, because if individuals are not going to be described as at all to blame for what are actually their – at least partly – self-inflicted misfortunes, it is all too likely that someone else – someone who at worst only contributed somewhat to these problems - will be held entirely responsible for them. Which is unjust.

When things are said badly, they are liable to be done badly.

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I was listening to Frou Frou's cover of 'Holding out for a hero', I could not but help think of British politics. Here's part of the song, and the sentiment is what I think many Samizdata readers will feel, especially following of the Tory leadership's shameful and unprincipled support of identity cards:

Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
Where's the street-wise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?
Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed?
Late at night I toss and turn and dream
of what I need

[Chorus]
I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night
He's gotta be strong
And he's gotta be fast
And he's gotta be fresh from the fight
I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'til the morning light
He's gotta be sure
And it's gotta be soon
And he's gotta be larger than life

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It was a peculiar juxtaposition of programmes. First I watched the latest episode of Spooks, on BBC1 TV, and then I watched the BBC Ten O'Clock News, without pushing any buttons on the TV because that was on BBC1 TV also.

The News was dominated by David Blunkett's difficulties, largely self-inflicted, it would appear. There will be an independent inquiry into whether Blunkett fast-tracked a visa application for his ex-lover's nanny, and the Prime Minister announced that he was confident of the outcome, which was an odd combination of circumstances. If the Prime Minister is so sure, why the independent inquiry? Why can he simply not say why he is so sure of the impeccability of his Home Secretary? And as another talking head opined, it would now take a brave independent inquirer to fly so completely in the face of Blair's clear statement of what he wants the answer to be. Which means that if the independent inquiry does endorse the Prime Minister's view, the suspicion will remain that this was because of the Prime Minister publicly demanding that answer instead of because the answer is true. So whichever way the independent inquiry goes, the stink will either be strong, or strong.

Spooks (a programme I have had cause to mention here before) was a even more lurid soap opera than usual – of junior Ministerial wrongdoing (he murders a girl, then resigns to spend more time with his family (sound familiar?)), of a famed rock and roll couple (she has her baby kidnapped to keep them in the news, but it goes wrong, the baby dies, and he finally murders her in a rage and then shoots himself). Downing Street was presented throughout as relentlessly manipulating a deranged state of public sentimentality (not least in calling in the Spooks to sort the matter in the first place, instead of leaving it to the Police), as in the grip of electoral desperation, as total hypocritical, and generally as a huge cover-up machine. If this show is any clue as to the state of public opinion, out there in Middle England, we have our answer to that question about why the Prime Minister does not want to explain why he believes his Home Secretary to be innocent of all wrongdoing. Middle England would not trust such pronouncements further than it could spit them. The Prime Minister is not trusted.

It is perhaps worth mentioning that the actor who personifies this Downing Street ghastliness in Spooks is a man called Oliver Mace, who is played by Tim McInnerney. McInernney is probably most famous for playing Captain Darling in Blackadder Goes Forth. But since doing that he played a fixer for Sir Ian McKellen's wonderfully fascist and scary Richard III, a virtually identical character to the one he now plays in Spooks. So the equation is inescapable. Downing Street is the haunt of Shakespearian villains. Whether the Prime Minister is one of them or merely the manipulated façade (Richard III or more like Richard II), is really a matter of individual taste in how you choose to interpret such things.

For my own part, I doubt the claim, also strongly made by the Prime Minister on the news, that a Cabinet Minister, just like anyone else, is entitled to have his private life kept private, and free from public criticism. The underlying implication is that, in particular, marital infidelity is a purely private matter. I know that this is a widely held view nowadays, what with so many people now cheating on each other, and then getting divorced, but I do not share it. I think that when people break their marriage vows by committing adultery, that impacts upon the public realm. Typically, married people have promised, often with just such words, not to commit adultery. And they did this, if not exactly 'in public', then in something a lot more open than complete secrecy. That half of the Cabinet, or whatever is the exact fraction, have dabbled in adultery, just as a massive proportion of the rest of us have, makes public life a lot harder to do. Yes, I lied to the wife about my infidelities, but no I am not now lying to you about public policy. (I can – see the comments on Perry's recent Blunkett posting – be trusted not to abuse a compulsory ID card system.)

I just does not , to my eye, add up. I strongly disapprove of the whole principle of no fault divorce. Enthrone that principle, and the next thing you will get is no fault politics.

And if anyone mentions France, where, allegedly, they take a more mature and rational view of these things, my answer is: precisely. Cynicism about private life is directly to be associated, I would say, with cynicism about the more public side of things. French public life is relentlessly corrupt and cynical, and they are oh-so-rational about adultery. I do not think these facts are coincidental.

My telly has just shown me the front page of tomorrow's Telegraph, which was something along the lines of: "Prime Minister says Cabinet Ministers should not be morally criticised for their private lives." That would suggest that they think something along these lines too.

Some people, of the sort who confuse (or who like to pretend for propaganda purposes that they confuse) libertarianism with libertinism, might expect a libertarian like me to rejoice at any collapse in marital fidelity. But my libertarianism is about the right to choose what promises you make, not about the right to break them with impunity, to the point where you are not even to be criticised for such cheating.

And other more subtle-minded persons might expect a libertarian like me to rejoice that the state of modern morals (or immorals) is making politics so much harder to do with any dignity.

But cynicism about public life is one thing and the belief that the government should do a lot less than it now does – that public life ought to be smaller, so to speak – are two quite distinct matters. I wish they were not distinct matters, but sadly they are. Libertarianism is a strong and forthright attempt to see the affairs of the world governed far more in accordance with morally upright principles than it is at the moment. The sort of ideas I saw proclaimed on my television this evening are far more likely to lead people to believe that any such principles are either sentimental hot air or else an exercise in hypocritical manipulation and to dismiss them with a resigned shrug, than to believe that these principles are right.

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In this posting earlier today, Jonathan mentions how The Incredibles includes some "clever and sly digs at America's litigation culture". So here is another clever and sly dig at Britain's fast expanding litigation culture:

With thanks to b3ta.com.

Did you join an army, and then get hurt in a battle? Sue your commanding officers for forgetting to warn you that war is sometimes violent.

Did you fall over, because of running too fast? Sue the owner of the floor you fell on, the person who employed the person who spilt some water on it and made it slippery, the maker of your shoes for not making them with more grip, the maker of the floor tiles, but: on no account blame yourself, for being careless. Your life is not your fault. It is the fault of somebody else, somebody rich. And if you were engaged in robbing the place at the time, never mind: this makes no difference!

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Stop! Have you not raped the planet enough? Is it not time that you lifted your greedy foot from the head of the oppressed?

Put down that cup of steaming, hot coffee right now. Toss that doughnut away. Rip off your cotton T-shirt and consign it to the rubbish tip.

There. Doesn't that feel so much better? And would you not like to feel this good all the time? Wouldn't you just love to luxuriate in the warm, satisfying glow of self-righteousness? Tell me that would not like to tuck yourself up in your cosy bed at night and sleep the sleep of the just?

Well, now you can do all of those things. Yes, those guilty days and sleepless nights are at an end for you too can reach out for the 'Rough Guide to Ethical Shopping':

Along with the usual demons such as Nike and Gap, which are routinely accused of using sweatshops to keep production costs low, are other alleged villains. The fashion label French Connection is accused of having a "feeble" code on ensuring its clothes are not produced in sweatshops, while the Arcadia boss Philip Green, who owns Top Shop and BhS, has refused to join the UK's Ethical Trading Initiative.

Ah yes, the UK's Ethical Trading Initiative. Otherwise known as a 'shakedown'

Bling Bling is a definite no-no unless aficionados can prove their diamonds have not come from war zones where human rights abuses have been perpetrated.

Like the people who buy this Guide can actually afford any sort of diamonds.

Perfume companies such as Calvin Klein are accused of continuing to test products on animals, while Greenpeace recommends avoiding Axminster carpets because of the chemicals contained in them.

Which could be very harmful if swallowed by members of the Carpetmunching Community.

Lovers of the Toblerone chocolate bar may want to think twice after discovering it is owned by the tobacco company formerly known as Philip Morris, now renamed Altria.

No chocolate?!! Damn. Just have to buy a packet of smokes instead.

And those who think they are doing their bit for global warming by shopping on the web rather than driving to an out-of-town mall should beware - AOL, CompuServe, Microsoft and Netscape Navigator are all major donors to George Bush, who infuriated campaigners by refusing to sign the Kyoto treaty on the environment.

Note that the moth-eaten lie about George Bush and Kyoto has now settled into leftie folklore.

The manual highlights some extreme groups, such as the fruitarians, who only eat uncooked foods that can be eaten without harming any organism, which limits them to fruits, berries and nuts.

Go on, have a spare rib. You know you want one. Go on, go on.

Another movement suggests that even the ethical shopping lobby is in the wrong because it encourages purchasing when in fact people should not be buying at all. With that in mind, 27 November has been declared national Buy Nothing Day...

Yes, but in order to find out about it you have to buy a copy of the The Independent and then...D'OH!

Its chunky boots and no-nonsense clothing are popular among public school-educated young men, but protesters claim Caterpillar sells bulldozers to Israel which could be used to bulldoze Palestinian homes.

No-nonsense. Sounds right to me.

Tiger Prawns. Prawn farms in Bangladesh and the Philippines drain villages of water, and pollute surrounding land. Human rights abuses including rape and murder have been inflicted on people forced from their homes to make way for man-made ponds.

Stop the genocidal Prawn Army now. No blood for shellfish.

Asda. Owned by Wal-Mart, which is notorious for anti-union activities in the US, selling guns and donating funds to the Republican Party.

I am pleased to note that the funds have been put to very good use.

Notice how much of this guff is qualified by terms like "accused" and "said by some" and "thought to be". This 'guide' is just a tissue of po-mo smears, fabrications and wilful ignorance and it would be sinister were it not for the utterly po-faced earnestness with which is presented and which renders it achingly hilarious.

The supreme irony is that the publishers of this guide have concocted a near-perfect advertisement for the very system they purport to be against. The brilliance of capitalism is that it enables people to make all manner of weird, wacky, neurotic and irrational choices. They are not bound to follow any lead but their own and, if labouring under a guilty conscience, salvation is within their own gift. The market is about choices, though not necessarily sensible choices and hooray for that.

I, of course, will make different choices. Now, I wonder if Caterpillar make boots in my size?

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Last Friday, on another blog, I did a link-to/short-comment-on piece, linking to and commenting on this report. It was about Chinese students lying about their qualifications in order to get into British Universities.

Harry Hutton (esteemed writer of this hugely entertaining and clearly much frequented blog) added the following very interesting comment to my posting:

It's a big problem with the IELTS exam in mainland China – people turn up to do tests for other people. They also come in with live mobile phones, to record the script. But there is zero cheating in Hong Kong. I don't know why this big difference, but it is so.

Cards on the table, I do not know why there is this big different either. And never having been to – or for that matter anywhere near – Hong Kong, or mainland China, I am a lot less qualified even to guess than Harry Hutton is.

However, I choose to offer a guess nevertheless.

Hong Kong has been a rampantly capitalistic economy for the last half century, and rampantly capitalistic economies make people more honest.

Oh not in the short run, but they do in the long run. People learn, at first the hard way, and then by being eloquently taught by the people who did learn it the hard way, or who already knew it and whose experience confirmed it, that honestly pays off, in the long run. In the short run, you may get some small or even big advantage by cheating. But in the long run, the damage you risk doing to your reputation for honesty by cheating, whether at a game, in the market or in an exam, is a risk not worth taking.

The biggest single reason why someone is unemployable, if he is unemployable, is that he is dishonest. Incompetence can often be corrected, with luck and application. Ignorance, ditto. And if a basically well motivated and honest person simply cannot master the first job you give him despite days or weeks, or even months of honest effort, why then, you can find him another job, if you have one for him. If not, you can enthusiastically recommend him to someone else who can, for his honesty if not his competence. (Remember: your recommendations have to be honest too!) But dishonesty is a deal breaker. Well, it would be. Dishonesty means that you break deals, so why would anyone want to make a deal with you, if that is what you do?

To put all this in modern econmicspeak, in a society in which people are entitled to shun you and have no obligations towards you that they do not freely accept, what is now called 'human capital' grows rather than shrinks.

I vividly recall participating in a radio panel discussion in which our chairman, a prmoinent newspaper editor, said that free market capitalism was all very well at accumulating capital of the physical, steel and wheels, bricks and mortar variety, but that when it came to 'moral capital', it consumed the stuff, and eventually exhausted it. This is the direct opposite of the truth, which is: that free market capitalism is not only good at encouraging the accumulation of physical capital, but that it is especially good at encouraging the accumulation of moral capital. It is the collectivist, politically dominated societies (such as mainland China), the societies in which how you are paid is quite separate from what sort of character you are or worse, are paid according to how nasty you are willing be, that consume moral capital.

Moral capital is no triviality. It does far more than merely decorate the cake of society with an icing of decency. No moral capital means no cake to put icing on in the first place. A society where people who say that they will ring you back do ring you, in which people turn up for things when and where they say they will turn up, who declare that (for instance) a structure is safe only if they really think that it is safe, is a society that is going to function a whole lot better than one where people are not to be trusted, to keep an appointment, or to express an honest opinion regardless of how much money is being waved under their noses to say something dishonest.

Banks, to take a particularly portentous example, simply cannot work at all unless the people who run them are regarded as trustworthy, and the only way that can happen for any length of time is if they actually are trustworthy.

I know, from reading about eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain, that everyone who was involved in any sort of trade or business – not just those who could 'afford to be honest' but everyone – took their reputations for honesty and square deal very seriously. They could not, that is to say, afford not to be honest. So, why should it be different in Hong Kong now? Hong Kong, I am guessing, has recently been a very Victorian sort of place. Long may it last.

This tradition of honest dealing survives only very incompletely in Britain, and this is quite rightly regarded as a major threat to Britain's economic future. This is because, although wise enough to impose wise economic policies upon Hong Kong, we were not wise enough to impose similarly wise policies upon ourselves.

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Last night I attended a seminar on education organised by the Social Affairs Unit (there is as yet nothing about this event on their blog), at which the speaker was Francis Gilbert. Gilbert read a bit from his new book, I'm a Teacher, Get Me Out Of Here!, and if this bit was anything to go by, it is a very good book. (See also this posting here earlier this year.)

I will not here recount – and could not hope to recount - everything that was talked about, but I do note with approval that Francis Gilbert, after he had finished reading from his book, invited us to think about how much better education would be if it was run by the man who has recently taken over his local corner shop, and has made a great success of it, and by a few thousand others like him, instead of by the Government.

However, I will focus on one very widespread and wrong clutch of related ideas that cropped up in the course of our discussion. It was said, echoing something that Francis Gilbert himself had said, that education is not "like oil or bread". The most important qualities of education are beyond measurement or quantification. The thing is just too complicated and ... I think that the word ineffable may even have been used. Unlike oil or bread.

The conclusion we were invited to draw from this was that education, unlike oil or bread, cannot be supplied entirely by the free market, as a lot of us, taking our lead from Francis Gilbert, were enthusiastically recommending. It is just too complicated a thing to dole out in easily measurable little packets, like oil or bread.

But it simply does not follow that because something is complicated and immeasurable, even ineffable, that it cannot and should not be supplied by tradesmen.

All products worth bothering with have intangible, ineffable qualities, which are almost impossible to measure. Oil and bread are not "like oil and bread" either. They too have mysteries and intangibles attached to them.

Closely related to the entirely correct claim that education is a very complicated thing was the point, also made, that "people do not know what is good for them", when it comes to education. A complicated service cannot be a mere product, because the consumers will not know what to pick. They need to be told that (in the words of Claire Fox while putting this argument) "Mozart is better than Hip Hop", but will not want to be told this.

The idea that authority (as opposed to raw power) can never flourish in a free market is likewise very widespread, and likewise utterly wrong. I buy all kinds of immensely complicated products, and I am constantly seeking out authoritative guidance about which ones are best. Often I do not understand the reasons why they are best. I am glad merely to have detected a consensus among the authorities that product X is indeed excellent. The very existence of the institution of the specialist periodical press is proof beyond all doubt that authority and the free market go hand in hand.

I did what I could very briefly to challenge these notions. I said the "oil is not oil either" thing, and also waved my little digital camera. (This is hugely complicated object freely available in many competing versions in shops, yet it is clearly not something any government would have come up with. I chose the one I was waving not on the basis of my own non-existent knowledge of such devices, but on the basis of reviews written by people who do understand these things.) I might also have seized hold of one of the many wine bottles on the table we were seated around. Was there ever a trade – and it definitely is a trade – with so complicated and so ineffable a product as the wine trade? Yet this is one of the oldest trades of all.

The wine trade also points us towards another important point. Wine, however ineffable, can, to some extent anyway, be measured – in gallons, in bottles, in costs, in profits and in losses, and the same applies to education. The fact that not everything about education (or oil, or bread, or digital cameras, or wine) can be satisfactorily measured, does not mean that measurement can contribute nothing at all to education. You can still measure numbers of pupils, hours of teaching, pupil satisfaction, parental satisfaction, and exam success, in ways that are way better than just guessing. If a school is a business, you can most definitely measure income, and costs. No business would ever use the impossibility of completely accurate and completely uncontroversial measurement as a reason to abandon all effort to measure at all.

Yes, there is a danger, in any business, that the measurable will be concentrated upon at the expense of things which are beyond measurement but perhaps in the long run more important. But this is a familiar idea in the literature of business management and in the experience of real world business managers.

I would go further, and say that governments are at their worst and most bureaucratic when what they are trying to do is least easy to measure. Tradesmen can always fall back on the notion that their customers are always right, even if they cannot ever be entirely sure of what they are right about. But what is a government to do when the numbers mean nothing? (A few years back, I did a whole Libertarian Alliance piece about the absurdities of government support for that most ineffable and immeasurable of things, Art.) The fact that, as I say, almost nothing can be measured with complete accuracy means that governments tend inexorably tend to screw up everything that they do. Far more than traders, governments depend on their precious statistics. If a trader makes a nice loaf of bread (or a nice school), and people like it, he is in business, provided only that the Government does not stop him. Government itself is not like that at all.

By the way, I do not want to present Francis Gilbert as a pure free marketeer. The excerpt from his book had been all about the waste and incompetence of state provision – inspectors, second-guessers, form-fillers and bureaucrats of all kinds crawling about doing very little – yet his final recommendation was that the state should concentrate on providing very good nurseries for all the badly brought up children who were, he felt, almost beyond getting a good education when they first arrived at school. But a nationalised nursery industry would merely pile bureaucratic miseries on top of current family failures.

To be fair to Gilbert, I felt that the point he was really making was that "we", the concerned classes, need to think and worry most about those very early years, where improving things will do the most good, rather than that the Government would necessarily do this job as well as he would want them to, if they were to tackle it. He is a product of a statist intellectual culture, and is not in the habit if distinguishing between: "we" should do something, and: The Government should do it. In any case, we put him right.

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Depress yourself with this:

The Home Office is spending hundreds of thousands of pounds recruiting a PR team to sell the benefits of compulsory identity cards before legislation for the scheme has been before Parliament.

It is advertising for a head of marketing on a salary of up to £66,000 to promote the ID scheme not only to the public but to MPs and public sector groups. Legislation enabling the Government to set up a population database containing the details of every citizen and to begin issuing ID cards in three years is due to be included in the next Queen's Speech.

From 2007, all new passports and drivers' licences will double as ID cards. By the time they have been issued to 80 per cent of the country, Parliament will be asked to make the scheme compulsory for all. A programme team has been set up to mastermind the plan, including the testing of the biometric identifiers, such as iris prints, that will be included on the cards.

I recently defended democracy here, but this is its ugly side. I mean, if a majority gets to vote, and if out of that emerges a guy who wants us all to have these ID card things, and if most people have them anyway … what the hell, right? The difference between eighty and a hundred is, democratically, insignificant. But when it comes to liberty, that difference is all the difference.

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Dominic Wellington see the hate filled collectivist attitude to private sector space flight as being the same attitude which feeds poverty in places where such sentiments actually control the political process

Rand Simberg points to this article in The Washington Dispatch. The author, Mark Whittington, writes about the sophomoric class-envy editorials on the X-Prize that have appeared recently in the UK press. Excerpt:

An editorial in The Scotsman on October 3rd [online here] seemed to set the tone. "Virtually every child does fantasise about space travel," The Scotsman sneered. "But most then grow up. Branson reckons he will have no difficulty attracting customers for his space venture. Sadly, he’s probably right. Arrested development is a common trait among the super-rich, a fact which explains the market for Lotuses and Lamborghinis."

Speaking as someone who would love a Lotus or a Lamborghini, and would kill for a ride into space on one of Mr Branson's craft, I have no idea what the Scotsman editorial writer has been smoking. What is his problem?

Well, actually, I know perfectly well what his problem is - he thinks that nobody should be rich, and we should all live in dour council flats and drive Ladas and Trabants. I only have one response to that, and it's not printable.

I do not have much time for those who inherit wealth and squander it, but self-made men or people who work with their inheritance and grow it command my full respect. This is one of the reasons why I like Berlusconi and his kids. He came from nowhere, and made some very clever deals. Nobody would have bet on private TV in Italy when he was buying stations up, but once it took off the howls of outrage from slower competitors and suddenly obsolete State broadcasters were deafening. The same sort of thing happened with many of his real-estate deals. His kids, with an inheritance the size of the national debt, are working their tails off in the family businesses.

Gerard DeGroot, the bitter ankle-biter of the Scotsman, is instead a professor of modern history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Surprisingly, he approves of space travel per se - see for instance this Christian Science Monitor article from earlier this year - it is just private space travel that he dislikes. I wonder how he can combine the vitriol quoted above with positive sentiments such as the following:

Through history, every vibrant culture has pushed horizons outward. They've done so not simply because of the practical benefits of exploration, but also because discovery is a touchstone of cultural vigor.

I would argue that individuals doing things for their own reasons and benefit are much more of a "touchstone of cultural vigor" than massive State-run programs dropped onto the populace.

There is an expression in Italian: cattedrali nel deserto. Literally, it means 'cathedrals in the desert'. It refers to the practice of building a shiny new factory, motorway, hospital or whatever in the economically backward South of Italy. The problem with this practice was - is - that the factory had no workers or transport links, or the motorway went from nowhere to nowhere, or there were no doctors to work in the hospital. These projects were as absurd as building a great cathedral in the desert, far from any worshippers. The 'cathedrals' bred only corruption, and many of them never even entered service. This is what State-run projects look like.

By contrast, the North of Italy, which has a GDP on a level with Switzerland and fearsome productivity, is driven entirely by small to medium businesses. Sure, there are a couple of Fiat-sized colossi, but mainly we're talking little companies that you've never heard of, that are making their owners rich, that bring jobs to the area, and that supply such a level of diversity and resilience to the economy that it can drag the South along with it into Europe without being crippled or even slowed down too much.

The entrepreneurs driving this new space race and their prospective super-rich passengers are productive members of a vigorous culture. Gerard DeGroot and his intellectual compatriots, despite pretensions to the contrary, are most emphatically not.

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It is not at all uncommon for libertarians to boast about not voting in political elections. The rationale behind not voting varies, from "it is pointless, my single vote cannot affect the outcome," through "I don't like any of the candidates on offer, so why should I vote for any of them," to "voting only ratifies the cult of the state." (I abbreviate for brevity's sake, but not unfairly, I hope).

I disagree with those who do not vote, not because any of these arguments are wrong (indeed, they are each correct in their own relatively narrow sphere), but because elections and some degree of 'democratic' accountability are an essential part of any society that hopes to retain a sphere of personal liberty beyond the reach of the state. I say this based on a broad reading of current events - those nations that are the worst offenders against liberty lack democratic accountability, and those nations that maintain a sphere of liberty, however beleaguered, have some degree of democratic accountability.

Voting and democracy are, in a nutshell, a necessary but not sufficient condition of liberty. Those opposed to voting focus on the 'not sufficient' part of this formulation, and say that therefore it is worthless, or at least not worth doing. I freely admit that democracy is not sufficient to maintain liberty, and that a number of other conditions also have to obtain; to conclude, however, that what is not sufficient is also not necessary is to fall into a logical fallacy.

I think the broad correlation of functioning democratic institutions and personal liberty is solid, and the inverse correlation of lack of democracy and tyranny is absolutely undeniable. From this I draw the conclusion that, regardless of the value of your individual vote, the institution of voting is important. This institution is dependent on people actually voting, and so refusing to vote on principle amounts to undermining one of the pillars of personal liberty.

There is nothing to be gained from not voting, as there is no chance whatsoever that voter apathy or nonparticipation will ever spur any reform or change. However, there is something to be lost. Not voting concedes the field to a narrow class of political activists who uniformly want to turn the power of the state to their own ends rather than limit it (as illustrated by primary elections in the US, which have low turnout and all too often result in the nomination of party hacks). Not voting may also, over time, undermine the principle of democratic accountability altogether; is it just coincidence that, as voter participation has declined, state power has expanded at the behest of unelected judges and bureaucrats?

To my libertarian brethren and sistren I say, then, vote. Hold your nose if necessary, "throw your vote away" on the execrable Libertarians if you wish, but vote. Like so much in life, it may not be a panacea, but it sure beats the alternative.

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Natalie got there ahead of me but I also noticed the preposterous attempt by the pseudo-liberals of Crooked Timber to lecture us "Schmibertarians" in the 'correct' libertarian stance towards Iraq.

I thought it might be informative to examine the Crooked consensus and some of its logical implications. I would summarise the "Samizdatistas are schmibertarians" argument - and anyone who suspects I'm setting up a straw man here is invited to read the relevant posts and particularly the follow-up comments - as follows:

1. 'Proper' Libertarians oppose major government programs funded by coercive taxation, the Iraq war is such a program.
2. 'Proper' Libertarians are wary of any kind of social-engineering, so the neoconservative plan to remodel Middle Eastern countries as democracies is futile folly.
3. Thus anyone who supports the war against Saddam is necessarily a sham libertarian who just thinks it's cool to blow things up.

My first reaction was to the irony of being lectured in 'correct' libertarianism by a bunch of egalitarian, social-engineering collectivists who presume to identify as "Liberal". Indeed it is precisely because this previously unambiguous term has been suborned by those who display a cavalier disregard for the classic liberal values of autonomy, individualism and limited government that many of us reluctantly adopt the libertarian moniker in the first place.

The premise behind the argument is dubious to say the least. It is generally taken to be the case that arguments are accepted or opposed on their own merits and without reference to whether they conform to some theology to which those making the argument are perceived to subscribe. I were to argue against, say, a Creationist, it would seem to me to be a pointless task to identify what a 'real' Creationist ought to believe prior to debunking his theory. Indeed, the logical consequence of a position which states that the correct libertarian ought to oppose the Iraq war according to libertarian first principles is that those who oppose the war are implicitly endorsing those specific libertarian principles. So, the next time some wonky twig proposes a massive government intervention or other, one can remind him that, as his opposition to the Iraq war demonstrates, such social engineering ought to be avoided.

It is also curious to note the partial isolationism adopted with regard to Iraq, considering the enthusiasm regularly displayed for action against third world 'exploitation'. Thus, according to the Crooked Timber moral calculus, it is not ok to interfere in the affairs of another country if its citizens are being tortured or murdered but it is ok to interfere to prevent those (remaining) citizens getting a good job with a dreaded multinational corporation!

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The dogs of the 'fat war' are chalking up their first victory:

Confectionery companies have agreed to phase out many king-size chocolate bars as part of the campaign against obesity.

The concession is part of the food and drinks industry's efforts to persuade the Government that tough new laws on issues such as labelling, advertising to children and school vending machines are unnecessary.

The bitter lessons of appeasement are as valid on the domestic front as they are on the foreign front. This 'concession' is merely the first of many, many more.

Like frightened villagers, the chocolate manufacturers have thrown some meat to the ravenous wolves in the hope that their hunger will be satisfied and the wolves will leave them alone.

But the wolves have a bottomless appetite and they will be back for more. Very soon.

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A series of posts on Crooked Timber criticise pro-Iraq war libertarians, mentioning this blog in particular. The posts (and still more the comments) differ in their degree of charitability to our position but the general thrust is '... can we think of a new name for libertarians who think it's a good idea to invade other countries and overthrow their governments, like maybe “shmibertarians”?'

Apologies to those who have heard me saying this before.

It is all much simpler than you think.

When I see my house burning down I do not wait for the evolution of private fire brigades.

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Funny how one posting leads to another. There I was going on about books, and now, as David Carr has already flagged up in a posting below, here come a thousand books.

I agree with David that this Liberty Library is a very important development, with potentially enormous long term significance to the cause of liberty. And it so happens that when I was in Brussels earlier this year, in addition to snapping the new EUro-parliament, I also took photos of, among many other interesting people, the two men in charge of this other and far better project.

Here is the techy of this operation, CNE webmaster James Rogers...

... and here is the academic supremo, Dr Hardy Bouillon:

Good as Hardy Bouillon is at this kind of thing there are almost certain to be some omissions, and there may even be the odd mistake in what is up there already. In either event, Hardy wants to know.

As it happens I think I may already spotted an error, in the form of a duplication. Government Failure: A Primer in Public Choice by Tullock, Brady and Seldon, seems to get two entries, the one right above the other. That is no big disaster, two mentions of this fine volume being greatly preferable to no mentions.

There is no explanatory verbiage attached to each title. It is just a plain and simple book list, with subject area (economics, history, literature or whatever), title, author, and link to where you can buy it and where you will find explanatory verbiage. A simple idea, simply done. I am told that it will be possible to search for an individual title, or to search for all the works of an individual author, but I cannot now find that facility. Unless this is just me, these further features have yet to materialise, but presumably they will very soon.

The sort of people who find books rather heavy going to plough through, and who prefer lighter reading of the sort supplied by things like Samizdata, are prone sometimes to underestimate the importance of books. We want action not words, blah blah blah. And it is true that people who already have classical liberal or libertarian opinions, and who have their lives and careers all up and running and who hence have only so much time to be reading books, are probably not the target readership of this site, although if that description fits you and you still want liberty-inclined books, got there and click away. But students, meanwhile, and younger people generally, with their opinions as yet unformed and their entire adult lives still ahead of them, are likely, insofar as they have been persuaded to look at this site at all, to be profoundly influenced by it, that is, by the enormous volume of writing to which it now provides easy access. I wish the project all the best. It can only make the world a better place.

I only discovered David's post about the Liberty Library just before I was about to put this up, and of course I then had to scurry back to the drawing board, so to speak. And I obviously considered not bothering with this post at all. But, like that Government Failure book mentioned above, if this Liberty Library is good enough for one mention, which it definitely is, two mentions, although a trifle confusing, can do no very great harm.

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The CNE (or the 'Centre for the New Europe' for those of you who still need an introduction) is an influential free-market think tank in Europe for whom I sometimes write, are spreading their wings even wider.

They have launched the 'Liberty Library', an on-line bookstore which lists over 1000 books and publications which can be sorted by subject or author and directly linked to for purchase or download.

Here is a treasure trove of the very best ideas in the whole wide world. Dive in and enjoy!

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Taylor Dinerman, a professional New York City journalist and long time Samizdata reader, sent us this short and incisive article on the impact of blogs and libertarian ideas on the current political environment.

Over the years I have come to the conclusion that most things in this universe revolve around a) The law of gravity and b) The Law of Supply and Demand.

The best case for this is the way the US election is being impacted by 'New Media'. The combination of Talk Radio, Fox News and the Blogosphere made it impossible for the traditional Big Media to ignore the Swifties. Thus John Kerry's character and personality were exposed in ways that would never have come out if it were up to just the New York Times etc.

The demand, in the US, for a non left wing media was always there, it was just when Limbaugh and the others showed that one could make money at it that others came in. The Blogs were more a pure product of technology but the demand for people all over the world to make themselves heard could not be held back. The flow of ideas is frankly, amazing.

Libertarian ideas have tended to triumph over the long term because they are better adapted to human nature. Sadly, resistance to these ideas is also deeply ingrained in the hearts of men. It is interesting to see how difficult it is to make people accept things that are manifestly in their own interest. While the ideas tend to win, libertarian leaning politicians tend to loose. Newt Gingrich was probably the most libertarian major politico in recent history, he was easily defeated by Clinton even while slick willie was grabbing his major ideas such as welfare reform.

Bush on the other hand pays little serious attention to libertarian ideas, but he may move America closer to those ideals with his ownership society set of proposals, than Newt ever could.

The point is that Libertarian ideas have become the 'default' position for the Republicans in the same was that socialist EU-centric ones are for most European politicos.

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Austin Bay is right up there with Wretchard when it comes to good analysis, hard common sense, and good info on the current war. He's back from the front in Iraq with a column on how the current war really is a fight for freedom.

If there is one mistake I think we've made in fighting this war, it's been the way we've soft-pedaled the ideological dimensions. This really is a fight for the future, between our free, open political system and the unholy alliance of despots and Islamo-fascists whose very existence depends on denying liberty.

Our enemies are the enemies of freedom within their spheres of influence. In the modern world of jumbo jets and international networks of all kinds, they have already succeeded in reducing our freedom, and seek to do so even more. Because they have chosen to attack us with violence, we are in a war of self-defense with the enemies of freedom. Fighting this war is, in my view, entirely consistent with a libertarian world-view.

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The problem I see with the libertarian pro-war position is that libertarians don't have recourse to the most powerful argument for the war: that it made the world a better place. Non-libertarians can yammer on about freeing poor Iraqis who were crushed under the thumb of Saddam Hussein, and that's definitely a benefit. But Libertarians don't believe it is OK to steal money via taxes and spend it on other people. Hence they can't use this argument.
- Patri Friedman

There has been a lively discussion in the comments section of Johnathan Pearce's article here on Samizdata.net When libertarians disagree. It has thrown up so many interesting points that I felt a new article on the issues might be a good idea. It is pleasure to see so much intelligent discussion of strongly held views without the acrimony and name-calling that so often characterises debate on the internet.

We have a problem that the label 'libertarian' sometimes it does not really inform as to what a person thinks, something which September 11th 2001 brought starkly into view, and I am not just referring to the more absurd uses of the term. For example a frequent commenter here on Samizdata.net, Paul Coulam, is a prominent libertarian and anarchist, well known in pro-liberty circles in London. He is also a friend of mine and has been known to get plastered at Samizdata.net blogger bashes. I too am fairly well known in the same circles and describe myself as a 'minarchist', or social individualist or 'classical liberal' or a... libertarian. I see Paul as a 'fellow traveller' of mine but clearly we have fairly major disagreements of where we would like to end up. We just agree on the direction we need to move from where we are now. I regard the state as probably indispensable, albeit a vastly smaller state than we have now, whereas Paul sees no state as the final destination.

In my view the minarchist 'classical liberal' view to which I subscribe means the only legitimate state functions which can be funded via some form of coercive taxation are those which can only realistically be carried out by a state, and which are essential to the survival of several liberty. The military seems a fairly clear cut example of that to me (with the proviso I would like to see the state military as only 'first amongst many') and possibly a very limited number of other roles, such as (maybe) a centre for disease control function to prevent plagues, and some form of superior court function.

So once you get over that core issue of small state or no state (no small feat), the rest is arguing over magnitude (also not a trivial issue), rather that whether or not you even have a military funded by some form of coercive action: that also means 'how you use that miltary' is an argument over degree rather than existence. In short I see the difference between a 'libertarian' (or whatever) of my non-anarchist ilk, and sundry types of non-libertarian statist as being one of the degree to which the state is allowed to accumulate coercive power.

Certainly some libertarians fall at the trap labelled 'magnitude' as they cannot bring themselves to see the moral or sometimes even practical differences between the USA and Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. As I want a 'vastly better state' rather than 'no state', and as I also regard the process of getting a vastly better state involves holding 'the state' and its borders in considerably less regard, the idea of using' less bad states' to overthrow 'much worse states' does not really pose a great moral dilemma for me, particularly in the here and now of 2004.

I am not suggesting wars and struggles between states are a generally Good Thing but at the ends of the continuum, the moral and practical calculus does not seem that hard to me. Sure, the justification 'it makes the world a better place' is used by left and right statists all the time for all manner of things and sometimes they are even correct... but for me the test is 'but would the world be an even better place if the state had got out of the way and left private individuals to sort things out?' On that test, the state fails pretty consistently, which is why my 'ideal state' is one where it is permitted to act in only those very few core functions where private non-coercively funded action cannot do what must be done for the survival of life and liberty.

So yes, I supported war by the bloated regulatory nation-states of the USA and UK (and others) against Ba'athist Iraq and doubly so against the hideous national socialist regime in Belgrade, whose works I saw first hand in Croatia and Bosnia (a process that not only inoculated me against the Murray Rothbard virus once I was exposed to it years later but also left me with an abiding hatred for ethnic nationalism, a fondness for 338 Lapua and 'smile reflex' whenever I see an F-16). My view is that it is only a matter of practical consideration whether or not one should be shooting at tyrants and their servants and using other people's money to do that. My friend Paul is not a pacifist so I am sure we would agree that ideally tyrants should be overthrown locally and, ideally, for profit: where we depart is over when it needs to be done on the taxpayers dime.

Left to their own devices, tyrants accumulate to themselves the means to spread tyranny and so the notion that offensive war against a tyrant is morally wrong seems bizarre to me, particularly as I am not too hung up on the whole national borders thing when it comes to spreading liberty. The utilitarian consideration of 'are they too strong to just attack' is rather important of course, which is why I rather like the idea of attacking North Korea before they get nuclear weapons.

Why? Because it makes the world a better place.

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The trouble with all this free-market capitalism (according to every reliable and sound authority on the subject) is that it results in a cruel, dog-eat-dog society where the strong and the rich grow stronger and richer while the poor and weak get trampled underfoot in the headlong stampede for endless profits.

This is why markets must be subject to the moderating influence of a compassionate government which must deploy a range of taxes, regulations and laws to stave off the worst predations of naked greed and help create a level-playing field and decent living conditions for all those poor and feeble people.

Here endeth the first lesson in received wisdom: [Note: link to article in UK Times may not work for readers outside of the UK]

THE black economy does Britain good because it helps to keep poor people off the breadline and develop their "entrepreneurial skills", a report commissioned by the Government has found.

Efforts to stamp out moonlighting — including a year-long £5 million advertising campaign — were misguided because tax dodges were a way of providing the needy with a financial safety net, the study commissioned by John Prescott’s office found.

It may cause some cognitive disonance to reverberate around the corridors of power to be told that the best way to help the poor is to let them out of the prison that has purportedly been built for their benefit.

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The case of Gayle Laverne Grinds highlights one of the most important issues of our time.

I wonder how many adverts for fatty, calorie-laden food this woman viewed during the six years she spent on the sofa in front of the television. I suppose the free marketeers would claim that exposure to these commercials had no bearing on the foods this woman consumed during her six years on the couch, and that she had the "personal responsibility" to choose not to eat them and to choose not to soil herself every day. But public health experts predict that by 2010, one person in three will die this way, and that 72 per cent of all schoolchildren will be one with sofas of their own. With increased funding for public education on the dangers of sofas and junk food, those rates could be substantially reduced. As it is, the government departments in charge of such education are criminally underfunded - and still the right-wingers and libertarians cheer on as tax cuts for the wealthy kill us and kill our kids.

The real question is this: How many innocent people have to die after spending six years on the sofa, eating unhealthy food, defecating and sitting in a mound of their own filth before we put big business in its place and tell these fast food and junk food companies that they cannot continue to run roughshod over the public?

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There have been grumblings from the commentariat in recent posts, questioning my libertarian bona fides because I think it is a good thing that journalists are treated like ordinary citizens, a bad thing that a former government grandee thinks he can break the law with impunity, a good thing that my government is at least trying to perform its most basic function - protecting me against those who trying to kill me and mine, and so forth.

I regard these positions as being pretty straightforward applications of a common-sense practical libertarianism, one that has no truck with either pacifism or anarchy, but it occurred to me that I hadn't really laid out my basic principles.

Government is the wrong tool for nearly every job. At a minimum, civil society does a better job of creating and distributing wealth, and of regulating conduct that does not involve force or fraud. The regulatory state and the redistributionist state are both largely illegitimate and ineffective in achieving their stated goals.

Taxation is distinguishable from theft and extortion only through an attenuated theory of 'consent' that posits that your vote for the guy who lost somehow means you consented to a bunch of people you never even had te chance to vote for agreeing among themselves to take your money. Low taxes good, high taxes bad.

Government does have legitimate functions. (I suspect this is where I start to wander off the ideological reservation). One of those is to serve as a night watchman, to protect the citizenry against force and, arguably fraud. The night watchman is truly a civic functionary only if he is impartial, so the goverment must act under the rule of law and treat everyone impartially. As a corollary, obedience to the law, even laws you disagree with, is a civic virtue, at least to that undefined point where the law is illegitimate.

Another legitimate function of government travels these days under the name 'national security'. It is the government's obligation to protect me from those who would attack me and subjugate me.

Everything I post is consistent with these basic principles.

John Kerry, for example, is all about raising taxes and expanding both the regulatory and the redistributionist states, is worse than George Bush on this front, and so I cannot take seriously anyone who claims both to be a libertarian and a Kerry supporter.

Special privileges, like 'big dog' rules for Sandy Berger and privileges for journalists, are antithetical to the impartial rule of law essential to a free society, so I mock and abuse those who claim special privilege.

We can argue about which strategy and tactics in the current war would be more effective, but I cannot take seriously anyone who can watch the footage of the two towers coming down and tell me we are not at war, or who argues that a continuation of the demonstrably failed multilateralist benign neglect that preceded 9/11 is an effective means of protecting the US.

Finally, hard experience in the trenches of politics has convinced me that the perfect truly is the enemy of the good, and that it is alway better to have half a loaf than none. This realism may lead me to express support for half measures and compromises that are disdained by the ideologically pure. Keep in mind, my friends, we have lost much of our freedom to a half century or more of half measures piled one on another. We will get our liberty back, if at all, only with half measures of our own, so my advice for libertarians who want to make a difference in the world is two-fold:

First, recognize the legitimate role of government in our flawed world.

Second, in the world of politics, take what you can get. You can always come back for more.

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The thing I find most unsatisfactory about the debate over gay marriage is the widespread misunderstanding about the law as it is presently configured.

Of course, I cannot speak about the law in other countries but here in Britain same-sex marriage is not illegal it is void. There is a world of difference in those two positions.

Allow me to explain. If two men (or two women) in the UK decide that they wish to wed then they are perfectly free to engage in any type of marriage ceremony they desire accompanied by confetti, bridesmaids and any number of drunken, embarrassing relatives reeling around the dancefloor while the band plays 'Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree'.

Nobody is going to a lift a finger to stop them nor will they ever be subjected to any form of official censure or arrest or prosecution. However, the state will not issue a licence for that marriage and, as far as the law is concerned, there was no marriage. It never happened, it does not exist and the participants remain as two single people.

Hence, the gay-marriage campaign (for want of a better term) is not really about rights but about recognition. What they want is not the 'right' to get married but the legal recognition of that marriage contract as having the same force and validity as the heterosexual version. In this day and age, legal recognition means state recognition.

Thus far, most governments have refused to concede this not, I believe, out of any antipathy towards homosexuals but rather a combination of the fear that it might be a vote-loser with lots of people who do and the prospect of having to redraft so many other laws (e.g. inheritance, adoption, taxation) as an unavoidable result.

Yes, marriage (in common with so much else) is a state-regulated business but the state did not create it. Traditional heterosexual marriage enjoyed centuries of customary (and common law) recognition long before HMG ever passed the first Family Law Act. In fact, all the government did was to acknowledge that the institution existed and then took over most of administrative formalities from the Church.

The typical (indeed, stock) libertarian answer to this problem is to propose the de-nationalisation of marriage so that same-sex couples will not have to rely on the benediction of the state in order to reap the benefit of a valid marriage contract. I, myself, have taken this same position. However, it occurs to me that the free market might not be the answer to this problem and could even make it worse.

The abiding characteristic of state-made (or state-endorsed) law is that everyone is forced to recognise and deal with it regardless of whether or not they approve of it. However, the opposite must also be true and the inevitable consequence of de-nationalising marriage is to de-nationalise the requirement for recognition.

For example, one of the commonest complaints I have heard from gay couples in the UK is about hospitals who refuse to recognise same-sex partners as spouses and therefore deny them privileges (such as visitation rights) that they grant as a matter of course to heterosexual husbands and wives. Now if HMG were to bestow its blessing on gay marriage then the hospitals would be forced to change their ways. They would have no choice. But, in a free market, they most certainly would have a choice. Without compulsion, they would be enable to set their own policies in this regard and a hospital, say with a very conservative board of governors, might decide that they simply will not recognise same-sex couples as 'married' regardless of how many bits of paper they wave around. Furthermore, there is not a damn thing anybody will be able to do about it.

And the same applies to hotels, banks, airlines, travel companies and a host of other industries and institutions? Without compulsion would same-sex marriages be recognised by, say the Roman Catholic Church? The Beth Din? An Islamic Bank? One man's free market choice is another man's discrimination but that is equation which never appears in the calculations of those libertarians who take it as read that, without state interventions, everyone will naturally make liberal and enlightened choices. A preposterous conceit. Yes, let the free market speak by all means but no-one should assume they are always going to like what is says.

Of course, the counter-argument is that there will be lots of people who are prefectly happy to recognise gay couples as married couples and treat them accordingly and that is surely true but that will still leave those gay couples facing the equivalent of 'colour bars', i.e. hospitals they cannot use and hotels that will not allow them to share a double room. If they feel a sense of grievance now over being treated differently then how much deeper will that sense of grievance grow in a society where it is not just permissable to treat people differently but sound business practice to do so?

It seems to me that what gay couples want is not a just a 'right to marry' but a society which naturally and happily regards them as married and no different in any way from heterosexual couples. But that requires a high level of customary acceptance which can neither be demanded nor simply conjured into existance.

This is not to say that customary acceptance will never happen. It may well happen and when it does, then the law will change to accomodate it without the need for noisy compaigns and agitation. But until such time as that level of acceptance has been achieved, gay marriage is going to require state intervention and lots of it.

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There has been some laughs about Linda Ronstadt getting kicked out of a casino for her anti-Bush tirade. This happened because of confusion about the right to free speech and the right of private property to be enjoyed as the owner sees fit.

Casino owner Bill Timmans explained that:

We hired Ms. Ronstadt as an entertainer, not as a political activist. She went up in front of the stage and just let it out. This was not the correct forum for that.

This is all quite proper in my view. I have nothing against anti-Bush tirades, and I might make one myself soon (although I'm unlikely to dedicate it to Mike Moore), but there is a place for everything, and I would suggest that if you are paid as an entertainer, when you go to work, you entertain.

And the casino owners were right to evict her. It is like having a blogroach in Samizdata comments. A casino is private property, and the owners can admit whoever they like, and set guidelines for how guests should behave.

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My last posting has provoked a storm of comment, which I hope relfects the controversy of the issue and not any inflammatory tone on my part. I tend to let the commentators discuss the issue, because frankly they do a very good job!

However, adam raises a very interesting point:

Isn't this kind of argument fallacious, as you're assuming the phrase "assumed consent" has the same moral status in all circumstances?

Compare with other phrases, eg "killed". "I killed him cause he got in my way" - moral status = bad. But, "I killed the rabid dog because otherwise it would have eaten those poor babies" - moral status = good.

However, I was pointing out that someone having sexual intercourse with a minor or a person with diminished mental faculties would want to defend himself of herself of the charge of 'rape' by claiming 'presumed consent'.

The point is that sexual intercourse is not a criminal offence, despite the attempts of puritans of both Left and Right to make it so. Therefore it is the question of consent that is central, and whether a person's inability to give consent allows other people to take decisions for them. Because minors and persons with diminished mental faculties are generally unable to give their consent, we have a presumption that consent is not given in such cases, hence the notion of 'statutory rape'.

The main moral issue about statutory rape is that an age of consent will not protect some immature adults whilst unreasonably assuming a lack of moral faculties for fast-devlopers.

To blur the distinction between a crime based on the lack of consent (rape) and an abhorrence of sex to create the concept of (sex crime) is something straight out of Orwell's nineteen eighty four.

I find it fascinating that a commentator should jump from sex to murder. One is a crime. The other is not.

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They are not artefacts, they are not animals, they are not a tourist attraction, they are people. They do not belong where animals do, they belong in settlements, villages, towns and cities like you and me. - Sydney Tshepiso Pilane

This is an account of my wildly fluctuating sympathies as I gradually found out more about a legal case launched by the Bushmen of Botswana.

I first saw the story on Ceefax. It's disappeared from there, so I can not quote, but I got the impression that the Bushmen had been evicted from the Kalahari game reserve and that the (possibly dishonest) reason the Bostwana government had given for evicting them was that it could not afford to provide services. Riiight. I powered up for Welfare Rant #2 on the way that welfare systems start by offering their clients services and end by making the 'services' compulsory and demanding that people live their lives in such a way as to allow the government to fulfil its side of the forced exchange with minimum inconvenience.

Then I thought, not so fast, Natalie.

Turning from Ceefax to the BBC Online story linked to above, it now appeared that the Botswanan government wasn't evicting the Bushmen but merely refusing on cost grounds to continue to provide services to remote places. Not the same thing at all. The Bushmen were free to continue to dwell in the same place and manner as their ancestors, they just had to jettison modern conveniences to do it. Well, said I, there is no reason why other Botswanans, themselves most likely poor, should subsidise the Bushmen's lifestyle choice, is there?

In the 1980s there was vast resentment here in Britain at the supine way in which mobile social security offices were set up to follow New Age traveller convoys to keep paying them their benefits; resentment redoubled when it was reported that the travellers seemed immune from many burdens that the state imposes on the rest of us. Their vehicles were frequently untaxed, and the drug laws and the requirement to be 'actively seeking work' if on benefits were left unenforced. (For something of the other side of the story, see the account by a traveller linked to further down.) The Bushmen seemed a similar case. They wanted it both ways: piped water even though they had chosen to live in the back end of nowhere.

But the ride was not over yet. My sympathies swung back once more to the Bushmen as I read another BBC account: 'Botswana's bushmen battle for land.' Maybe I had been revving up for the wrong rant. Now it seemed like a case of Welfare Rant #1: Dependency. Maiteela Segwaba, the old chief profiled here, presents a sad picture; a man for whom the first sip at a government-provided waterhole turned out to be almost the equivalent of the first injection of heroin.

Thousands of bushmen used to live traditional hunter-gatherer lives inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, but now there are just a handful. And few still wear their loincloths or use bows and arrows to hunt game.

The waterholes the government provided years ago changed them gradually into farmers - ironically the authorities' refusal to continue supplying that water is now driving the bushmen from their land.

Not ironically. Predictably. Furthermore this account says that my first impression was right after all: the Bushmen were forcibly evicted, with threats and violence, possibly because there may be diamonds under their land and certainly because the government wants to tidy them up and make them proper modern Botswanans. Rants #1 and #2 fused into one when I read this attempt at justification by a government official, Sydney Tshepiso Pilane. It is sickening.

"Every government in every country formulates a policy for the development of all its people. They are not artefacts, they are not animals, they are not a tourist attraction, they are people. They do not belong where animals do, they belong in settlements, villages, towns and cities like you and me," he said.

Doublethink is not dead: the use of force to make a minority live like the majority is dressed up as a pseudo-indignant declaration of their equality with that majority.

One of the myriad reasons for thinking that it is an evil for the government to lay on services for one is that when the services are withdrawn it hurts, just as part of the evil of drugs is that withdrawal from them hurts. The hurt has two components: first the fact that something you have come to depend on goes away at all, and secondly that the way that the end comes tends to be chaotic and acrimonious.

The reason that withdrawal is rarely phased and planned comes from the politics of the attempt to make services universal. At first the government provides some service or other to most people, those it can reach easily. Then it gets a little richer and has enough spare capacity to get logical. It makes strenuous efforts to provide the service to everyone, whatever the expense. Officials often display a sort of manic determination akin to that of a mother determined to ensure none of her children will ever have cause to complain of fewer ballet lessons or football coaching sessions than another. The first stirrings of resentment from the paying majority start now. They will be ignored because the principle of universality seems so important. But resentments ignored have a way of building up. The pressure rises and rises and then explodes. Suddenly politicians are clutching their parliamentary majorities. Something has to be done to appease the ordinary folk, and quick! But because the minister placed in charge of withdrawal does not wish to have his own universalist platitudes of ten months earlier quoted back at him he has a strong motive to avoid debate. Thus it is Cold Turkey when you are lucky, force and fraud (as seems to be going on in Botswana) when you are not.

Some of the same themes emerge in this account of the New Age travellers (pdf document) by a man who was and is proud to be one. (The author, known as "Tash", would very much dispute some of my interpretation below.) The traveller movement seems much reduced since the eighties. Do those mobile Social Security vans still trundle devotedly on? I doubt it - and that may have been the gentlest of the methods the State used to break up the peace convoys and the festivals. One does not have to be sympathetic to New Age stuff to feel disturbed by accounts of police brutality at the "Battle of the Beanfield."

'Tash' also contends that in the early halcyon days the travellers had a functioning mini-economy of their own that was broken up by government action, pushing them onto benefits. Frankly I do not believe that they kept going solely by handicrafts, barter and busking. I did not dream those mobile social security offices, and a Joseph Rowntree foundation study says a later generation of travellers are somewhat welfare-dependent - but perhaps not as much as the press make out.

On the one hand, state welfare, along with the indifference to trespass, undermined the travellers' claim to be living sustainably and independently. On the other hand, many travellers were liberated and sustained by the freedom to choose their own neighbours and live in their own way and who can argue with that? (Answer: loads of people, starting with Sydney Tshepiso Pilane, but not me.) I can well believe that politically-motivated disruption of the festivals circuit did push people who had been making something for and of themselves into complete dependency. Then that dependency was used to stoke up more anger against them and that in turn embittered the travellers.

Something like the traveller life ought to be an option. But for it to work it has to be visibly non-parasitical. It is not fair that this requirement should be so much stronger for them than for settled people - any libertarian worth his or her salt will point out that people in houses and boardrooms often have their noses in the government trough more deeply than the travellers. It is not fair, but it is true. Metaphorically, those mobile social security vans carried the riot police and the bailiffs within them. They rankled too much to last.

Turning to the Bushmen, perhaps their ancient way of life was doomed anyway by contact with modernity, but any slight chance it may have had to either adapt organically or fade away by consent was finished, and its end made more bitter, by government efforts to help.

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I always knew there was something fishy about the Spectator. My suspicions were confirmed by the article which surfaced for air last week (but which I have only just got around to reading).

The author is very troubled by the apparently catastrophic collapse in fish stocks:

In a single human lifetime we have inflicted a crisis on the oceans, comparable to what Stone Age man did to the mammoth and the sabre-toothed tiger, what 19th-century Americans did to the bison and the passenger pigeon, what 20th-century British and Norwegians did to the great whales, and what people in this century are doing to rainforests and bushmeat. This crisis is caused by overfishing.

The emotionally overdone analogies (integral to any discussion concerning wildlife or the environment it seems) could well tempt me into dismissing his entire thesis. But that would prevent me from making what I regard as a more important point so, for now at least, I am willing to play along with the proposition that fish stocks are, indeed, under some degree of threat. In any event, I have no evidence to the contrary.

But at this point the author of the article and I part company, as the former goes on to lay the blame for impending eco-disaster on the proliferation of celebrity chefs with their apparently insatible appetites for exotic fish dishes. A conclusion so absurd as to be almost worthy of satire.

In common with every other 'opinion former', the author draws on what he regards as an unarguably correct and obvious equation: if some species of fish are dying out it can only be because we greedy, selfish humans are eating too many of them. Not once does it seem to occur to the author that if that equation were true then we surely would have chomped cattle, pigs, sheep and chickens into extinction long ago.

The dwindling numbers of marine animals is a 'tragedy of the commons' arising from the fact that the high seas are insufficiently owned. Apart from some nationalised coastal waters, fishermen are pretty much at liberty to trawl for as much fish as they can lay their hands on anywhere they please, anyhow they please and as often as they like. There is simply nothing to stop them.

In such circumstances, it is hardly surprising that they fail to husband or manage the species they live off. There is no incentive for them to do so. However, if stretches of sea were owned in the same way as land is owned then not only would the owners be able to bar trespassers but (as with land farmers) they would have an commercial incentive to find ways to breed as much edible marine life as possible for human consumption and resultant profit. Hence the countless millions of farm animals in the world despite the prodigious rate at which we humans kill and eat them.

Until such times as the oceans are parcelled up into 'watersteads', stocks of marine animals will continue to decline. If you want to save the seas from becoming a watery grave, privatise them now.

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As the sort-of unofficial Samizdata consiglieri, I have occasionally had to advise the editors about the laws that govern them things we can and cannot say. Fortunately, we have managed, thus far, to steer clear of unwelcome attention from the authorities.

However, that task (and my sort-of job) could be about to become a degree of magnitude more difficult:

Inciting religious hatred is to be made a criminal offence under plans unveiled by Home Secretary David Blunkett.

The government failed to get laws introducing the offence passed by Parliament in the wake of the US terror attacks in 2001.

In a speech in London, Mr Blunkett revived the proposals.

He said he was returning to the plans as there was a need to stop people being abused or targeted just because they held a particular religious faith.

As mentioned in the linked article, this proposal was first hastily put forward by David Blunkett as a knee-jerk response to the WTC attacks in 2001 and justified as necessary measure to counter the whirlwind of anti-Islamic hatred he believed was about to blow (but which never actually did).

At the time, an outcry made him back down but once these ideas get into gear it is next to impossible to prevent them trundling forward. They are like cancer; you think you may be in remission only until such time as it comes creeping back.

I have yet to see the draft legislation so I consider this to be an interim condemnation. However, if recent history is anything to go by, then the laws that finally get embossed onto the statute books will be badly drawn, inchoate and so indefinite in scope as to be open to alarmingly wide interpretation by a now thoroughly politicised police force and judiciary.

Nor can we expect enforcement to be anything like fair (insofar as I am able to use that word at all in this context). Again, precedent indicates that it will range from selective to chaotic with the really nasty creatures going unscathed while the unlucky and politically easy targets have the book the thrown at them.

As much as anyone, I love to lampoon the 'PC' culture but I don't much feel like laughing anymore. Current public discourse is already sufficiently timid and amaemic without further legal mechanisms designed to lock up our minds and sterilise our conversations. I do worry that the effect of all this will be that people eventually turn inwards to small groups of family and trusted friends, eschewing any sort of public life or discussion altogether for fear that it is just too risky.

I realise that some may find these concerns a little overwrought but just as it takes time to construct the machinery of public control, so it takes time for the effects of that control to manifest themselves and a nation where people have to speak in whispers or codes is a despotic and unpleasant one regardless of how bouyant the economy may be.

This is not what the future should be.

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Meanwhile, in Gotham City:

People who kill bats or destroy their roosts are to be targeted in a nationwide police campaign.

Officers are to be trained in how to investigate damage to roosts as part of Operation Bat, which is officially launched on Wednesday.

Police will also be warning builders, roofers and pest control workers that it is a crime to destroy bat roosts.

Ker-pow! Take that, you builders. Spla-tt! Not so fast, roofer-man. Ka-boom! It's the Gotham City jail for you, pest control worker.

Conservationists hope the crackdown will help protect dwindling native numbers of the nocturnal mammal.

With the added benefit of thwarting the fiendish plans of The Joker, The Riddler and The Penguin.

Surely you do not have to be Superhero to appreciate that the very essence of private property is exclusivity. That means the owner is entitled to eject all manner of other living things regardless of the number of legs and wings they possess. Otherwise, what is the point of private property? If we are obliged to maintain our homes as wildlife sanctuaries then we may as well revert to living in forests under the shelter of banana leaves.

Never mind the 'dwindling native numbers of nocturnal mammals', what about the dwindling native numbers of property rights?

I just hope that these apparently well-connected 'conservationists' do not take it into their heads to add wasps, rats or cockroaches to their little list.

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Wealthy property tycoon, Will Hutton, is having himself a right old grumble today.

He is angry because other people are not paying enough tax and it is all the fault of those wretched Americans:

Equally, would our readiness to stand by progressive taxation have been so weakened without the view from the US that high rates of income tax on the rich are morally and economically wrong?

We had Mrs Thatcher, but arguably her dominance in British politics would have been less secure had it not been for the succour she took from American policies and conservative ideas. Britain is not a slave to American influences, but it cannot ignore the international common sense which the US more than any other nation shapes.

But, and lest anyone think that Mr Hutton is mindlessly anti-American, salvation is at hand. If US Conservatives have crippled the British left then American socialists can help them to cast away their crutches and enable them to walk tall again:

But opinion is moving. My bet remains that it will carry John Kerry to the White House - just. Of equal importance is the fact that neo-conservatism is on the defensive and that American liberalism has its best chance to regain ground for the first time in a generation.

It is not just American politics that could be transformed by Iraq, but our own. To believe in universal rights and fair societies might become respectable again.

Ergo, Mr Hutton believes these things are not respectable now.

For the most part, this is standard, nay boilerplate, Sunday fare for Guardianistas. Something to be to scanned in approvingly over a nut roast washed down with a steaming pot of fair-trade, dolphin-friendly, non-judgmental eco-coffee.

But if his regulars are unable to appreciate the sumptuous irony here then I can because Mr. Hutton is a member of that peculiar class of British metropolitan scribblers who are forever bewailing what they see as American dominance of our economy and culture and demanding that we look to Europe for inspiration. Yet Mr. Hutton feels himself unable to make the case for socialism without the bulwark of a Democrat President in the Whitehouse and notwithstanding the fact that Europe is a social democrat lock-in.

I think the truth is that Mr Hutton has lost the capacity to make the case for 'universal rights and fair societies' under any circumstances. But if he insists on blaming Ronald Reagan and George Bush for this descent into rhetorical impotence, then that is just fine by me.

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Harry Browne overstates the case against Ronald Reagan and makes himself look small.

There are plenty of libertarian criticisms of Ronald Reagan, from his refusal to veto tax increases, for failing to cut spending, or his support for the 'War on Drugs'. Where Harry Browne goes well overboard is when he dismissed the effect of Ronald Reagan's spending cuts rhetoric and on the Cold War.

Browne actually admits that Reagan made the dialogue of spending cuts possible and the mainstream debate. He accuses Reagan of not acting on his words. But what about Harry Browne himself?

In his excellent 1973 book: How I found freedom in an unfree world, Harry Browne claims:

You waste precious time, effort and money when you attempt to achieve freedom through the efforts of a group... I came to see how foolish it was to waste my precious life trying to make the world into what I thought it should be.

Yet by 1996, Browne was writing:

I don't want to be a politician. I just want our country back.

He then sought the nomination twice as the Libertarian Party candidate for the US federal presidency. Now unless Browne had a grotesquely over-estimated sense of his on importance, he must have realised that the LP candidate was not likely to win. If not to win, why stand for office?

The answer I would give is that the Libertarian Party argues the case in public for reducing the federal government. So words do matter. And in any case, Harry Browne has some explaining to do about his 180 degree turn since 1973.

American libertarians hate their government so much they often make barmy comments about the rest of the world. So when Harry Browne suggests that there was no need to engage in an arms race with the Soviet Union, he uses the following argument:

Reagan’s military and Cold-War policies seem to be the least controversial. It’s simply taken for granted that Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War — bringing down the Soviet Union by pushing the Soviets over the edge with increased military spending.

The idea is that the Soviets couldn’t keep up with Reagan’s new arms race.

Okay, suppose that’s true. So what?

Switzerland couldn’t keep up either. And neither could China nor New Zealand nor Tanzania. But those nations didn’t collapse simply because their military budgets weren’t as large as that of the United States.

So what Harry Browne seems to be saying, is that there is no difference between the ideology of worldwide Communist domination, and the political ethos of Switzerland. The reason that the Swiss economy did not collapse in the 1980s under the strain of miltary spending is that the Swiss government was not trying to achieve world wide conquest. If the Swiss government had intended to conquer the planet with a Socialist economy, then I am sure that the attempt would have failed and that the Swiss régime would have collapsed much as Soviet Communism did. If he really cannot tell the difference between Switzerland and the Soviet Union in 1980 (which I doubt), then Harry Browne is a twit.

Rather than admit that Ronald Reagan's policies brought the Cold War to a positive end, Browne prefers to promote Mikhail Gorbachev, the man who voluntarily joined the Soviet Communist Party when Stalin was still in charge, authorised military actions in Afghanistan that may have included the use of chemical weapons, and who sent tanks into Lithuania to enforce Soviet rule. Yet Gorbachev seems to express a more pro-Reagan view himself.

Of course it is always easy to denounce a policy one disagrees with by deliberately mis-stating it. Ronald Reagan did not set out to cause the economic collapse of the Soviet Union by an arms race. His re-armament policy was designed to prevent the Soviet Union from making further military gains. He did this by upgrading the nuclear capability, increasing the fire-power of the conventional forces. This meant that by 1985 the numeric superiority of the Red Army was no longer relevant. The dramatic US victory in Kuwait against largely Soviet-equipped Iraqi troops in 1991 shows how far re-arming America worked.

Consider the record of the 1970s against the 1980s. In the 1970s Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Grenada, Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, South Yemen, Afghanistan all became satellites of the Soviet union and none of them did so by peaceful means. In the 1980s no country fell to the Soviets and Grenada was liberated. In Afghanistan US support allowed the resistance to force a Soviet withdrawal, the only one since 1920 without direct foreign armed intervention.

So the evidence is that Soviet expansion stopped in the 1980s, and like all imperialist systems, once expansion is stopped there is only one way to go.

What Reagan offered was the moral certainty of the justice of resisting the Soviet Empire. Reagan knew that for all its imperfections, the USA was a better place to live than the USSR. What Browne seems to offer is equanimity between Switzerland and and the Gulag, whilst denouncing the USA as worse then either.

As for Reagan the politician, he seems to have had a knack for choosing to fight on issues where he would win. He did however engage in that debate, it is extremely unlikely that his politicial rivals (George Bush I, Bob Dole, Walter Mondale and others) would have spent less. As a self-help writer himself, Harry Browne should recognise that the way to effectiveness is to concentrate on one's own circle of influence. Reagan may not have slashed federal spending, because resisting the USSR was the big issue that he could do something about.

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This past weekend, I took a friend's baby daughter for a long walk (or, more accurately, a long push - she can't yet walk, so was in a buggy/stroller). The ducks that reside at a nearby lake are usually a safe bet when one wants to keep this particular child entertained, so that's where we headed.

As the baby clapped and giggled at the animals - They're not that funny, I sniffed. She kept laughing anyway. Kids, eh? A man arrived on the shore carrying a cage that contained a baby duck. He had rescued the animal the week before, he told me, after a member of the public had called the Folly Wildlife Rescue to report that the duck was caught in some fishing line. Initially, it was believed that the duck would have to have its leg amputated, but fortunately the vets were able to save the animal's life and its leg.

I asked the man about Folly Wildlife Rescue, and he told me that it is an exclusively volunteer effort, with absolutely no form of government subsidy or other state support. It relies entirely on donations from the public and its own fund-raising activities. He himself is not paid a penny for the time and effort he puts in to this endeavour, and neither is anyone else involved.

In addition to the entirely noble goal of trying to educate the public about how they can prevent accidental injury to animals and caring for those animals when they do get hurt, I approve wholeheartedly of people taking the initiative to launch and maintain this kind of volunteer effort. It is refreshing to see Folly Wildlife Rescue performing such an admirable service without relying on the state to write the cheques. And I am pleased that they get enough donations to treat thousands of animals and inform the public about the dangers posed to wildlife by seemingly innocuous activities.

For years, Folly Wildlife Rescue - including its intensive care unit and other medical facilities - has been run from the home of Annette and Dave Risley in the Kent and East Sussex borders area of South East England. Due to the huge volume of animals they are treating, this is an impractical set of circumstances, both presently and in the long term. Because the price of property in this area of England is so high, it is expected that Folly Wildlife will have to spend at least £400,000 (more than $730,000US at current exchange rates) in order to buy suitable premises for their operation.

If you are at all impressed with the dedication shown by the volunteers who run and raise funds for this rescue operation that is untainted by money taken from taxpayers, I would ask you to consider throwing a few ducats their way. If you are not able to do that, you could support them by using their Amazon affiliation link when you shop at that online store, or simply drop them an email (address here) to let them know you are behind them and wish them luck. After all, someone has got to give injections to sick badgers and put bandages on injured hedgehogs, and I am pretty glad it is not me.

More to the point, Folly Wildlife Rescue is the kind of thing any supporter of a smaller government should gaze upon with gratitude. Please consider doing what you can to communicate that gratitude to the people behind the effort.

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During the last few days, the British media, all of them, have been making much of D-Day, and quite properly so. The survivors from among those who fought that day who still remain with us now will mostly be gone ten years hence, so now is the last big moment of public thanks and public acknowledgement for these gents. And today will surely not pass without further mentions here of the sacrifices made on June 6th 1944, and the great purposes for which those sacrifices were made.

But the bit of the story that I keep thinking about is … the weather. How pleasing that one of our great national obsessions should have proved so extremely pertinent, at that time of all times.

The story is well known. The weather during the first few days of June 1944 was vile, and Group Captain Stagg, the man whose job was to analyse and present the weather news to those in charge of Operation Overlord, was the bearer of these bad tidings. On June 4th, D-Day, ready to happen on June 5th, was postponed, because of the weather, by one day.

But it could not be postponed for much longer than that. Too many men were revved up to go. A serious postponement would do dreadful things to that most crucial of military variables, morale.

Then, the miracle. Stagg discerned a magical moment of calmness in the middle of the weather system that was causing all the headaches, and through the eye of this meteorological needle Supreme Commander Eisenhower was able to thread the Normandy Landings. And they were all the more of a success for the fact that the Germans knew for certain that they just could not be done when they actually were done. As it turned out, the weather for D-Day was perfect, and all the more perfect for having seemed to be so imperfect.

My main purpose here is not to salute those ageing D-Day survivors, although I do salute them in passing, of course I do. No, the point I want to make here is that weather forecasting is one nationalised industry that really does seem to work, and to have been working well for some time now.

All of my life I have been aware of how good weather forecasts tend to be. People complain about them, in the everyone-else-does-so-I-will-too way that they also complain about airline food, yet the truth is that weather forecasts are, on the whole, amazingly accurate. Time and again I have organised my entire day, even my entire week, around the belief that those clever weather men were telling the truth, and I have never, never regretted it. I only regret it when I do not know what they have prophesied and foolishly did not trouble to find out. Think of the economic benefits that result from accurate weather forecasts. Think of the food that is grown better because of them, the marine and aerial journeys that are better planned better because of them, the surprising pleasures identified, the disasters avoided.

In England, everyone still jokes about the time when much loved weather man Michael Fish said that a hurricane would definitely not smash the living daylights out of the South of England, at which point it did exactly that. But this was the exception that proves the rule, the rule being that, as a rule, weather forecasts these days are amazingly accurate. Fish saw that hurricane coming. He just got its exact location of maximum drama wrong. It did a wholly unpredictable left turn, northwards, from the Channel to Southern England, or some such thing. It could have happened to anyone.

No, the rule is that weather forecasting is right up there with dentistry as one of those great reasons to prefer being modern to being ancient.

Yet, excellent thought it is, in Britain as in most places, it is a nationalised industry. Anything that crucial to the fighting of wars (as that D-Day story illustrates so vividly), and that dependent upon gizmos of the sort used to fight wars, like satellites, ships and airplanes, is bound to be heavily political, and perhaps even globally political. Only world peace of a profoundly peaceful sort will persuade governments to slacken their grip on this activity.

Nevertheless, it is done extremely well, I think.

Statists do not need an explanation for state competence. They have to explain (away) state incompetence. But as a libertarian, who takes state incompetence for granted, I am puzzled by this outburst of state organised excellence. How come?

Partly, I think it is that weather forecasting errors are very public, and are revealed as eroneous very quickly. Poor old Michael Fish knew within a few hours when he made that hurricane blunder. The comedians started in on him immediately, as he must have known they would.

Then, there is the fact that bad weather forecasts affect almost all of us. If a hospital gives an illness to all its patients, or if the welfare system twiddles one of its knobs and turns a tranch of the more indolent populous into even more parasitical parasites than before, not everyone notices, and if they do, they may not know why it happened. But bad weather forecasts are an inconvenience to literally millions, and there is no doubt in anyone's mind who to blame when they go wrong.

And then – I come back to it – there is that warfare angle. Less that excellent weather forecasts do not just cause vexation to farmers and fishermen, or to misinformed commuters who stew in winter clothes in superheated trains when the weather is actually warm. The state hurts itself with bad weather forecasts. With bad weather forecasts its own plans might go horribly wrong. So, it needs a permanent regiment of weather people who really know their business. And when times are more peaceful, these weather persons keep themselves occupied by sharing their wisdom with the rest of us, in a way that is enough to make foolish onlookers imagine that all nationalised industries might be made to work well if only a bit more effort was applied to them.

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Totalitarianism is any political system in which a citizen is totally subject to state authority in all aspects of day-to-day life.
- free-definition.com

Britain and the United States are not what could be reasonably called totalitarian states. The 'modern' understanding of what a totalitarian state is falls within frames of reference conjuring up the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany: national systems which believed that the state was an all encompassing thing that superseded society, in fact replacing civil society, in the manner advocated by Rousseau and others. To be a totalitarian means a total state in which quite simply no aspect of human life is beyond the remit of the political state.

Because both of these well known forms of totalitarianism enforced their political will via mass murder on a biblical scale, that disguises the fact that National Socialist Germany and the Soviet Union differed quite significantly in many ways. Just being 'total states' does not mean they were the same kind of total state. Whereas the Soviets simply nationalised literally everything (i.e. took direct political control of all means of production) and maintained control via the supply of, well, everything, Nazi Germany retained large numbers of privately owned companies which were 'free' to trade and make several profits provided they did so in ways which complied with regulations and essential national strategic objectives: Willi Messerschmitt was free to run his company, provided he did not decide to stop making aircraft and instead become a refrigerator manufacturing company.

Reasonable commentators have often pointed out that in modern times, totalitarian states have always come about due to cataclysmic events... it was the slaughter, privations and aftermath of World War One which lead to both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union after all. However is this understanding of how a total state comes about the only way Totalitarianism one can come about?

We in the First World live in a state of absolute abundance in which poverty is now little more than a relative measure of wealth. To find absolute objective poverty without a great deal of looking, one needs to look at the underdeveloped nations of the world. There is no risk whatsoever of starvation in the developed world (other than within highly paid sections of the fashion industry) even at the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder. So does that mean a total state is quite simply something that cannot happen to us in the absence of a nuclear war or sudden unforeseen economic melt-down?

Far from it.

And whilst there are also (thankfully) countervailing trends to be seen, that we are indeed on the march towards a total state in the Western World is almost indisputable.

It is now hard to find any area of life which the state does not regulate. Ever more areas which were once 'regulated' by the evolving and emergent mores of civil society are increasingly being politicised (though the usual term used is 'democratized', which means the same thing) and interactions forced to conform to politically derived formulae. That governments feel they can ban advertising for certain types of 'bad' food, or ban the use of tobacco on privately owned property shows the extend to which nothing is now beyond the remit of the political state, which I would argue is a clear precursor to a total state. Does anyone seriously think 'bad' foods will not eventually be banned outright or (first) taxed into exclusivity in the long run? I can eventually see parents losing their children to the state for not sticking to government approved dietary directives. Absurd? Extreme? Yes, at the moment it is, but you do not need a tinfoil hat to see how that could happen.

And just as both the German National Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Party were greeted with considerable and broadly based enthusiasm at their outset, do you really think the next total state(s) will be greeted with any less acclaim by considerable swathes of the Guardian and New York Times reading classes?

So when someone says to you "everything is political", they are in fact suggesting they (and you) already live in a total state. They are wrong now but they might not always be so. A 'total democracy' in which the political completely replaces the social would be in no way less of a totalitarian state than the other forms of totalitarianism which have existed in the past. It would be interesting to see what future generations would call it. Suggestions anyone?

(5) (36)

The Libertarian National Convention may have reminded a few observers of Sartre's "No Exit" - each faction selected the candidate that would deny their rival faction victory, producing a nominee with little broad-based support. Or maybe it was more like the 1969 blaxploitation classic Putney Swope, in which a wildly unlikely darkhorse emerges out of similar circumstances at an advertising agency's board meeting. At any rate, the Convention certainly produced an unlikely candidate, Texas-based computer guru Michael Badnarik.

Badnarik entered the convention as a distant challenger to two better-financed candidates, Hollywood producer Aaron Russo and Ohio-based talk show host Gary Nolan. But acrimony between Russo's and Nolan's camps led Nolan, who fell behind in early balloting, to withdraw and endorse Badnarik, with the intention of tilting the election away from Russo. Badnarik finally carried a majority on the third ballot and became the LP's unlikely nominee.

Badnarik's campaign website, as of the time of this post, apparently has not been updated in 'weeks', as you are greeted with this message on the home page:

With the National Convention mere weeks away, we owe it to you to finish up our drive to the presidential nomination in style. Please consider NOW to be the optimum time to make a difference! (emphasis mine)

Moreover, it appears that Badnarik has not raised much money to date, and has not even had a professionally managed campaign, although I understand that a team is being mobilized rapidly. Candidate websites can be powerful fundraising tools, but right now, the only way to contribute online is (egad) via PayPal.

Badnarik's website also contains a link to a speech given at Washington University in St. Louis that contains, well, comments about the United Nations that he would probably rather have back. But there they are, out on the web for the whole world to see. (Scroll down toward the bottom, or just do a Ctrl-F search for "detonate.") Astute readers may find other causes for concern as they read through his position statements.

The election is still five months away, and Badnarik will have time to refine his campaign between now and November. I will keep an eye on the situation and provide updates (with the best intentions of objectivity.)

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Last month, I was in the Sydney Fish Markets with fellow Samizdatista Michael Jennings. We had a splendid lunch, as the Fish Markets have plenty of good places to eat. Anyhow on leaving we grabbed a coffee to go, and headed off back to the tram stop to return to the CBD.

I was tardy in finishing my coffee, and in fact I did not finish it until I had got to the tram stop. So I got up to put the cup in the bin. However, I found to my considerable surprise that the bin had been closed. A plastic lid had been placed over the top of the bin.

I had never seen anything like it in my life. Michael Jennings, though, knew why- he explained that it was the practice to seal such bins to prevent people from placing bombs there, and that this is a common sight in London.

Well, that makes sense. There is a war on, as they used to say.

If truth is the first casualty of war, then libertarian ideals seem to me to be not far behind. In a society under military pressure, the liberty of the individual is quickly appropriated by the State for its own ends, often quite justifiably. The needs of the RAF in England in 1940 really were quite important, after all.

In Australia, the touch is very light. We are rather remote and isolated from the crosscurrents of the War on Terror. But we’ve had experience of this phenomena before, in the Second World War. With the Japanese 'at the gates' so to speak, the Federal Government wasted no time in seizing power over large swathes of the liberty of the individual. And, as a libertarian minded individual, if I had protested, the government would have told me "hey, there’s a war on, you know".

The only Western society that would really understand this these days is Israel, I would guess. Liberty is best enjoyed when you are alive, and sometimes the need of the latter have to take precedence over the former.

I think though, that it is no coincidence that the necessary loss of personal liberty in both Australia and Britain in the second world war acclimatised the citizens for the massive assault on personal liberty and responsibility that came straight after the war, when socialist governments in both nations erected all-embracing welfare states.

Not that they saw it that way at the time - it was seen as a 'just reward' for the people who had endured the costs of war. It turned out to be a false reward indeed, but the idea that there really is no such thing as a free lunch took thirty five years to sink into the minds of the electorates in both nations. (Indeed, it is arguable that it has not penetrated even now).

The lesson is clear though - the state will use the loss of liberties necessary to undertake the war on terror to its own advantage, and we must be vigilant to prevent a second welfare state disaster being built on the back of it.

Yes, so far it is just a rubbish bin. Let us keep it that way.

However badly the war on terror infringes our liberty,
there are at least appropriate ways in which
we can deal with the Wasabi strain of Islam.

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Conservative MP (and onetime leadership contender) Michael Portillo has a column in the UK Times [note: link may not be available to non-UK readers] in which he manages to illustrate everything that is so frustratingly wrong with British Conservatives.

This is not to say that his opinions are entirely unworthy. In fact, he hits several nails very squarely on the head:

Public esteem for business is alarmingly low. It is striking how much comment in the media is negative. In Britain those who most influence public opinion, the so-called commentariat, are in the main not involved in wealth creation. They are journalists, lobbyists, academics, religious leaders, civil servants and public service employees. They are generally given to scepticism or cynicism.

They are generally given to far more visceral sentiments but the point is still meritorious. However, it all starts going downhill from there.

I am a fervent advocate of free enterprise. Humankind has invented no better system for the generalised increase of prosperity. I believe that the creation of wealth is virtuous. People who work in business can and should feel that their efforts have a moral purpose. Without the profit motive we would not generate the resources that make it possible for government to build schools and hospitals and pay benefits to those who are poor or who cannot work.

Mr Portillo's idea of 'advocacy' is to make a moral case for free enterprise based on nothing except a shameless pandering to the parasitical instincts of the public sector. Vote for capitalism, you will get a fatter cow to milk.

But these are not easy times for enthusiasts of capitalism. The cynics have received plentiful ammunition. We have witnessed the collapse of Enron, the American energy conglomerate, into a cesspool of deceit and trickery with its shareholders defrauded. Its auditors, Arthur Andersen, had one of the finest names in the business. The firm was associated with the highest ethical standards, a reputation built up over a century. After such rottenness was revealed within a venerated institution, it is difficult to be confident of anything.

Well, if that is 'fervent' I would hate to see 'phlegmatic'. That sounds like a BBC editorial, written by the kind of people who believe that fraudulent behaviour is an inevitable and damning characteristic of free trade. Mr. Portillo seems to agree.

Politicians can help wealth creators to understand that in their own self-interest they must be more transparent. Issues such as how they do business in the developing world need to be debated. For example, how you conduct business in a country where families depend on their young children bringing in a wage is not straightforward. It is a good topic for consultation and one of many areas where business can establish codes of conduct on a voluntary basis. That can help to make the case that without foreign investment and expertise the poorest countries have no chance of making progress.

A slightly toned-down version of the kind of 'fair-trade' drivel put out by organisations like Greenpeace.

And there it all is in a nutshell. I have no doubt that Mr Portillo is a deeply clever and thoughtful man but, like so many other Conservatives I have either encountered or whose writing I have read, he tries to convince us of his professed beliefs in the power and goodness of free trade while simultaneously conceding to every canard and trope of those who regard free trade as an unmitigated evil.

If Mr Portillo is, indeed, a 'fervent advocate' of capitalism then he (and we) would be far better served if he were to explain why he is so disposed and what led him to those conclusions. If he is not prepared to make his own principled case then who does he expect will do it for him? Instead he shuffles timidly through this shame-faced and timid apologia.

Why do otherwise savvy and articulate people like Michael Portillo insist on pandering to the ridiculous prejudices of the people he refers to as 'the commentariat'? Is it because he thinks they will despise him for being a capitalist? Well, I have news for Mr Portillo: they despise you anyway and regardless. You may as well give them good reason to despise you. You will be no worse off than you are now and your country will be all the better off for your passion and clarity.

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'Underground, overground,
Wombling free,
The Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we.
Making good use of the things that we find,
The things that the everyday folks leave behind.'

I was half watching one of those interminable nostalgia programmes on TV last night when my intention was caught by the voice of Bernard Cribbins, whose vocal intepretation of the flawed yet quietly heroic role of Orinoco (not to mention Tomsk, Wellington, Tobermory, Madam Cholet and Great Uncle Bulgaria) in The Wombles will forever have its place in the hearts of all who heard it.

Among the many interesting things he said (did you know that all those endearing dithery mutters were ad-libbed?) was that Womble-fixated kiddies used to go to Wimbledon Common and drop litter there in the hope that a Womble would come and take it away.

This proves something. I am not sure what, but something.

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Regulation is the new taxation. Eamonn Butler has an example of this at "Europe's Favourite Think Tank blog", as the ASI blog has taken to describing itself:

… Germany is introducing a new workplace regulation, which insists that businesses must take on at least one trainee/apprentice for every fifteen workers they employ.

An excellent initiative to get young people learning a trade, you might think. …

But I wonder whether this concession is one that we free marketeers should perhaps stop inserting into pieces like this. Something more along the lines of "well now let us think of just what sort of harm this state compulsion is going to do" might be more in order, instead of ritual obeisance towards the supposed good intentions of the people who imposed this rule. So, let me see. This one will result in masses of businesses having apprentices who just hang around going through the motions. Wasted young lives, in other words. A classic welfare trap, imposed upon the 'private' sector.

But as with all government interventions over the marketplace, there are unintended consequences.

Quite so.

For Germany recently legalized brothels. And, like other businesses, they too are covered by the new law. So for every 15 girls employed, another must be enticed into the trade as an apprentice.

A rather odd result – which just shows what a tangle politicians get into when they start telling businesses how to run themselves.

But what if this "tangle" is actually the whole idea? The people who did this, I surmise, hate business, all business. But recent intellectual trends make it harder for them to say this out loud. So, they just go ahead wrecking businesses anyway, without any public justification, and then they blame the very principle of doing business for the wreckage that they have themselves unleashed. Bastards.

The trouble with the theory of "unintended consequences is that you deny yourself the chance to call people doing harm evil. And calling such people evil might be just the thing to get them to stop.

On the legalising prostitution thing, a couple of years ago the Libertarian Alliance published a piece by a prostitute, who argued that the last damn thing her line of business needed was to be made 'legal'. 'Legal' equals smothered in idiotic laws and regulations (and taxes of course), whereas illegal means she could run her business the way she wanted, uninterfered with, apart from the occasional bribe or two, by meddling government officials.

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This is not about sport.

Libertarian and conservative policy obsessives tend not to read the sports pages of newspapers. There is a theory that most politicians were victimised at schools and their pursuit of politics is a form of revenge. Even those libertarians who are sporty are often practitioners of solo sports: jogging, skiing, suba-diving. I merely point this out to explain why the collectivist drivel which infests the sports sections of newspapers rarely gets challenged.

One of the the great myths of modern England is that the cricket team is rubbish because of the 'polluting' effect of foreigners. Some people have suggested that the solution would be to ban non-white players from the England team. Others suggest a more merchantile approach: ban foreign players from playing for the counties. The argument is exactly the same as for US steel tariffs, or restricting the number of American TV shows on European TV stations.

This article in the Daily Telegraph describes a development in the labour laws that should be welcomed. But English cricket keeps its ostrich head rammed into the ground.

The problem is that cricket does not generate enough money to pay for squads of highly paid professionals. The bulk of the money comes from televised matches involing the national team only. Therefore if a team is going to shell out a large sum of money for a couple of players, it wants a big name, which means an established international player.

Perversely, restrictions on foreign players mean that each club is only allowed to hire two, roughly the number of players who could be paid big wages. Result, cricket is not a viable professional sport for most young English players.

The sensible commercial decision would be for cricket to go either go semi-professional (part-time players paid appearance money), or cut the number of teams to a level that is affordable. Instead we have demands for EU citizens who are allowed to work anywhere in the EU to be banned from playing cricket in England. Is this the way to spread one's market?

Imagine if the software industry worked like this.

Californian firms would initially be banned from hiring more than one programmer from outside the state of California. These firms would also refuse to serve customers outside Silcon Valley, except at international trade fairs. Then when the Supreme Court prohibited restraint of trade for non Californians there would be a moan about the number of Texans etc in Californian software firms. With a market restricted to one state there would be demands for subsidies, wage control, and repressive immigration laws.

This is the economic orthodoxy of cricket, yet there is no reason why it should be. Other sports such as baseball, gridiron football, soccer, basketball, even rugby union in recent years, are profiting from globalisation. What English cricket needs are better business models, not laws.

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Australian Libertarian blogger Tex waxes lyrical on free markets:

For me, nothing - nothing - in recent years has confirmed my faith in the wonders of markets and competition more than one humble little sector of our economy: the pizza industry.

I'm a pizza addict. Ten years ago, I would have to part with the best part of twenty bucks to get one large pizza delivered. Suppliers in my area were limited and it sometimes arrived cold. When in Sydney a few years ago - in an area not well serviced by the Pizza men - I shelled out nearly fifty bucks for two delivered pizzas + a drink. Nowdays, I can get two large pizzas - easily enough to feed three people - for less than $15. It arrives quickly, is great quality, and there are a far greater variety of pizzas to choose from.

So in ten years, pizza prices have more than halved, the quality has gone up, the delivery times are quicker, and there's a greater menu to choose from. And it's 100% the result of competition. As a couple more suppliers moved into the area, the "coupon wars" began. Maybe a couple of coupons per month would arrive in the mail, offering a few bucks off per pizza. Then other companies started to price-match. Nowdays, my letterbox is flooded with pizza coupons, each subsequent one outmatching the last.

As another example of the benefits of free markets, I was in Melbourne on the weekend. Melbourne is justifiably proud of it's food- I'm not a well travelled man by any means but it does seem to be one of the world's leading cities for fine dining.

In the restaurant strip in Lygon Street, for example, you will find that the establishments there actually have hired people to stand outside and make offers to passers-by, to entice them in, and in this way you can get yourself, for example, a free bottle of wine. Australians don't haggle much, but the visitor who has this skill can make good use of it there.

In Melbourne's Chinatown on Little Bourke Street, the same practice has come into vogue.

This hot-house atmosphere of competition isn't just a boon from the point of view of the diner's wallet either. Restaurants don't just compete on price- they compete on quality as well, and reputation is as important as price in these markets. For they are dealing with a clientele that is, on the whole, very well educated in dining.

And this also encourages risk-taking, to provide new and innovative ways of presenting and preparing food. Bon apetite!

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Glenn Reynolds pointed me to this story which should warm the cockles of a libertarian anarchist's heart. It seems 'hundreds' of what I presume were members of the Mahdi's 'army' were held off for hours by eight employees of Blackwater Security Consulting (apparently all ex-Special Forces), four MP's and a Marine. Company helicopters flew in under fire to pick up the wounded Marine and drop off ammunition supplies.

The DOD Press briefing for the day neglected to mention the government building was privately held.

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My friend Bernie emailed me with the link to this short Radio Times film review of The Godfather, shown last night on Channel 5. Spot the anti-capitalist bit.

This crime drama and its 1974 sequel are among American cinema's finest achievements since the Second World War.

The production problems are well documented — how Paramount wanted a quickie, how Francis Ford Coppola came cheap and how he turned the picture into an epic success, a box-office hit that was also an artistic triumph.

His first masterstroke was casting Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall and Diane Keaton, four relative unknowns and one known risk; his next masterstroke was to keep cool under fire, like Michael Corleone himself, turning Mario Puzo's pulp novel into art and showing how capitalism and crime go hand in hand.

It's thrilling, romantic, tense and scary – a five-course meal that leaves you hungry for more.

"… capitalism and crime go hand in hand." Another of those implied solutions that dare not spell itself out clearly. Wanna get rid of crime? Rub out capitalism. But if thus challenged, the anti-capitalist replies: "but I never said that". If unchallenged (which is how most readers will get the message), he did say it.

This is why we need our own publications, to edit out sneaky little innuendoes like that, and to insert our own.

It would be truer to say that the legal creation of victimless crimes goes hand in hand with crime, and that the state (a) claiming a universal monopoly in the supply of law and order but then (b) not supplying it anything like universallly goes hand in hand with crime.

Will this get a link from Biased BBC?

(3) (69)

Recently a commenter here on Samizdata.net used a term that I think sums up modern regulatory statism in the Western World rather well.

Populist Authoritarianism

Whilst Google shows that the term is not exactly new, it does seem both little used and particularly apt. The banning of smoking on private commercial property seems a classic example of this in action. Let's start calling a spade a spade and stop letting the statists of all stripes hide behind euphemisms.

Spread the word.

(2) (11)

The government talks a lot about 'investing' in hospitals and schools. That is why we have to pay extra taxes. We all know that New Labour's experiment with spending has been a flop, with the improvements to services tiny compared with the increased spending.

One problem is that the cash we think is going to be spent on operations and classrooms gets diverted. Sometimes this is because of excessive bureaucratic layers, like Local Education Authorities. But sometimes it is rather more blatantly wasted.

Like with government attempts to encourage 'e-society'.

The private sector worldwide has done a really good job at providing opportunities for e-society. Just look at AOL Instant Messenger, webcams, blogs, web site forums, Friendster and Orkut.

But the fact that e-society is so abundantly provided by the private sector has not stopped the UK government thinking it should get involved. Back in the autumn, I got an e-mail from James Crabtree of VoxPolitix asking if I would blog about a new project called MySociety.org, run by his friend Tom Steinberg, a former No. 10 adviser. I have met Crabtree a couple of times and like him, so I thought I should do my bit. I tried for an hour or so to write a blog about this new project, but I just could not. The project was utter crap. And I just could not write anything nice about it with a clear conscience.

Well, that project which I thought was 'utter crap' is now being funded by the government. It has just been awarded £250,000 as "part of something called the e-innovations fund, a pot of government cash set aside to stimulate useful and innovative new online projects".

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When I edited pamphlets for the Libertarian Alliance, our problem was that we could not expect much in the way of immediate distribution. There was no internet in those days, or not that we knew about or could have used. Nor did we have the resources to print our publications and then to market them, and in the meantime store them. So it was that we relied on (a) the photocopier, and on (b) time. If what we said did not instantaneously find a readership, then it would have to get itself around nevertheless, one pamphlet at a time, by its sheer eloquence.

The time angle meant that we needed a different style of writing, a more timeless style, a style that would not date. We had to write in what I now recognise as a French style – more abstract, more theoretical (but free of any technical jargon), not heavy on detailed evidence (because evidence is liable to date) and heavy instead on generalisations with universal (and therefore timeless) appeal.

We were accused of preaching to the converted, and this was true. We were doing that. But preaching to the converted is an important part of any propaganda enterprise. The eloquent statement of that which is good and true, everywhere and at all times, is something to which supporters can rally and declare their agreement. By saying what we believed, we helped to turn what had merely been a silent army of isolated dissenters into an interconnected network of potential activists and organisers and movementeers. And writers, of course.

In short, we wanted people to write more like this:

Law is justice. And it is under the law of justice – under the reign of right; under the influence of liberty, safety, stability, and responsibility – that every person will attain his real worth and the true dignity of his being. It is only under this law of justice that mankind will achieve – slowly, no doubt, but certainly – God's design for the orderly and peaceful progress of humanity.

It seems to me that this is theoretically right, for whatever the question under discussion – whether religious, philosophical, political or economic; whether it concerns prsperity, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, cooperation, property, labour, trade, capital, wages, taxes, population, finance, or government – at whatever point on the scientific horizon I begin my researches, I invariably reach this one conclusion: the solution to the problems of human reliationships is to be found in liberty.

"Theoretically right." That is from Frédéric 'Bastiat's 'The Law', on page 82-3 of my IEA edition, in the section entitled 'The path to dignity and progress'.

The trouble with this kind of unsupported pronouncement is that although it may reinforce the convictions of the already convinced, it does little to persuade.

Here is what follows, in the next section of The Law, "Proof of an idea":

And does not experience prove this? Look at the entire world. Which countries contain the most peaceful, the most moral, and the happiest people? Those people are found in the countries where the law least interferes with private affairs; where government is least felt; where the individual has the greatest scope, and free opinion the greatest influence; where administrative powers are fewest and simplest; where taxes are lightest and most nearly equal, and popular discontent the least excited and the least justifiable; where individuals and groups most actively assume their responsibilities, and, consequently where the morals of admittedly imperfect human beings are constantly improving; where trade, assemblies, and associations are the least restricted; where labour, capital, and populations suffer the fewest forced displacements; where mankind most nearly follows its own natural inclinations; where the inventions of men are most nearly in harmony with the laws of God; in short, the happiest, most moral, and most peaceful people are those who most nearly follow this principle: although mankind is not perfect, still, all hope rests upon the free and voluntary actions of persons within the limits of right; law or force is to be used for nothing except the administration of universal justice.

Now it would be easy to classify that also as just another pronunciamento, only likely to convince the already convinced. But here, it seems to me, we have an actual argument. It is certainly the argument that most convinced me in favour of the freedom principle.

Suppose you want to know whether to have a free market in paper clips, or in western isles of Scotland. Suppose you are wondering whether to allow or to campaign for this or that much disapproved of sexual practise or artistic fad. The reason to decide in each case in favour of liberty, says Bastiat, is not going to be found by looking only at paper clips, or in the islands of Scotland, or at the particular art or sexual practice being argued about. If you look at only the particulars of the particular, you are all too liable to decide that the answer to some particular question is some particular sort of arrangement that you happen to favour, and then to believe that the answer is for the government – what Bastiat calls "The Law" – to impose that preference by force.

And to understand why that is a foolish way to think, you need to step back from the particular, and look at the big picture. To see why a free market in paper clips is wise, look at all the other markets, permitted or suppressed, everywhere in space and in time. To see why sexual or artistic freedom of a particular sort is the right thing to have, look at the story of freedom generally, and unfreedom generally.

So although Bastiat doesn't go into detail about all the evidence that convinced him about the need for freedom, he does explain very well the nature of that evidence. And the point is: that evidence is everywhere. The evidence is the entire world.

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Brace yourselves for a truly shocking prediction:

Tax rises are inevitable if Labour wins the next election, according to an influential group of economists.

Just think, if it were not for this 'influential group of economists' none of us would have had even the merest inkling that increased taxes were even remotely possible.

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David produced a useful guide to Tranzian for beginners. I thought it apt to follow with a guide to Cultural Luddism - the language of those who reject modern cosmopolitan capitalism - for those who might otherwise be perplexed at the offerings of this group of pseudo-libertarians.

"I'm an economic libertarian only"

This means: "I am not really a libertarian at all, but I quite like the idea of paying little or no tax. I am intensely relaxed about the prospect of a large intrusive government so long as it is large and intrusive in the furtherance of my own personal preferences about society". The irony is that Cultural Luddites and Leftists from moderate to extreme subscribe to the same canard: That there can be a meaningful line drawn between economic and 'other' activity.

"Discriminating against someone who belongs to group x which tends to exhibit trait y is not prejudice, it's post-judice"

This means; "It is prejudice really, making a judgement about someone prior to receiving complete information based on nothing more than smug assumptions, but post-judice sounds less irrational, don't you think?"

See also:

"I am a race-realist"

Which translates as: "I am racist, I believe my own race to be superior to at least one more race but I am prepared to consider the possibility that another race may be superior to mine and I wish to avoid the social opprobrium attached to avowed racists"

"Race is an extremely extended family"

This means: "I barely know my own extended family but I like to bask in the reflected glow of famous people who have the same skin colour as me"

"I am running a little ahead of the science on this at the moment but I am confident that cherished notion z will be proven very soon"

This means "There is not a shred of evidence which supports my fervent belief in notion z, but just you wait and see, I'll be vindicated!"

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Have you thought about learning to speak a foreign language? If so, then why not learn to speak Tranzian? A good grasp of Tranzian will enable you to rub shoulders with bureaucrats, lawyers and Outreach Co-ordinators the world over and conversational fluency is easier than you might think. Tranzian is widely used in travel, business, culture and nagging.

Not only will the ability to speak Tranzian broaden your horizons and help you to make new friends but it will also give you an air of supreme self-righteousness that opens doors and, more importantly, state purse-strings.

So, come on, let us learn to speak Tranzian. Here is Lesson 1:

Violence against women is a "cancer" in every society affecting at least one in three women, human rights body Amnesty International has said.

One in three, two out of every four, over half, the majority. The statistics are hardly worth quibbling about. This is purely an academic exercise and should not be confused with actual facts.

Amnesty's secretary general Irene Khan urged governments to enforce laws to stop attacks on women and girls.

So, class, we see in this example that there are laws against attacking women but governments cannot be bothered to enforce them. Okay so far?

Female genital mutilation is one of the abuses being targeted by Amnesty.

The organisation says it affects 135 million globally, and these cases, along with so-called honour killings, should be treated as human rights crimes by governments.

So we have 'female genital mutilation' which, in English, is called 'Grievous Bodily Harm' and 'honour killings' which, again in English, are pronounced 'murder'. However both of these English phrases translate into Tranzian as 'human rights crimes'.

Thus we learn what a useful language is Tranzian. In circumstances where using the plain English terms will cause embarrassment or discomfort, you simply reach for the anodyne Tranzian lexicon of faux-rights to make yourself sound terribly important and caring without actually offending anybody.

Now for Lesson 2 and since you have all been such good and responsive students, I am going to give the answers in advance:

Q: Why is it that governments are not enforcing crimes like murder and rape?
A: Because they are far too busy farting around trying to enforce bogus 'human rights'.

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In just over a week's time I am to give a talk in Brussels, courtesy of the Centre for the New Europe, on the subject of Why Libertarians Don't Talk About Culture - And Why They Should.

When you are extremely grand, you let things like this come and go with no comment from you other than the occasional "oh yes, that, yes, I think it's on the fifteenth, I'm not sure" (it is on the fifteenth), or "oh that, yes, I'd forgotten all about it". But if you are me, you make the most of these sort of invites. If I don't tell everyone I am doing this talk, who else will?

Here is the blurb I sent to my hosts about it:

Libertarians don't believe in either subsidising or censoring cultural activity, so for libertarians it often doesn't matter what they personally think about any particular cultural object or enterprise. Good or bad, it should neither be encouraged nor prohibited by the political process. So long as you don't infringe against the rights of others, you can enjoy "culture" any way you like, or in no way at all.

For collectivists on the other hand, the goodness or badness of a particular cultural enterprise is a burning issue, because the collective must decide what sort of culture to encourage or discourage. So, they talk about culture a lot.

The result is that libertarians often appear philistine, shallow and one-dimensional, while collectivists can seem far more cultured and attractive. So, we libertarians ignore culture at our peril.

I have already ruminated on this topic here, in this posting, and the blurb above owes much to those ruminations.

Maybe another reason why libertarians are a little reluctant to talk about culture is that we fear that quarrels about inessentials, like how good the Lord of the Rings really is, are liable to undermine team spirit amongst us to no purpose. That is a mistake, I think, but maybe some libertarians feel that.

I think that the claim in part one of my talk's title, that libertarians do not talk about culture, may now be becoming obsolete. With the Internet, blogging etc., we libertarians now have a means of chatting away about movies and literature and stuff, in a very congenial and magazine-like setting, yet without all the bother of anyone having to put together an actual magazine – which is a total nightmare compared to running a blog. The reason we used not to talk about culture was simply that it was too difficult. It was all we could manage to bang away with our core agenda. Now, simply, we can do culture talk, and we do.

Well, those are my thoughts so far. Does anyone here have anything else to say about all this? I would really welcome the input.

UPDATE: This very recent comment on this posting might have something to do with why libertarians don't discuss cultural themes. When they do, they get denounced by people saying things like this:

What does this have to do with libertarianism? I come to this blog to read libertarian views and issues, not artistic commentary.

This, to me, is a perfect example of a libertarian (if that is what Telemachus is) being boring and philistine.

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Amidst all the partying I did in Brussels last weekend, I somehow managed to find the time to actually learn a thing or two.

The first thing I learned was not everyone takes the Euro terribly seriously (while fiddling around for correct change to pay for a taxi, I let the words 'Mickey Mouse money' slip from my mouth whereupon the taxi driver began laughing and said "oui, Monsieur, oui").

Secondly, and rather less anecdotally, I also learned of something called the Stockholm Network. Before last weekend I had no idea that this organisation even existed and, in this case, ignorance was not bliss.

I think it fair to say that there is a widespread impression in the Anglosphere (especially the American bit) that the continent of Europe has fallen under the unbreakable spell of the Grand Wizards of Schtoopidity. Sadly, this is mostly true. But it is not completely true and the difference between 'mostly' and 'completely' can be found at the website of the Stockholm Network.

Billing themselves as 'Europe's only dedicated service organisation for market-oriented think tanks and thinkers', the website is contains a treasure trove of links to well-organised, well-funded and highly active free-market and libertarian think-tanks and organisation in Britain, Ireland, Albania, Finland, Turkey, Macedonia, Switzerland, Sweden, Portugal, Serbia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Poland, Italy, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Holland, Norway, Spain, Russia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, Rumania, Georgia, the Ukraine and elsewhere.

The idiots and the kleptocrats may be running the show for now but, pleasingly, there are pockets of determined guerilla resistance. Even more pleasingly, these pockets seem to be growing in number.

And that is all I am going to say on the matter. Otherwise there is a danger that I might start sounding optimistic and, as everybody knows, that is strictly against my religion.

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I have lately been reading a book of essays and review articles by Richard Dawkins, and mostly I agree with him, about most things. However, in his Foreward to a book called Pyramids of Life, which he here entitles "Ecology of Genes", he indulges in an aside on the subject of the free market (p. 266 of my Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003 paperback edition):

As Adam Smith understood long ago, an illusion of harmony and real efficiency will emerge in an economy dominated by self-interest at a lower level.

Dawkins is not here making a point about the free market. He is merely seeking to punch home a point about how ecological systems are not designed, but instead merely present the illusion of having been designed, in rather the same way that individual species also appear to be designed, but also are not. In truth, species evolve blindly, with no designing intelligence determining their shape, and ecologies are but aggregates of species. It gets a bit more complicated by the end of the piece, because actually species do somewhat resemble ecologies, in that they too are coexisting aggregates of mutually sustaining genes. I may have explained that slightly wrongly, but in any case, my point here is not what Dawkins says about what he is really writing about and really knows about.

No. I am interested in what Dawkins says in that little dig at the free market (the "economy dominated by self-interest at a lower level"). Illusion of harmony? Adam Smith said a great deal more than that. The free market does not just look harmonious and efficient, Smith said. It is harmonious and efficient. This is no mere illusion.

The reason is that the participants in free markets do something that the participants in mere ecologies – or, to use an even more common usage when nature and market are being compared by people who do not like markets, in jungles - do not do. They respect each other's rights. Animals in the true state of nature that animals really do inhabit, and in pursuit of their self interest, actually destroy one another. They consume one another. If people in markets ate one another, then indeed, in would be quite proper to denounce 'capitalism' (i.e. the free market) as the 'law of the jungle'. But people in markets make no arrangements with one another than all concerned do not consent to, albeit often rather grudgingly and discontentedly. Markets really are very harmonious, and compared to jungles they are utopian idylls of conviviality.

Why does Dawkins indulge in this snide little aside? I have not read this entire book of essays from cover to cover, and I have not caught him out saying anything else that I disagreed with. So why this cheap shot, all of a sudden?

On my Education Blog a while ago, I featured another chunk from this same Dawkins book, and one of my commenters there asked if Dawkins was perhaps some kind of lefty, and what light could I shed on that? I did not really know, and still do not, but this little anti-market jibe certainly suggests that he is some sort of "lefty".

My interpretation of this is that when it comes to free markets, Dawkins is ignorant rather than wilfully stupid. He hasn't thought about free markets very much, and merely alludes thoughtlessly to what he takes to be the general view of markets, in order to get across what he is really thinking about. How else explain both his ignorance of the nature of free markets, and his extraordinary diminution of what Smith really said about free markets.

But I know little of Dawkins' political views or ideological allegiances. Can anyone else answer my commenters question? Is Dawkins some kind of lefty? Or is he politically and ideologically indifferent, and fiercely partisan only about such things as science (for) and religion (against).

Or could it be that, what with the attacks on him from fundamentalist Christians ("right wing"), and from lefties denouncing Dawkins (quite wrongly of course) for his supposed genetic 'determinism', that Dawkins just says, of politics, ideology etc.: a plague on both your houses – and turns his back on the whole pack of politicos, and goes out of his way not to acquaint himself with the details of their opinions, having what he regards as better fish to fry? Comments welcome.

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Not too long ago, David Goodhart, the editor of the left-wing magazine Prospect, had an epiphany.

Rather less romantically, he must have had one of those "oh..umm, hang on a minute" moments when he realised that his movement was not just heading off in two different directions but that those directions are mutually exclusive:

And therein lies one of the central dilemmas of political life in developed societies: sharing and solidarity can conflict with diversity. This is an especially acute dilemma for progressives who want plenty of both solidarity (high social cohesion and generous welfare paid out of a progressive tax system) and diversity (equal respect for a wide range of peoples, values and ways of life). The tension between the two values is a reminder that serious politics is about trade-offs. It also suggests that the left's recent love affair with diversity may come at the expense of the values and even the people that it once championed.

Mr Goodhart calls this the 'progressives dillema' which, in a nutshell, means that for the want of the diversity, the solidarity may be lost.

[It is worth digressing here for a moment to note how Mr. Goodhart, along with the rest of his ideological bedfellows now insist on referring to themselves as 'progressives', a painfully sanctimonious but revealing bit of re-branding. It is as if they no longer want to be publicly associated with the contaminated 'S'-word. There is much satisfaction to be had here for people like me. Indeed, it is something I may have mentioned on previous occasions but I cannot be bothered to go trawling through the archives and, in any event, it is an observation that merits virtually no end of repetition.]

Anyhow, Mr Goodhart has at least sufficient integrity to admit that the cracks have opened up in his head. Indeed, he has poured the contents of that head (well, some of them at any rate) out into two rambling great essays both of appeared in the Guardian earlier this week. The link above is to the first of them.

I bet Mr. Goodhart struggled for some time to bring his thoughts into sufficient focus to write them down with a degree of candour now so uncommon among the bien-pensant. The nagging doubts must have been gnawing away at him like woodbeetles until he could stand it no longer. Before he burst, he just had to stand up and tell all his complacent little chums exactly what was what.

He must have guessed that this was going to go down like the Hindenberg. And if he did, he was right because it has.

And to mark this seminal event the Daily Social Worker has set today aside as an Official Day of Angst:

His articles are littered with assumptions about "us" and "them" and peppered with references to a "common culture" and "homogeneity", as though such terms are not only universally agreed but eternally static. No wonder he concludes that "National citizenship is inherently exclusionary". Of course it is, if defined by race and frozen in time.

Says Gary Younge.

So there is such a thing as British society after all, and it is worth preserving. Great thanks are due to David Goodhart, perhaps more thanks than he wants, for grasping that a country cannot long retain consent, freedom and order unless it defends and respects its own culture.

Trumpets specially-drafted-in-Conservative Peter Hitchens.

The pity of it all is that what Goodhart and the liberal intelligentsia refuse to see is that Britain, despite Blunkett, is far more progressive than the rest of Europe in the way it has handled diversity and racism and put institutional racism on the map. In doing so, it has tacitly acknowledged the contributions of African-Caribbeans and Asians, as a people and as a class, to that process. What Britain is still failing to see, though, is that, today, the presence of refugees and asylum seekers reflects and veils, at the same time, the decline of the welfare state in terms of public services, housing provision and so on, and ignores the contribution that they, like the immigrants before them, can make to shore up and rebuild the welfare state, and so generate a political culture of unity in diversity.

Bleats somebody called 'A Sivanandan'.

Diversity is a challenge to social solidarity, but there is nothing inevitable or mechanical that links the scale of diversity with the weakness of solidarity. We need to recognise that there are two rather different problems, and we have ways of tackling both.

Insists Labour MP, John Denham.

While paying lip service to diversity, Goodhart shows little appreciation of its value and fragility. Diversity fosters new sources of energy, creativity and imagination, and enables us to see the strengths and limitations of our own way of life. He is wrong to think that diversity can look after itself. There is increasing pressure towards assimilation, and diversity can easily wither away unless it is nurtured.

Opines Bhiku Parekh.

So does diversity threaten the solidarity underpinning the welfare state? Public hostility, surely, is to the undeserving: as much for the welfare scrounger unwilling to work as for the asylum seeker (who is not allowed to work). Ethnicity is not the determining factor. How do we create the sense of belonging and mutual obligation?

Asks Sarah Spencer.

Well, what a lot of ruffled feathers and spluttering indignation. But that is usually the result of telling people that they have to give one of their two sacred cows the big chop. That is what David Goodhart has had the audacity to tell them and, from within his own worldview, he is absolutely correct. The trouble is that his worldview is dead wrong.

Like all other 'progressives' (chuckle, snicker) Mr Goodhart believes that a convivial and decent civil society cannot possibly happen without a sustained top-down effort of a government filled to the brim with people like him. Similarly, if the great unwashed public was merely left alone to exercise their own choices they will invariably make stupid, cruel and malevolent decisions. This is the same blindness that leads people into believing that without state schools there will be no education.

Ironically, in a state of affairs that the 'progressives' would like to see, 'diversity' and 'solidarity' are not polar opposites. 'Solidarity' means a whole population forced into a universal state of monochromatic immiseration under the stewardship of a dull, earnest and condescending ruling elite. 'Diversity' means exactly the same thing with the addition of some brown people.

[I am sorry but I have digress again for a moment just to emphasise how much I loathe the word 'solidarity'. It is one of the many semantic horrors born out of the French Revolution and I will forever associate it with student barricades, industrial strife, bedsit Che Guevarras, clenched fists and collectivist poverty. I suppose the 'progressives' associate it with those things too, which is exactly why they love the word.]

The truth is that there is no dilemma here at all for anyone with a clear head. 'Diversity' and 'solidarity' are two merely two parallel streams of the same thematic programme of social engineering and the very best thing anyone can do with both concepts is to piss all over them until they fizzle and melt.

But, for those on the left, this dilemma is real enough despite all the harrumphing and denial. The state can mandate uniformity OR the state can mandate differences but it cannot possibly mandate both regardless of all heartfelt beliefs to the contrary. Mr Goodhart's confreres are standing with him at that fork in the road whether they recognise the fact or not. I suspect that some will and some won't which is why I can see them all getting into a very big, very public and very brutal bust-up very soon.

I intend to sit back and watch the entertainment. Tickets, anyone?

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Back in November 2003, I predicted that the end result of the anti-junk-food campaign would be 'sin taxes':

Then on to Step 5: the levying of 'sin taxes' on hamburgers to 'encourage a change of behaviour'. The money raised then pays for a lot more Food Standards Agents.

I hope I will be forgiven for this brief episode of smugness because, not only has my prediction come to pass, but it has come to pass rather more rapidly than even I had anticipated:

A Downing Street-based policy unit has proposed a plan to place a "fat tax" on junk food in an attempt to tackle the rising incidence of heart disease.

According to The Times, the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit raised the prospect of extra duty or VAT being imposed on some of the nation's favourite foods after heart disease overtook cancer as Britain's biggest killer, and more young people started developing diabetes.

That is what it was really all about. All the media-hype, all the hand-wringing, all the brow-furrowing and all the phoney 'caring'. It was all an elaborate ploy by the public sector classes to get their hands on more of your hard-earned. It really is all about revenue.

I heartily recommend pessimism. It enables you to amaze your friends with your powers of prediction and bask in the satisfaction of being borne out by events.

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I had been mulling over the reiteration, last week, of our dear leader's approach to political parties. It occurs to me that while Perry's prescription - don't vote and have nothing to do with political parties - is tempting, it is ultimately flawed. It is possible to affect a weary disdain for politics if you are fortunate to live in a country where some liberties remain. It is, however, dangerous to assume that this situation is static.

In any election - and for the purposes of argument I refer to a two party system such as the US or the UK - one is inevitably offered what appears to be Hobson's choice: Two sets of control freaks who share the same basic statist assumptions. That this is barely palatable to the libertarian doesn't alter the fact that there are bound to be differing outcomes depending on whom is elected and that one of those outcomes would be worse than the other. Thus while it is true to say that one's individual vote will not make any difference to the outcome, the libertarian should have an interest in that outcome.

There remains the question, if one chooses to engage in mainstream politics, of how to improve the choice offered to the voter. There is no prospect, under the UK's first past the post system, of a government being formed by any party other than Labour or the Tories. It may seem, at first, like a daunting task to convert either party towards any kind of libertarianism. How does one persuade an entire party of committed statists away from statism? Surely by the time everybody was on board, the "libertarianism" would be watered down so much so as to be unrecognisable? One possible answer to this conundrum was suggested to me while reading the Observer Food Monthly.

Heston Blumenthal, chef-proprietor of the 3-Michelin-starred Fat Duck restaurant, takes a uniquely scientific approach to cooking. One of the concepts which informs his thinking is Flavour Encapsulation. This describes the strength of flavour imparted when elements of contrasting flavour remain whole and unblended. Blumenthal explains it thus:

Make a cup of coffee with one ground coffee bean - it will taste horribly insipid. Now take the cup and fill it with hot water; just before you drink it, pop a coffee bean into your mouth, crunch it and then drink the water. This time, the coffee flavour will be far stronger and last in the mouth a lot longer. The experiment shows that a coffee bean delivers a far greater flavour eaten whole than when ground up in a cup of hot water. Effectively, the flavour is encapsulated in the whole bean but dispersed in the water.

This is the culinary principle behind such things as marmalade, fruit cakes, spaghetti carbonara, even something as naff as sun-dried tomato ciabatta and explains why significantly more flavour is required for 'smooth' food such as a souffle or pureed soup than 'chunky' food. If your objective is to create a nutty chocolate bar there is an efficient method and an inefficient method. The reason why smooth textured praline is more expensive than a chunky 'choc and nut' bar is because far fewer nuts are required for the latter to achieve an equivalent flavour. To convert a party such as the Tories towards libertarianism it is not necessary to puree and blend with the mass, all you need is a few whole nuts.

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Whatever happened to the phrase, which I believe was coined about a year ago by his überblogger highness, Glenn Reynolds, "A pack, not a herd" following his pointer to a Jonathan Rauch article?

If you recall, Reynolds attempted to show how the idea that there is a negative tradeoff between liberty and security is based on an error and that free societies, because they let citizens be vigilant as well as rationally self interested, are typically safer against threats than those in which folk assume the State will see to every issue.

What is so clever about Reynolds' argument is that it means that opponents of Big Government measures to make us 'safer', for by example, crackdowns on various civil liberites, can instead point to positive examples of people figuring out problems without the need for endless government programmes.

I think that coming up with lots of positive examples of how individual men and women have worked voluntarily with others to fix problems normally felt to the province of the State can do more to advance the cause of liberty than a library of classical liberal tracts.

And if there is a supreme British example of voluntarism, heroism and the advantages of encouraging a "can do" philosophy in our lives, it is surely that favourite of libertarians, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI).

And the depressing question which arises for me is, if the RNLI were being contemplated now rather than in its time of birth in 19th Century Britain, would the health and safety bureaucrats try to kill it at birth?

Dear readers, you are ahead of me on that one.

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For a wonderful account of the BBC's world famous dispassion and impartiality, check this out.

Some views are more welcome than others it seems.

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In addition to loving skyscrapers I also have a thing about bridges, and I periodically feature a picture of a bridge at my Culture Blog. Sometimes the pictures are taken by me, of one or other of the many bridges of London. Sometimes they are acquired from the infinity of information that is the Internet.

Some while ago I featured the Coronado Bridge, which is next to San Diego. In that connection someone else drew my attention to another splendid bridge in Macao. Commenting on that posting, Phil Cohen has this to say about the Coronado Bridge:

The original design for the Coronado Bridge was a much shorter, and almost straight span to the Island (actually, peninsula). Then in order to qualify for federal funding, (whereby our government pays most of the tab), the City of San Diego curved and lengthened the bridge to meet the minimum length standard that would qualify the Coronado Bridge for Federal funding.

How about that for an unintended consequence of taxpayer funding. They help you if yours is a long bridge, so San Diego builds a long bridge instead of a short bridge!

If you want to see even more clearly what Phil Cohen is talking about, just take a look at this map!

It is very rare that government spending has such conspicuously visible results. Normally, when governments waste money – which is what they mostly do with money, after all - the waste all happens tucked away in offices and in the form of a few thousand quietly invisible salaries for suburbanites. For every Concorde or Space Shuttle or daft piece of architecture there are a hundred bits of wastage that are no more exciting to look at than evaporating water. But this Coronado Bridge story really makes the point.

Personally I prefer the highly visible kind of government wastage. First, it is often, as with this bridge, and as with Concorde, very pretty to look at. Second, it very prettily dramatises how wasteful government spending can be, and I like that even more.

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Two decades ago I used to love arguing about the rights and wrongs of capitalism, socialism, social democracy, collectivism, communism, etc. Now, I don't have the adrenalin for it. Now I prefer to offer observations, big or small, and let others fight about them while I cook up my next observations. Thank God (by which I of course mean Perry de Havilland and his editorial confreres – thank goodness might be a better way of putting it) for Samizdata.net, because here I can do just that.

But if you want a good old libertarians-versus-collectivists row to join in on, this Chris Bertram post together with all the comments it has provoked could be just your ticket.

Chris Bertram says this about the Morecambe tragedy in which nineteen Chinese cockle pickers perished:

But one thing that needs saying is that such tragedies are a normal and predictable consequence of capitalism and not simply the result of coercion and abuse by a few criminals.

Bertram's piece is a classic example of what one might term Implied Collectivism. Capitalism, says Bertram, regularly causes violent deaths. The clear implication is that therefore "capitalism" needs in some way to be severely hobbled, if not done away with altogether, and that if that happened, poverty would likewise be diminished or even done away with too. But he doesn't dare come out flat with the claim that capitalism ought to be cut back, still less got rid of, on poverty relief grounds, because that would be too daft. He doesn't even think this, because he does have more than a trace of intellectual efficacy and moral sanity in that befuddled head of his. Nevertheless he allows the implication to float in the air, because he wants it to be true, or seems to. Not admirable. He ends his piece thus:

But we mustn’t forget that the root cause of many such tragedies is that poor people need to risk themselves in order that they and those they love may live. Unless they cease to be poor, and cease to face such unpalatable choices, such events will happen again and again.

There is as much truth in that bit of writing as in any where the words "root" and "cause" are to be found next to each other and in that order, but so what? Why blame "capitalism" for that? This is like blaming oxygen for forest fires.

And if poor people are to cease to be poor, what they need is more capitalism, different bits of capitalism to choose between, not less of it. If those wretched cockle pickers had had more and consequently better choices, they might not have chosen the risk of drowning for the sake of £1 a day. And … oh, but I've said all this, argued all that.

If you want to read more denunciations of Bertram, as I say, read the comments, of which this one from Steve Carr (any relation I wonder?) is one of the better ones:

Forgive the naivete of this question, but how is poverty "a consequence of the normal operation of capitalism"? Chris argues that capitalism "creates great poverty," which in turn presumes that there is a pre-poverty state that capitalism transforms. Where is the evidence for this? Have there ever been any non-capitalist socities in which the vast majority of people were not poor?

It won't do to answer this question by pointing to the enormous wealth that capitalism generates for those at the top, or invoking the question of exploitation. To say capitalism "creates poverty" means that it makes things worse, in absolute terms, for poor people, who would be better off had capitalism never existed.

Exactly.

I'm also baffled by the assertion that in a non-capitalist society mineworkers would be paid more for their labor than other workers. Certainly one of the defining characteristics of most socialist societies has been relatively equal pay across fields of labor. And pace Ophelia, I have a very hard time believing Cuba or Tanzania ever paid its farmworkers hazard pay.

Capitalism is doing well. There are now people called things like Ophelia arguing for it.

I also don't understand Chris' point about Sweden. If "not all capitalisms" are red in tooth and claw, then we can’t say that what happened to the cocklers was a "normal and predictable consequence of capitalism." It's what happened under a particular variant of capitalism, and in fact I think it probably has a great deal to do with "coercion and abuse." It also has to do with the still-desperate condition of rural China, which is in no small part the result of thirty years of complete economic destruction wreaked by Mao’s policies.

And my only objection to that is that Steve Carr tosses the misery of China in almost as an afterthought. Britain is not Sweden (Sweden's answer to the poverty of the world's poor being to shut them all out completely, because, I guess, that way, your teeth and your claws get to stay white). Oh and "also": China is China. If you want a "root cause" of the Morecambe horror, China's Chinaness seems to me a far better bet than Britain's alleged insufficiency of Swedenness.

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One of the most appealing aspects of a libertarian outlook is simplicity. It is often the case that when one examines, in greater depth, what initially appears to be a libertarian conundrum, it proves not to be. One such faux-dilemma, suggested to me by Alan K. Henderson's comments to Andy's post below, is the extent to which liberty can be threatened by non-state interests.

This can be the basis for populist political crusades against "Big Oil", "Big Pharma", even "Big Food". The faux libertarian conundrum is the notion that we need a strong state as a guarantor of "real competition": to break up monopolies in the interests of consumers. Yet surely such interference in the market is un-libertarian? In reality the conundrum evaporates when one examines how such monopolies arise. Put simply, monopolies wither in the free market and thrive under state regulation. Such monopolies, rightfully abhorrent to any free market capitalist or libertarian, are sustained by the very political system which seeks to regulate them. Just as the enforced "tolerance" of multiculturalism is a form of intolerance, so enforced competition is inimical to true free-market competition.

A similar dilemma is suggested by considering the plight of those in Northern Ireland who have fallen foul of paramilitaries. It matters little to a person tortured or exiled on threat of death whether his tormentors are acting for the state or a paramilitary group, Yet so-called human rights bodies such as Amnesty International, pay little attention to the human rights of such individuals, reserving their comments for infringements by state forces. Glenn Reynolds struck a chord when he cheered David Trimble for pointing this out. Needless to say this did not go down too well with some of the socialists and nationalists who comment at Slugger O'Toole. The conundrum is that surely a libertarian can agree with Amnesty's justification: It is proper to be more concerned by state abuses than actions by private agents.

In examining this "conundrum" it also evaporates but leads to a surprising, counter-intuitive insight. In the segregated, working class urban 'bantustans' of Northern Ireland, paramilitaries are in a position to exert punishment and enforce exiles because they have been ceded a monopoly of violence. By the state. Local hostility to police forces means they are reluctant to carry out normal policing and individuals are prevented from defending themselves. This gives the paramilitaries a free run. Though they are nominal antagonists, the IRA effectively operates a monopoly of violence backed by the British state. The plight of its victims should be the proper concern of any agency which professes to uphold human rights.

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Perhaps the 'idiotarian' opposition to the US is over the top, a bit like suggesting that Pol Pot was better than Richard Nixon because Nixon taxed more people. But I offer three honest reasons (well, one is cowardly) for opposing British military intervention and occupation of Iraq:

1. The British armed forces are not properly equipped. I did say so beforehand. Let me be clear: if the cause is just, but the equipment is not ready, kit up first, then go to war.

   N.B. This is not an argument against US intervention in Iraq. I note approvingly that in the Second World War, the US federal government starting arming before launching assaults on Axis-occupied territories.

2. This one will really not be popular on Samizdata.net... Suppose that it is not possible to defeat Islamic fundamentalism by force of arms - at least as far as the UK is concerned. A final 'victory' worldwide that follows half a dozen nuclear terrorist outrages in the UK and a racial war in most of the UK's towns is not worth it. As far as the UK is concerned, it might be safer to appease and let others do the fighting. I think of Switzerland not declaring war with Germany over the treament of the Jews in 1941.
3. To be a libertarian must include at least some reservations about using other people as ends for one's own purpose. I do not have the right to force one person (A) to do something to another (B) that I think is moral, but that (A) did not wish to do, even though (B) may deserve it. This means among other things that I do not have the right to levy money by compulsory taxes in Yorkshire, to pay for my pet social-engineering experiments in Basra. I should add that the argument against compulsory aid for the disabled is the same.

In effect a libertarian who says it is fine to use tax-funded resources to liberate Bagdad from tyranny and economic ruin, and argue that it is not alright to use a fraction of the money to liberate a paraplegic from economic disadvantage, could be said to be inconsistent.

Failing to recognise the points I list above could lead to the following sorts of problems:

1. A British soldier killed because he lent his body armour to a colleague. This sort of thing happened in the Crimean War with coats, right boots, blankets etc. In Kuwait the British troops got the nickname 'the Borrowers' from the US troops. I imagine that the French troops in the Crimean saw their British colleagues in much the same way.
2. Consider this scenario: by the end of the 'war on terrorism' in 2015, France has not had a single nuclear terrorist strike, the US has had 20, the UK has had six and Spain, Italy and Poland one apiece. Who's the idiot?
3. In 2010 President of the EU Blair announces a "libertarian" programme of the Peace Corps: all 18 year olds will serve in a peace-keeping unit to promote the values of freedom around the world. The move is popular as it cuts youth unemployment in the EU from 45% to 40% and crime.

I repeat: removing Saddam Hussein is great. So why worry about all the lies or mistaken intelligence? It matters because we may be asked to believe another set of pretexts. It would be nice if the next lot were a bit more coherent and plausible. Of course it will be harder to persuade many people who swallowed the "45 minute" threat line of Tony Blair's. Refusing to support a war just because Tony Blair says it is right does not make someone an idiot.

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The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else
- Frédéric Bastiat

RyanAir has just lost a legal dispute with Bob Ross, a customer of the airline who suffers from cerebral palsy, due to the fact the airline did not supply him with a wheelchair for use within the airport at RyanAir's own expense. The low cost air carrier was ordered to stop charging disabled passengers £18 ($33) for the use of wheelchairs the airline provided at Stansted airport as this was deemed to be in violation of the Disability Discrimination Act.

[The Judge ruled] the airline should pay £1,000 compensation for injured feelings to Bob Ross, a cerebral palsy sufferer, who brought the case after having to pay for a wheelchair to take him the half-mile from Stansted check-in to the aircraft two years ago.

[...]

The Disability Rights Commission, which supported Mr Ross's case, praised the judgment for recognising that Ryanair's policy was a "slap in the face" for disabled people wanting to take advantage of low-cost flights. Bert Massie, the commission chairman, added: "It beggars belief that a company that made £165 million profit last year should quibble over the cost of a wheelchair."

So what we are being told here is that because the unfortunate Mr. Ross has a terrible affliction, he can forcibly impose his costs on others who do not wish to bear them. In a civilized society, a civil society, people should feel that it is right and appropriate to assist those who are disabled. Enlightened businesses should seeks to cater to those with special mobility or other needs and it is right that social opprobrium be heaped on those who decline to do so. Yet Mr. Ross did not seek social opprobrium for RyanAir but rather the forcible appropriation of its resources.

Yet why does a disability give anyone, no matter what unfair cards fate has dealt them, even a terrible affliction such as cerebral palsy, the right to legitimately help themselves to other people's money by force? Whilst I think RyanAir's policy of applying these charges was perhaps unenlightened (and certainly bad P.R.) to 'quibble' over the costs of a wheelchair, I fail to see by what right Mr. Ross is owed by force backed obligation a special charge on the resources of a company he elects to do business with.

As the regulatory state, and those who make their living from it, work to replace more and more social exchange between people with mandated politically derived behavioural formulae, less and less people (and the companies run by people) will seek to do 'the right thing' from any sense what is reasonable and decent, and instead will merely do what is mandated by political processes. When people like George Monbiot and Peter Hain describe their visions of a total political 'society' (which is to say the replacement of social interaction by political interaction... the replacement of society with state), Mr. Ross is an exemplary product of that world view.

Of course to some it would seem any criticism of a wheelchair bound person suffering with cerebral palsy is beyond the pale. But I prefer to think of Mr. Ross as a human with the same rights as myself, but not more just because he has less mobility. Yet it seems this man has not just the right to impose his needs on others but to say otherwise means the state will force you to compensate him to the tune of £1000 for hurting his feelings. I wonder when the Disability Rights Commission will take this to its logical conclusion and start going after people such as myself for airing such heretical views if they hurt the feelings of those who want to impose their needs on others?

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In 1998 the Human Rights Act swept in on a bow wave of heady expectation. It was the dawn of a new era and the end of the dark ages. Britain was, at long last, a properly civilised country where everyone was going to have tons and oodles of rights for everything they could possibly want and anything they could possibly imagine and the whole thing was to be busily administered by an army of publicly-funded lawyers and functionaries. The Human Rights Act was heralded was the modern Social Democrat version of the Magna Carta.

This was the pot of gold at the end of the Entitlements Rainbow; the sweet reward for decades of interminable squawking, marching, banner-waving and shouting the word 'fascist'.

Courtrooms would now become shopping malls where anyone can just swan in, pick up some rights (in size and colour to suit) and leave with bags full of them, gift-wrapped.

I took a rather different view. My appraisal of the Human Rights Act was that it was a pernicious harbinger of Swiftian stupidities and a cornerstone of a permanent nanny-state. Nothing since has given me the slightest cause to review my initial opinion, indeed, it has only been reinforced. But, interestingly, it appears to be dawning on some of the dewey-eyed believers that this is not the New Jerusalem they were expecting:

I am not the only one who worried that the introduction of the Human Rights Act might backfire on those of us who worry about little things like rape, murder, child abuse and prostitution. Certainly some of the fears many feminists had about fancy lawyers defending all sorts of scum in the name of "rights" proved well founded. HRA cases have included the right of a man accused of rape to hear details of a complainant's sexual history for the benefit of his defence and - turned down only after serious deliberation - serial killer Dennis Nielsen to be allowed gay pornography in prison, based on the argument that heterosexual serial killers are allowed theirs.

In countries in which real human rights violations blight the lives of millions, there is confusion about why we westerners are using the act to argue, for example, that a man has the right to sunbathe naked in his own garden. Is that really the best we can do?

Cry me a river.

If I had my way, the wretched Human Rights Act would be repealed and every copy in the land would be fed into an industrial shredder.

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I took this photograph of a street in North London earlier this evening (with a camera-phone, hence the poor resolution).

The snow that the weather forecasters have been threatening us with for the past week or so has finally swooped down with a vengeance (well, by London standards anyway).

But as I gazed out of window at the swirling storm, I was struck by an interesting idea. You see, due to my meticulous and detailed observations over many years, I have concluded that snow seems to occur during periods of very cold weather. And, by coincidence, these periods of very cold weather are also marked by a dramatic decline in the number of lurid 'global warming' stories appearing in the British press.

Conversely, during periods of very hot weather said 'global warming' stories make a sudden and almost miraculous re-appearance.

Are these two phenomena linked in some way? Is this a clue to the existence of as yet unseen and mysterious forces that science has, hitherto, been wholly unaware of? I shall continue with my research in the hope that more will be revealed.

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One of the most welcome commenters in my part of the blogosphere, including here of course, is Mark Holland. So it was a great pleasure to learn, some few weeks ago, that he now has his own blog, called Blognor Regis, which is the name of a famous English seaside town plus an L. Take a look. What can you lose?

It definitely is a libertarian blog, let there be no doubt about that. When he mentions car tax, for instance, he says there ought not to be any. But when I went looking for further items of libertarian holy writ that has not yet sunk into the archives I found almost nothing else that was really hard core. He does not hit you over the head every day with his libertarianism, in other words.

Nor does Richard Garner's new blog, which I heard about by reading Blognor Regis, but that is because Richard seems to post less frequently than Mark Holland does. Otherwise, Richard Garner's Thoroughly Enthralling Weblog could hardly be more different. This is a blog with long quotes (scroll down to "EDUCATION (HEALTH CARE, FOOD, ADEQUATE HOUSING... ADD GOOD OR SERVICE AS YOU FEEL APPROPRIATE - IS A PRIVILEGE, NOT A RIGHT" - January 25 - blogger archiving ...) from hard core libertarian luminaries, world famous and not so world famous. Hairs are split. Doctrinal purities are distilled still more. Libertarian colours are nailed to the mast and carried into battle. Peace movement people ("PEACE AND THE STATE" - also Jan 25), for instance, are politely and patiently told why, if they believe some of their more benign slogans, they ought to follow the logic of them a little further and be libertarians rather than statists.

This is the kind of thing I used to do but – and I intend no disrespect here – have now lost the taste for. Like playing international rugby or going out on all night drinking sprees, debating the ins and outs of libertarianism and libertarian doctrine, against anti-libertarians and with fellow libertarians is, I feel, a young man's game, and yes I think I do mean man. And as I enter my old woman phase of life, I find myself less inclined towards it, in writing at any rate. (I just did a spot on Radio Humberside about the merits of privately owned public space, and I suddenly sounded to myself about a quarter of a century younger. I sounded, that is to say, like Richard Garner.)

In pre-Internet days, both of these gentlemen would either would have become regular contributors to the Libertarian Alliance or to something like it, or they would have been frustrated at not being able to do that because it was too much of a bother, what with them having to worry about whether someone like me would like their stuff enough to publish it. Now they can just blog. Beautiful. For both, I am sure that this is a huge liberation.

Such blogs as these may or may not immediately set the world alight, but they, and other blogs like them, are part of an immensely important process, and a huge step forward for the libertarian movement.

There are two important things about libertarian publishing, one of which is very widely understood by libertarians, and the other of which often has to be explained to libertarians in tortuous detail.

The obvious bit is the number of people who read the stuff. You want that to be as big as possible, of course you do.

But the unobvious bit is, if anything, far more important, and concerns the political and philosophical assumptions that are the basis of your publication, the things that you and your readers take as givens that do not have to be argued for every time you mention them in passing in a piece about something else (like how to do them, how to phrase them, or about car rallying). Running publications which have the assumptions built into their intellectual architecture that we want built into them is at least as important as building up mere circulation, and especially so if circulation is built by surrendering on key political and philosophical assumptions.

One thing is for sure. We libertarians will not command many ocean liners if we are not in the habit of launching dinghies and ferry boats and tramp steamers.

This is why I am so delighted when I see new libertarian blogs setting sail. They may not now be carrying many passengers, and perhaps they never will. But the value of pushing an ocean liner a tenth of a degree away from the bad direction it is travelling in (by getting a letter or article published in a mainstream media organ) is often exaggerated, and the value of sailing a much smaller craft in precisely the right direction tends to be underestimated. (I would not have spent two decades slogging away for the Libertarian Alliance if I believed otherwise.)

So, congratulations and very best wishes to – and another pair of links to – Blognor Regis and Richard Garner's Thoroughly Enthralling Weblog. To revert to the maritime metaphor one last time, God bless them and all who sale in them.

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Earlier this evening the launch was held at the Institute of Economic Affairs of Dennis O'Keeffe's translation of Benjamin Constant's Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments, which is published by Liberty Fund Inc. Dennis is to be congratulated for this mighty undertaking, which is bound to reverberate through the Anglosphere in the months and years to come.

At the IEA, Dennis spoke only briefly. Rather than regale us at length with his own views of Benjamin Constant, he let the man speak to us for himself. We were offered the following few Constant quotations. Dennis commented hardly at all other than to note how much sense they still made of the people and events of our own time:

How bizarre that those who called themselves ardent friends of freedom have worked so relentlessly to destroy the natural basis of patriotism, to replace it with a false passion for an abstract being, for a general idea deprived of everything which strikes the imagination or speaks to memory. (p.326)

People always take mediocrity as peaceful. It is peaceful only when it is locked up. When chance invests it with power, it is a thousand times more incalculable in its motion, more envious, more obstinate, more immoderate, and more convulsive than talent,... (pp. 329-40)

This next one, said Dennis, could - its extreme eloquence aside - have as easily been said by the most committed twenty first century libertarian:

... society has no right to be unjust to a single one of its members, ... the whole society minus one, is not authorised to obstruct the latter in his opinions, nor in those actions which are not harmful, in the use of his property or the exercise of his labour, save in those cases where that use or that exercise would obstruct another individual possessing the same rights. (p. 384)

The final one, said Dennis, he could not supply a page number for, despite a lot of searching. It had just stuck in his mind.

If human nature is a good argument against freedom, it is an even better one against despotism.

I am ashamed to admit that until now, for me, Benjamin Constant has only been a name. Not any more. I bought the book, and I recommend you do too if you are at all interested in the history of liberty and of the idea of liberty.

UPDATE: Here is what Benjamin Constant looked like.

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Ron Crickenberger, a well known libertarian activist of several decades standing, passed away overnight.

He is survived by his partner Noelle Stettner, two children, and one grandchild.

The movement will miss him.

If you knew Ron, please add your remembrance to our comments section.

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Peter Briffa catches Polly Toynbee talking sense:

… The middle classes, who benefit most, might have preferred an earmarked income tax rise to extra university fees.

The government replies that 80% of taxpayers never went to university, so why should they pay too? Besides, if taxes rose, there are better spending priorities. Why should the 50% with too few opportunities fork out for the lucky ones? That's very nearly a good enough answer - but it raises key questions, too.

For that is not social democratic thinking: on that basis, why should those without children pay for schools? Or those without cars pay for roads? Or the great majority who never use trains pay for the 4% who commute by rail? Or those outside London contribute £1bn a year to the tube? Or southerners pay for the Angel of the North, while ballet-haters pay for Covent Garden? And why should the majority pay for social housing or tax credits they will never use?

Once you start to question who should pay for what, the idea of national collective provision crumbles. Where is the line in the sand? Where does it stop? Is there really something about universities that is clearly, qualitatively different to any of the above? You might just argue that there is a stronger personal financial gain to be had from a degree which justifies a personal contribution. But the same case might be made for why the suburban commuter should pay the full cost of his train, paying for his pleasure at living somewhere salubrious. …

Very good! PT of course intends that all these very good questions should be answered with:yes. Yes, southerners should pay for the northern angel, yes ballet-haters should pay for ballet, etc. And yes, higher education despisers should pay for other people's higher education. But for once, I like the cut of her jib. Asks Briffa mischievously: Is the penny finally dropping for La Toynbee? No of course not. She is incorrigible. But might not some of her readers find their brain cells being prodded into unfamiliar directions by all this flagrant logic.

This spasm of Toybee sanity reminds me of when people say that I should oppose some little government tyranny not for being tyrannical (that being perhaps too difficult or unpopular to do effectively), but for being inconsistent with some other not-so-tyrannical arrangement. Beware of asking for consistency in such circumstances, I reply, you just might get it, in the form of consistent tyranny. Toynbee starts by arguing for consistency and immediately finds herself sounding for the duration of her point like the purest sort of libertarian.

Heh.

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Natalie Solent links to this posting at Thought Mesh, about the realities of regulation. Thought Mesh seems to be US based, but the message is universal:

As you may know, I work in network security management. I’ve been off at a summit discussing the future of the product. While listening to our chief marketing guy talk about future requirements, he said something I found astounding. Paraphrasing, the gist was that our corporate customers cannot comply with their reporting and auditing requirements. There are so many and they are so detailed that compliance is apparently no longer possible. The point for us is that any auditing done by our software should be designed with this fact in mind and so, rather than verifying compliance should be able to document the level of failure to comply.

Further, it seems that this situation is known to the regulating agencies and the requirement is now not actual compliance, but "improvement" over time (which is where our reports can contribute). It’s the "no child left behind" theory of corporate regulation. One is left to wonder if we shouldn’t be trying for a set of regulations that is actually possible to obey. The answer, of course, is that it’s best for the regulators if everyone is guilty of something. Then when bad things happen, there is a nice selection of the usual suspects to pin the blame on, all of them disarmed because they are in violation of some regulation.

In another sense, it's cargo cult regulation. Some good company is observed to perform some action. Therefore if every company is required to do that, they will be good companies. In fact, this kind of regulatory environment, with endless obscure rules and universal compliance failure, is perfect for the sophisticated con men. Not only does it provide a thicket of procedures to hide in, but it distracts everyone into watching the forms without time to worry about the results. All that good corporate governance in Europe let Parmalat get by with shady accounting longer than any American company. It seems like there’s a lesson there somewhere.

And here are the first two comments about this at Thought Mesh. This from "anon" (no wonder!):

"our corporate customers cannot comply with their reporting and auditing requirements."

This is so true.

I work in networks too, and every year I get sent a questionnaire by central auditing. It always contains a question like "Do you regularly monitor your audit logs to search for [some bad event or other]?"

If you answer No (being truthful) and go on to explain why it is impossible - like for instance, the log is a squillion pages long, unsearchable free-form text, and doesn’t log [super-bad event] anyway - then they nag you to death demanding to know when you are going to start, never mind that it's impossible etc etc.

Whereas if you answer Yes (lying) you never hear any more about it.

So guess which answer they get?

What purpose is served by this? The one you mention, I imagine - if anything goes wrong I can be screwed. Well, I will be anyway, so who cares.

And this from vbc:

You say that it seems like there is a lesson in there somewhere. There is, and it was formulated nicely by the ancient Roman, Cicero:

Excessive law is no law.

Indeed. But not "heh".

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While channel hopping in the early hours of this morning through the unwatched digital end of the British TV spectrum (no doubt that is a technologically impossible thing to do literally but I'm sure you understand), I encountered the beginnings of or an advertisement for (I switched off and am only now remembering it) one of those Kilroy-Silk type programmes in which a sleek self-important talk-leader wanders around among various people desperate to be on television talking about something too interesting and lowbrow to be of interest to the kind of people who watch analogue TV with a number like 1 or 2, such as what it is like to sleep with your nephew or why you want your grandmother to stop getting any more tattoos. This sleek Kilroy-man was called Walsh, I think. (Yes.) And, this time the subject was going to be … and here I confess to forgetting the technical term which the unwatched TV industry has coined for this phenomenon … but it was video/digital/TV cameras for looking up girls' skirts in public places. Apparently some unfortunate girl had become the victim of one of these freelance soft porn Spielbergs and video of her bottom and underwear was even now circulating on the internet.

I don't know exactly how the cameras are organised. Perhaps they are placed in the shoes of the filmer. Perhaps they are operated from the basements of sleazy restaurants. A particular unfortunate girl had become more unfortunate in that she had sued her voyeur-tormentors in an American court, and the court had found that although disgusting, the behaviour of the electro-digital-voyeurs was not illegal. So now the unfortunate girl was taking her case to a higher court: unwatched television.

And that was when I switched off, which I now regret. It was the most memorable and interesting thing I saw on the telly yesterday, but I only realised this today.

As I say, I don't know how the argument then proceeded, although I do know that they had managed to entice or fake up some sleazoids willing to argue in favour of the rights of people to make movies by pointing cheap cameras up girl's skirts. So presumably there was an argument.

What might I have said if I had found myself in the middle of such an argument? I have no idea, but here are some guesses.

First, this is not only an argument for privately owned public spaces amongst people like those who read Samizdata, it is a circumstance which will surely cause people generally to prefer privately owned public spaces to publicly owned public spaces. Whatever the constitutional right to film people may consist of exactly, upheld by the US Constitution or by the European Convention of Human Rights and only challengeable after months if not years of legal foolishness, most girls don't want cameras pointed up their knickers, and will prefer to, e.g., shop in places where this is forbidden throughout, as I surmise that it already is in privately owned shopping centres. No doubt, in a world of ubiquitous privately owned public spaces, such as we are more and more seeing, there will also be places where such filming is allowed and even encouraged, and some girls of the naughtier and show-offier sort will visit such places on purpose.

Second, whatever the rules for such filming end up being, whether state-proclaimed or privately-proclaimed, it will be devilishly difficult to enforce them very completely. A likely result is that many girls will just get used to it. They will just say: if you look up my knickers, you're the one with the problems, not me. That would certainly make sense to me as a reaction.

But others may adapt their costumes. Will there be revival of voluminous layered ladies' underwear, which will give strategically places camera-persons you about as much of a view of the lower half of a lady's body as a naked human body gives you now of the skeleton that supports it? The fashion industry is always looking for excuses to make girls frocks look entirely different to what anyone was expecting. Redoing dresses to make them proof against invisible cameras in the floor could provoke amazing new fashion statements. Will young girls be urged by their mothers always to wear clean underwear, not in case they have a road accident, but in case their underwear gets filmed and internetted?

In other words, to summarise the above points, the market, in space and in clothing, will supply solutions that the ponderous absurdities of litigation and legislation will be powerless to offer.

Third, I wonder how this will all play out in Scotland, where men also wear skirts, concerning which much controversy now rages (in Scotland and elsewhere) about what they wear underneath them. Will the fashion of men wearing skirts which is now spreading outside of Scotland be stopped in its tracks? Or will it, perchance, be encouraged? There's a certain kind of man who loves to show off his manhood. Scottish (coincidence?) film star Ewan McGregor springs to mind. I was going to supply a pertinent link there but I would be doing most of our readers no favours, trust me.

Fourth, well, I don't want to go on at too great length about this. People might think that there was something wrong with me.

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I am glad that Brian has invited readers of his article below to veer off into unrelated realms because I intend to do exactly that. Of course, I would have done so anyway but I feel better for having had Brian's blessing.

Though this post has been sparked off by Brian's musings, it has nothing to do with Islam. Rather I have homed in on one particular phrase which Brian has used in his post and which has been repeated ad nauseum by others. Namely:

War is the health of the state

If free-market axioms were trees then that one would be a mighty oak. Among libertarians it is an unquestioned and proven truism. An article of faith. The nearest thing we have to a party line.

However, it is a line from which I dissent. Not because I regard the process of war with any favour but rather because, like Brian, I dislike untruth and while the declaration that war is the health of the state may be comfortingly self-righteous and gallery-friendly, it is not true.

This is not to say that war is a pleasing state of affairs. Far from it. War is terrible and it is terrible because it means that all sorts of people are going to have their lives ripped from them in all manner of frightening and ghoulish ways. It means countless others left without their limbs, their eyes or their mental faculties. Are any other disincentives required? I cannot think of more compelling reasons to avoid armed conflict wherever possible. In fact, given the awful effect of war on the health on actual human beings, does it not sound frivolously tangential to base one's opposition to it on the succour it may provide to public officials?

Even leaving aside the grisly fate of its victims, I can wholly understand why so many libertarians and conservatives oppose war on principle. After all, we don't like big government projects and what is war in this day and age except a big government project par excellence? But that does not mean that war is the 'health' of the state and I would submit that British history dispels any notion that it is.

The British spent the entire 19th Century expanding their empire across the entire globe and in every corner of that empire Her Majesty's footsloggers and cavalrymen were busy fighting wars, rebellions, skirmishes and guerilla campaigns. The glint of Sheffield steel could be seen and the report of Enfield Rifles heard on every continent. On the high seas, the Royal Navy was charged with enforcing the government writ against slave-traders while simultaneously fending off imperial challenges from the French and the Dutch.

Yet, despite all this military activity, the British state was so small as to barely figure in the lives of the average citizen. Comparisons with the leviathan we have now are hardly possible. Nor, at any point in the 19th Century, did taxes exceed 10% of the GDP. Nowadays, people like Brian and I would consider it to be a monumental victory to get that figure down to 40%.

And speaking of British history I have often heard the 'war-is-the-health-of-the-state' supporters cite the introduction of Income Tax in Britain in 1799 as proof of their proposition, i.e. it was only introduced for the purposes of raising revenues with which to fight the Napoleonic Wars. This is certainly the case but it is seldom mentioned that Income Tax was subsequently abolished in 1816. It was re-introduced in later years because it had become the pet project of a group of political campaigners who spent years assiduously lobbying for Income Tax not because they wanted the proceeds to fight any wars but because they wanted to redistribute wealth.

A growth chart of the British Welfare State rather bears this out. The Welfare State line climbs steadily upwards not in relation to the number of wars but directly in relation to the increase in enfranchisement. If the historical records are anything to go by, then there is a pretty good case for declaring democracy to be the 'health of the state'.

I also offer up the case of Sweden. I think anyone would be hard put to find any country in the developed world with a more comprehensive and interventionist welfare state. Yet, the Swedes have not fought any kind of war with anyone in nearly two hundred years. How does one explain the rude and robust 'health' of the Swedish state?

All that said, Brian and others are quite right to be concerned about the ongoing 'War on Terror' being conducted hand-in-glove with a very sinister agenda of social control by means of biometric systems and ID cards and the such. But the War on Terror is the excuse not the reason. The provenance for all this social control dates back to the late 1980's and first manifested itself in the global 'anti-money-laundering' regime that has been implemented since. The excuse then was the 'War on Drugs' but the real reason was the advent of the internent. Yes, our wonderful internet. It was the prospect of ordinary Joes and Janes being able to despatch packages of digital information around the world in anonymity that scared the willies out of our political elites and prompted them to construct a legal framework that would enable them to maintain an audit trail on every citizen.

Anyone who thinks that our political leaders and their security advisers suddenly thought of ID cards on September 12th 2001 is someone who is ignorant of this recent history. While the threat of terror attacks (be they real or imaginary) has certainly added an urgency to these impulses, the citizen-branding scheme was only ever going to be a matter of time. The internet has proved to be as healthy for the state as any war.

I am not suggesting that war has no part to play in the growth of state. It clearly has and clearly does. But it is not the health of the state. It is just one of many phenomena that play a part in the whole process along with technological changes, random events, ideologies, natural disasters, class interests and, let us never forget, the eternal lust for power.

Yet, despite all of that the only true health of the state lies in the lumpen apathy of the citizens and their mystifying readiness to assign great swathes of their individual sovereignty over to those that govern them. Wartime, peacetime, anytime.

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I have no time to expand, because I'm about to go out and about for the rest of the day, but just to say that this, by Julia Magnet for City Journal, is a terrific piece, about the great American movie maker (and about to be novelist, I read somewhere on my googlings for this) Whit Stillman. I adore his movies, especially Metropolitan, but the other two also. (Too bad they are still not yet available on DVD.)

Incidentally, my tastes in Stillman are shared in my corner of the blogosphere. See Patrick Crozier, and Stephen Pollard, who also links admiringly to the Magnet piece.

I won't comment at length about Stillman, but I will just rattle off a few thoughts about why a devout libertarian like me adores the work of a deeply conservative critic of recent non-judgemental, post-modern, sexually liberated trends in bourgeois behaviour and thinking.

I am conservative in my tastes, in art, etiquette, manners (at least in aspiration), morals (ditto), drug use (for real – I never inhaled because I never touched it – too scary – the case for legalising drugs cannot be that they are harmless). It is merely that I am profoundly anti-conservative in politics, if by this is meant the imposition of my – superior and judgemental – tastes and opinions upon others. Political compulsion corrupts, and should always be regarded with suspicion, especially when what is being compelled is – to start with – genuinely virtuous and admirable. Why? Because then that which is genuinely virtuous and admirable will be corrupted, which is clearly far worse then when something silly and meretricious and wrong-headed is imposed, and corrupted. (That imposing something silly will probably do more immediate harm is true, but that is a different kind of argument to the one I just made.)

I believe that a Stillmanian attitude to social life will eventually win through in the free market of ideas and of institutions. I don't believe that it has any chance in a world of politically imposed good manners.

That is the kind of conservative I am and the kind of libertarian I am. If libertarianism means assembling a panty collection from one's sexual conquests and boasting about it, or in saying the first thoughtless thing that comes into your head no matter how hurtful, or in abandoning one's children for the sake of personal liberation and pretending that one is doing them a favour, then to hell with libertarianism – that is to say with "libertinism". It is just that the way to spread ideas like mine is to spread them by following one of them, which is not to force people to do things or think things against their will. It won't work. Be eloquent. Don't hit people. Argue with them, politely. Take a stand, but try not to be hurtful. Use words.

To put it another way: freedom creates civil society. Political compulsion destroys it.

Commenters please be kind, this was written in rather a hurry. Postings here have been a little thin lately, and I judged that something hasty, about and provoked by the thoughts and movies of Whit Stillman, would be better than nothing. I hope that at least some of you agree. For the kind of thing I would like to have managed, read the Julia Magnet piece.

My thanks to Tim Evans for drawing it to my attention with an email.

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Madsen Pirie has been having bother from his local planning officer:

The house designs were ready for approval, but the planning officer had one last point. Where I had red pantiles there had to be blue slates. I didn't like blue slates, and felt red clay tiles fitted the design better. No, I was told. Blue slate gives a much better vista with the next house. The next house was some way away, and only from half-way up a tree 500 yards away could one see 'a vista' through the obscuring foliage. Furthermore, I added, most of the houses in the village had red pantiles. No, came the reply, blue slate was called for.

I found that the planning officer did not have the power to require blue slate. I wrote back indicating this, and saying that this was a question of taste. Since it was my house and my money, it was going to be my taste. Back came a letter. True, she did not have the power to insist, but she 'strongly recommended' blue slate. I wonder how many people even question the powers which government has conferred upon these pocket Hitlers to interfere in such detail in our lives. Had it not been for a chance remark by my builder, I doubt if I would have checked up.

The pernicious aspect of this planning officer's behaviour was not just that she had the power to insist on all manner of things which she should have had no power to even influence, but that she also used her actual powers to suggest that she possessed other powers as well, which means that in a sense she really does possess these other powers too. Not many people would have been as cussed about his legal rights as Madsen Pirie was. And as Madsen himself asks, how many others even question where the legal line really does lie?

It would be interesting to know if, and if so, just at what stage in all this to-ing-and fro-ing, this lady planner found out who, as it were, she was dealing with.

The point is that having fights with people like this planning officer count twice if you are someone like Madsen Pirie, once for the advantage gained by winning, and then again for the experience that can be talked about, written about, ideologised about, and of course now that there is an Adam Smith Institute Blog, blogged about. Nothing like a good juicy fight with a real live state bureaucrat to enliven a blog devoted to denouncing state bureaucracy, is there? So, you square up to a person like Madsen Pirie, in a matter like this, at your peril.

Lesser personages, on the other hand, are far easier to subject to "recommendations".

And that's hardly to mention the powers that this lady does now legally possess, even over the likes of Madsen Pirie, and over anybody else begging for permission to build something on what is supposedly their own property, within her domain.

So, even though Madsen won his particular little pantile battle, this is still a very nasty war and not one that our side is anywhere near to winning.

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From Dodgeblogium, to Harry's Place, to this, from today's Observer:

Not the least of the casualties of the Iraq war is the death of anti-fascism. Patriots could oppose Bush and Blair by saying that it wasn't in Britain's interests to follow America. Liberals could put the UN first and insist that the United States proved its claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the court of world opinion. Adherents to both perspectives were free to tell fascism's victims, 'We're sorry to leave you under a tyranny and realise that many more of you will die, but that's your problem.'

The Left, which has been formally committed to the Enlightenment ideal of universal freedom for two centuries, couldn't bring itself to be as honest. Instead millions abandoned their comrades in Iraq and engaged in mass evasion. If you think that it was asking too much to expect it to listen to people in Iraq when they said there was no other way of ending 35 years of oppression, consider the sequel. Years after the war, the Kurdish survivors of genocide and groups from communists through to conventional democrats had the right to expect fraternal support against the insurgency by the remnants of the Baath Party. They are being met with indifference or active hostility because they have committed the unforgivable sin of cooperating with the Americans. For the first time in its history the Left has nothing to say to the victims of fascism.

Or, as I recall Mark Steyn putting it in a recent piece, the left now echoes Cold War anti-Communist and pro-any-other-anti-Communist USA in saying: "Saddam Hussein may be a son-of-a-bitch but he's our son-of-a-bitch."

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"Good evening, this is the news from the BBC, 25th December 2010. Several arrests were made today after a dawn raid on an illegal Christmas celebration in Hertfordshire. Acting on a tip-off, armed officers swooped on the residential premises where they found a secret grotto, a fully-decorated Christmas Tree and up to two dozen suspects unwrapping gifts and singing carols. The police also recovered large quantities of contraband including a plate of mince pies, a string of fairy lights, a whole stuffed turkey and a sackful of toys.

The raid came as a part of 'Operation Tolerance' which is designed to curb the alarming spread of Christmas-crimes in the community."

That's a joke, right? Ridiculous? Alarmist? Wildly over-the-top? Gross exaggeration? Undue pessimism? Perhaps.

A church has been told that it cannot publicise its Christmas services on a community notice board to avoid offending other religions.

The Church of England may be the established faith of the United Kingdom. But Buckinghamshire county council regards it as a "religious preference group" and the ban was upheld yesterday.

A spokesman for the Tory-controlled council confirmed the distinction, explaining that because the service contained Christian prayers it was against policy.

Margaret Dewar, who is responsible for the council libraries, said: "The aim of the policy is to be inclusive and to respect the religious diversity of Buckinghamshire."

Peter Mussett, the council's community development librarian, said his member of staff was right not to display the poster.

"We have a multi-faith community and passions can be inflamed by religious issues," he said. "We don't want to cause offence to anyone."

Well, they managed to offend me.

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As Brian Micklethwait recently observed:

When a government starts to slide seriously into the dustbin of history, the very things which it tries to do to halt the slide become part of the slide.

He was referring to Her Majesty's Government's rather comical attempt to shore up its plummeting popularity by launching a 'Big Conversation' and, for it is worth, I think he is right.

But does this formula have wider applications? If the answer to that question is 'yes' then perhaps it can be applied to the democratic process itself:

A public debate on lowering the voting age from 18 to 16 has been called for by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer.

A lower voting age would encourage more young people to become involved in politics, he told the Observer paper.

The Electoral Commission, which advises ministers on how elections can be modernised, began consulting on the voting age in the summer following concern over falling turnouts among young voters.

I can entirely understand why the idea of lowering the voting age to 16 (at present it is 18) should have a certain appeal among the political classes. By every standard that can actually be measured, democratic politics is in steady decline. The membership roles of all main political parties are now so low that corporate donations are the only thing saving them from bankruptcy and voter turnout in elections is dropping year on year.

It is probably to early to pronounce that democracy is in crisis. It is not. Well, not yet. But there is now a sufficiently large block of public indifference to send a shudder down the spines of not just politicians but also the professional classes whose wealth and status is entirely dependent on state activism.

The threat of a creeping but inexorable loss of legitimacy has prompted calls for 'something to be done'. In the past few years there has been much chundering about making voting complusory. But the trouble with that is that it may, overnight, turn a large block of public indifference into a large block of civil disobedience and that will only make things worse. So, extending the franchise is probably their safest bet.

I am against it, of course. People of all ages tend to vote for three things: more government, more entitlements and more laws. There is no reason to suppose that younger voters will somehow buck this trend. Nor is this merely my customarily gloomy nature at work, it is an analysis borne out by history. From the 19th Century onwards the growth of the welfare/regulatory state has steadily tacked upwards on the same line that marks the growth of enfranchisement. Since governments must respond to the wishes and aspirations of those that elect them, the former will tend to follow the latter.

But if the voting age is going to be lowered then it will be lowered regardless of whether I approve or not. The real question is whether is will achieve its stated aims. Supporters of the lower voting age are hoping that giving 16 year-olds ther right to vote will enable them to express themselves, ignite their imaginations and re-quicken the democratic process.

Well, who knows? Maybe that will be the case. But it seems to me that the opposite effect is just as likely. Namely, that the steps taken to reverse the slide of democratic legitimacy just become a part of that slide as the teenyvoters stay away in droves, thus converting a nagging concern into a slough of despond.

And where do we go from there? Good question.

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Why are governments so deeply concerned to protect us all from pornography? Simple. To protect us from it properly, they have to watch it. Protecting us from savage debt collectors is not nearly so entertaining, so they don't bother with that, even though the kind of savagery that can involve is much closer to being their real business.

Canadian civil servants have been condemned for inspecting sex shops and adult cinemas while apparently ignoring a flood of consumer complaints.

Ontario's provincial auditor says the Ministry of Consumer and Business Services officials have carried out almost 1,600 inspections of adult video retail stores after claiming to have received eight complaints - none in writing.

Those inspections involved checking whether the stores had valid licences "and were selling adult videos only with proper stickers indicating their ratings," the report states.

In the same time there were about 4,000 complaints and inquiries related to debt collectors last year, including 800 written, formal complaints.

Despite the avalanche, it's claimed the ministry carried out only 10 inspections. Similarly, almost 2,000 complaints about motor vehicle repairs prompted just six inspections.

Assistant provincial auditor Jim McCarter has described the situation as "pretty weird", saying he wasn't sure whether inspectors were in fact screening porn. "My understanding is that is not a primary part of their job," said McCarter

As usual, Dave Barry gets to the stories that matter, and I pick out some of the ones that are serious as well as funny for Samizdata. And he has quite a few of those, let me tell you.

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Last night I attended the Adam Smith Institute Christmas Party, and I was once again struck by what seems to me to be a major fact of modern social life, and a major difference between the times we now live in and the times in which people lived in earlier times, say two or three hundred years ago.

Present at the party were some hundred or more people, ranging from posh and clever schoolgirls enticed only a few hours earlier with the promise of free food and a rest from schoolwork, to opposition front benchers, and assorted policy wonks, friends of the ASI of extremely variable wealth, and of course a decent sprinkling of bloggers, ditto. And what I noticed, again, was that when you are in a gathering like this, it is impossible to tell at a glance how grand the person you are talking to is, unless you happen already to know.

Take the nice chap I found myself talking to. Fifty-ish, matching jacket and trousers (that's pants if you're American), educated somewhere, you know, good. Pleasant, a job being Something in the City which I didn't quite hear properly because the din was a bit loud and nuances got lost. And as I said to the man himself in my bonharmonious liven-up-the-party way, I simply had no idea how important a chap he might be. Dressed like that, I said, you could by anything from a wage slave to a billionaire, from a failing journalist to a major media player, from a pathetic wannabe politician to a Bilderberg Commissioner. I wasn't that eloquent, but that was my point, and he got it well enough and with no offence meant or taken. Indeed, he amplified the point, by saying that me being dressed as I was (vomit coloured corduroy jacket, red cardigan, no tie, black corduroy trousers with safety pins to keep the improvised turn-ups turned up), I too could be anyone or anything. He reminisced about the various ultra-grand personages he had met in his time who dressed in a similarly down-market way.

The big immediately visible social gulf, now, it seems to me, is the one at the lower end of society, between those who are just about clinging on, and those who have fallen off the social edge into the untermenchen class. Dressing as I do, in a socially concerned manner (i.e. badly), I get a lot of attention from the street begging variant of these people, and I can tell at once what sort of person I'm dealing with. I don't know this person. Certainly not. But I do know exactly which side of the great divide he or she is on, and he or she is on the wrong side of it. Sorry. No.

Two or three centuries ago, I'm guessing, when even averagely nice clothes were about as cheap as an averagely nice house might be today, things were very different. Social nuances all up and down the tree were more visible, and the people at the top who could simply have the best, all day and every day, damn the cost, stuck out way above everyone else. Being one of the elite who could have the absolute best clothing there was were the ones whom you could in those days spot most easily. And the gap between the top people and the rest was the one that was most obvious.

Maybe it's just that I am personally very bad at spotting the nuances of people's clothing and appearance, and maybe that's all part of why I choose to operate in a social milieu (the intellectual end of politics) which is relatively indifferent to how you dress (so long as there is no actual vomit on your clothes). Maybe in other settings the matter of what brand your shirt is, how well your suit fits, how well your last bout of plastic surgery went, etc. etc., are all very visible-at-a-glance. And, people whom I've floated this theory at have argued that in my part of London, if you aren't fairly high off the bottom of the social ladder, your only business in town would be begging, hence what I think of as a huge social cleavage. London SW1 creates the illusion of a social gulf between the nearly bottom and very bottom of society.

But I sincerely don't think this is true. I don't think my belief in this particular piece of sociology is a mere trick of my neighbourhood, or a defect in my own personal social antennae. After all, I do know the difference, at once, between the people at the very bottom, and everyone above them. That I can see. So, if I can't tell the difference between a super-market manager and Rupert Murdoch, that's because this difference is genuinely much harder to spot.

Would you know who Steven Spielberg 'is', if you didn't recognise him, just by looking at the guy at one of his parties? Aren't those jeans pretty much like the ones you and I wear?

And actually, my part of London, which either is or is right next to Pimlico depending on how you define Pimlico (Pimlico by any definition being where I do most of my regular shopping), is a 'real' enough area, by which I mean that it contains many rather poor, but very hard-working and respectable people, working away in their shops and their offices (many of whom, I surmise, are not nearly as poor as they choose to seem). There are lots of council estates around here, with their quota of struggling single mums. And almost all of these people are on the good side of the social barrier I'm talking about. For many, I'm sure it's one hell of a battle, but they manage it. They wash every day. They have an address. They have TVs and phones. Most of them work. They pay their bills, and whenever they want to look smart they can manage that, for the price of a few new CDs.

And in among them, crouching in the boarded-up doorways and in the otherwise meaningless little triangles and nooks of space created by modern architecture, are to be seen the Miserables, who do not wash, who do not pay bills, who do not have fixed abodes, and who absolutely do not look smart, no matter how hard they may be trying on any particular day.

These Miserables are made even more miserable by the fact that, unlike in former times, they don't even have weight of numbers on their side. In the nineteenth century, entire social philosophies were erected on top of the worry about what might happen if the Miserables ever got really, really angry. Now, if our modern Miserables get angry, which individually they do quite frequently (a lot more than in the past I should guess), they merely get a talking-to from sympathetic but firm police persons. In the past the luckier people were scared of Miserable anger, so if the Miserables did get angry they'd be clubbed back into subservience by riot police. But now, the combined anger of the Miserables counts for nothing and the Miserables know it, which is why we feel no need to see the police hurting them any more than they are hurt in the normal course of their lives.

One conceptual clarification here: noting the existence of this crucial social line between this way of life and that one is absolutely not the same as saying that no one ever crosses it. I'm not saying that. People fall below the line, and they climb above it, and they climb back above it. The point is: it's a line. It takes a hell of an effort to cross upwards and then to stay above, but it can be done and it is done, a lot. Social stratification and social mobility are two different things. I recall from my sociology studies that Britain has always had and still has a lot of both, and the social mobility probably makes us more aware of social gradationss, on account of us moving up and down through them and past them, than we'd be in a society with less social mobility.

Another clarification: I'm not saying that all the social gradations within the Great Washed are now of no consequence, that the differences between me and Rupert Murdoch doesn't matter. Far from it. They matter a hell of a lot, once you find out about them. I am merely saying that they are not things we can now tell from each other at a glance.

Faced with this circumstance, the Marxists have had a dilemma. Marxism used to depend on the Miserables outnumbering the Toffs at the top, but this doesn't happen any more. The most visible upper class is the majority. The most visible lower class is a minority. So, having dumped their reliance on the old Working Class, many ex- or post- or neo-Marxists have tried instead to stitch together a new coalition of the Miserable, mostly involving the more put-upon of the ethnic minorities. But alas for the Marxists, the ethnic minorities are just as anxious to avoid Miserable status as white people are, and are just as capable of doing so. One of the reasons why multi-culturalism bothers me rather less than it seems to bother many others in my part of the political landscape is that to me, the enormous anti-centrifugal gravitational pressures on everyone – regardless of race, colour or creed – to join the Respectable Mono-Culture are so massively strong that they can over-ride any amount of Marxist and post-Marxist mischief-making.

Other left-inclined strategists, including not a few former hardline Marxists by the way, have simply made the jump. A lot of the story of New Labour is the realisation that they had to let the Miserables go hang, and concentrate all of their electoral and propaganda efforts on the Great Washed.

(This is one of the many strands that has been woven into that complex thing know as Political Correctness. PC means lefty memes being divided up and spread separately among a class traditionally unimpressed by leftism in any form.)

Before backing off and letting commenters pick up whatever threads of argument they are inclined to pick up from all of this, let me mention one other little social tit-bit straw in the wind which I found out about in connection with my Transport Blog activities. On TV a week or two ago, they did a bit about some new British bus companies which are getting into their stride, which do two things. First: they charge very, very little for their tickets. But second, and in apparent defiance of this first policy: they insist that all tickets much be purchased over the internet.

The obvious explanation, and I'm sure the public one, for this policy is that this is more efficient. The driver doesn't have to bother with messing about with change, etc. etc. But I wonder if there might also be something else even more important than mere efficiency going on here. If you can only buy on the internet, that keeps out the Miserables. At present, travelling by bus in Britain isn't that weird and scary, probably because it's not that cheap, all things considered, the way it is the USA. But if in Britain it now does get seriously cheap, how do you then keep out the Miserables? Answer, by making it an internet only deal. None of this is spelt out in any of the bus sales chat, which is partly why this social exclusion point never occurred to me while I was writing my original posting about these companies. I only got to thinking about it in a subsequent comment. But I think it's a thought deserving of somewhat more prominence than that.

In the USA, as I say, cheap bus services, especially cheap inter-city bus services, are famously the haunt of weird people, at any rate if the movies and TV are anything to go by. Inter-city bus stations are famously the places where TV detectives trawl the lower depths of society, and learn of the most gruesome yet socially insignificant crimes. Buses and Miserables go together, in other words. As a result, the Great Washed are inclined to shun buses, and to pay extra to go by train or even air. How do you make Michelle Pfeiffer in Frankie and Johnny look like a seriously miserable sympathy case whose life is going nowhere, while still having her look like Michelle Pfeiffer? – not easy, God knows. Answer: stick her in a long-distance bus for the opening credits. Any American woman who has to endure this ordeal is in trouble. In fact it occurs to me that this movie is all about living just above the Big Drop, so to speak. And in Johnny's (Al Pacino's) case it's all about climbing back up again after you have suffered the Big Drop – see above re social mobility.

Final final thought. I love the Heinecken TV adverts we have in Britain just now which imply that asking for lager which is not Heinecken will, in Holland, get you tossed out of respectable majority of Dutch society and into the Dutch Underclass. ("Weirdo!") You can see that lager sellers would have a, er, demographic problem not unlike the problems faced by the sellers of extremely cheap inter-city bus services. This advert tackles this problem head on. Clever.

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To me it is not a new idea, but it is a good idea, the one that says that the rich splash out now for what they think of as luxuries, but that some of these luxuries are actually emerging necessities, which will in due course be available to all at a fraction of the first prices paid by the rich. Sandra Tsing Loh is reviewing a couple of books for The Atlantic on line on these kinds of themes:

To consider "luxury" always a bad thing, Twitchell argues, is simply to ignore history.

"Almost without fail, one generation's indulgence becomes the next generation's necessity. Think buttons, window glass, rugs, fermented juice, the color purple, door handles, lace, enamel, candles, pillows, mirrors, combs, umbrellas."

Well said, Twitchell. Why, yesterday I even bought a comb myself. For 40p. It was a rather ugly brown colour. I would have preferred purple.

Nail clippers and shorts and socks were once a luxury, and don't forget the least frivolous "indulgence" of all: indoor plumbing. In a way, the rich provide society with a valuable service, because they pay the "high first costs" of emerging technology. "Sure, the 'upfronters' get HDTV, digital cameras, laser eye surgery, Palm Pilots ... They also get first crack at Edsels, the Betamax, eight-track stereo, and Corfam shoes."

I'm not sure about Palm Pilots. Aren't they becoming rather passé, unless you think of them as part of the ongoing attempt to perfect the portable phone? And what are Corfam shoes?

Also: into which box will history put blogging? Is blogging window glass or Betamax, nail clippers or … Corfam shoes?

Thanks to Arts & Letters Daily for the link. For me Arts & Letters Daily used to be a luxury, but it has become a necessity.

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I don't know why I yesterday took a random dip into Stephen R. Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, but I did, and I came across the following striking passage about the psychologist Victor Frankl. I think it was just coincidence that Frankl got a mention in one of the comments on this, although having chanced upon this passage, maybe that made me really notice it.

Anyway, here it is:

Frankl was a determinist raised in the tradition of Freudian psychology, which postulates that whatever happens to you as a child shapes your character and personality and basically governs your whole life. The limits and parameters of your life are set, and, basically, you can't do much about it.

Frankl was also a psychiatrist and a Jew. He was imprisoned in the death camps of Nazi Germany, where he experienced things that were so repugnant to our sense of decency that we shudder to even repeat them.

His parents, his brother, and his wife died in the camps or were sent to the gas ovens. Except for his sister, his entire family perished. Frankl himself suffered torture and innumerable indignities, never knowing from one moment to the next if his path would lead to the ovens or if he would be among the "saved" who would remove the bodies or shovel out the ashes of those so fated.

One day, naked and alone in a small room, he began to become aware of what he later called "the last of the human freedoms" – the freedom his Nazi captors could not take away. They could control his entire environment, they could do what they wanted to his body, but Victor Frankl himself was a self-aware being who could look as an observer at his very involvement. His basic identity was intact. He could decide within himself how all of this was going to affect him. Between what happened to him, or the stimulus, and his response to it, was his freedom or power to choose that response.

In the midst of his experiences, Frankl would project himself into different circumstances, such as lecturing to his students after his release from the death camps. He would describe himself in the classroom, in his mind's eye, and give his students the lessons he was learning during his very torture.

Through a series of such disciplines – mental, emotional, and moral, principally using memory and imagination – he exercised his small, embryonic freedom until it grew larger and larger, until he had more freedom than his Nazi captors. They had more liberty, more options to choose from in their environment; but he had more freedom, more internal power to exercise his options. He became an inspiration to those around him, even to some of the guards. He helped others find meaning in their suffering and dignity in their prison existence.

In the midst of the most degrading circumstances imaginable, Franki used the human endowment of self-awareness to discover a fundamental principle about the nature of man: Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.

My emboldenings are Covey's italics.

I'm sure I don't need to explain why I consider those paragraphs to be worthy of the attention of Samizdata readers.

But I have a question, relating to one particular matter raised by Covey, which is the very definite way he uses the words 'liberty' and 'freedom'. 'Liberty' he uses to denote external circumstances, while 'freedom' is more like an inner mental experience. Liberty is political and perhaps also economic. Freedom is psychological, even existential. So, are these regular usages that I have been unaware of all these years? (I confess – for I'm not proud of this and have always meant to sort it out in my mind some day – that I have tended to use these two words interchangeably.) Or is Covey unusual in knowing when to say freedom and when liberty? Or are others equally definite about the different meanings of these words, but in different ways to Covey?

As often with me here, comments are not merely welcome; they are positively invited, not to say solicited.

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There was a semi-interesting semi-comical article yesterday in the Guardian on the subject of happiness.

Propose a movement whose aim is to bottle happiness so it can be dispensed to one and all, saving humanity from a future of chronic misery, and you might expect at least a few people to roll their eyes. But, starting tomorrow, Britain's most prestigious scientific institution, the Royal Society, will host a meeting for some of the world's top psychologists who have done just that. Over two days, they will discuss "the science of wellbeing". Their aim is to find out why it is that some people's lives go so right. What is it that makes them happy and fulfilled, while others seem doomed to founder in misery, dissatisfaction and dejection?

Psychologists have immersed themselves in the study of misery, but have studied happiness a lot less. That was the message of a speech by Martin Seligman to the American Psychological Association in 1998, which set this happiness research bandwagon rolling. Simply: What makes people happy? Quick: find some happy people. Study them. How do they do it?

Optimism is one of the answers, and optimism, says Nick Baylis of Cambridge University, one of the organisers of this Royal Society meeting, can be learned. You can focus deliberately on the positive. Bad stuff? Put it out of your mind. Make a list of all your reasons to be cheerful!

So, the academic psychologists are finally admitting that all those tacky American pop psychology books about how to get ahead selling life insurance, with their positive mental attitudes and winning friends by influencing people (by, e.g. smiling, and listening to them and being cheerful), have been right for about the last hundred years and the academic psychologists wrong. The way to avoid misery is not to wallow in it, but to put it behind you. Surprise surprise.

Okay, but why do I write about this here? What has this to do with the Samizdata meta-context? My title will have already told you.

The great thing about capitalism is that it embraces success and forgets failure. It feeds solutions and starves problems. Does your new gizmo which was going to solve all the world's problems look like making a billion bucks? Great. Pile in with money and people and lab space, and make it work. Set up a website. Take happy photos of it. Tell the world. Work stupidly long hours and have the time of your life making it go. (You need only look at all this space business stuff that Dale Amon goes on about here for a perfect example of this attitude in action.)

Or does it actually not work? Okay forget it. Dump it. Lose it. No more money. No more wasted resources or chasing after historic costs. It was an answer to a huge problem was it? It needs (look out for that word) more money rather than less. Tough. It may need it but it can't have it. Learn what can be learned from the screw-up and move on. Put the money and the people who would be wasted on the thing to workon other stuff with a better chance.

Government, on the other hand … Well, you know what I'm going to say now. Simply read the collected bloggings of David Carr for how that works, and what it does to your happiness if that's all you spend your time looking at (although to be fair David does seem to have cheered himself up a bit lately by deliberately looking for good news as well as bad). Government feeds problems and starves solutions. It obsesses about people's miseries and failures and inadequacies, individual and collective, and throws infinite money at them. It purchases unhappiness, you might say, by taxing happiness. It redistributes the world's resources from happy stuff to miserable stuff.

This is why anti-capitalists tend to be so miserable, and why people like academic psychologists have tended to be anti-capitalists also. While they wallowed in neurosis and grief and failure, the world of capitalism was not just passing them by, it was actually serving up better answers to their precious problems than they were. While psychologists encouraged the unhappy to focus on their unhappiness, capitalism said: forget that, here's a job doing something that might work. That'll cheer you up.

And this is why, despite the atmosphere of wheel-rediscovery that this Royal Society meeting exudes, we should resist the temptation to sneer, and instead welcome the academic psychologists back into the sunlight, back to the part of the world where problems are either solved or put aside until the day comes when they can be solved, where the positive is celebrated and the negative is the only thing that people treat negatively.

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In the midst of a vast, arid desert of small-minded envy and zero-sum culture, there emerges a little oasis of cool, clear refreshing sanity:

The Swiss economy has faced hard times in the past few years. One canton, Schaffhausen, is doing something about it by changing its tax law to attract wealthy people. Beginning in January 2004, Schaffhausen will replace its system of increasing marginal tax rates on income with a system of degressive marginal rates. The cantonal tax rate will be set at just under 8 percent for income of SFr 100,000. It will rise to a peak of 11.5 percent for income between SFr 600,000 and SFr 800,000. Thereafter, the marginal rate declines with each incremental chunk of income: 10 percent at SFr 1,300,000; 8 percent at SFr 3,000,000; and just over 6 percent for income more than SFr 10,000,000. This is a true incentive-based tax system—the larger one's income, the lower one's marginal rate.

Seems that the penny (or the Franc) has dropped in one small corner of one small country. They have realised that penalising success is a pretty good way of guaranteeing failure.

Schaffhausen has its own legislative parliament, which contains eighty deputies representing all regions within the canton. Eight political parties compete for these seats. Evidently Schaffhausen's voters support a tax cut that gives the greatest benefits to the richest people. They believe that attracting wealthy individuals to reside in their midst is good for everyone.

And they are right.

[My thanks to Stephen Pollard for the link.]

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Inspired by the posting below about soundbites, Patrick Crozier has lashed up a list of attempted transport policy soundbites. Not all of them have quite the zip and zing that you are looking for in a soundbite. For example, I don't see this catching on:

Transport is not an unalloyed good.

"Unalloyed"?

Or this:

The chaos on Britain's railways is to a large extent the fault of the EU.

"To a large extent"? That sounds like John Major as enacted by a TV puppet.

But, as I said in a comment there, never mind. As soundbites they are mostly unfinished, but they're a definite start. Others can maybe get polishing.

And, as I have also already commented at Transport Blog, before realising that the thought might also be worth airing here, one of Patrick's suggestions may actually be ready to spread around. Here it is:

Safety is dangerous.

This little phrase may have been arrived at many times before (comments about that are of course very welcome), but I've not heard this exact combination of words before. I think it might be a winner.

First, it is short. Three familiar, easy-to-remember, easy-to-say words. Very important.

Second, it asserts an important truth, which is that an overzealous pursuit of safety, by (for instance) shutting down a pretty safe transport system in a vain and very expensive attempt to make it ever more safe can actually cost lives. The costs incurred (but hidden because spread around) can make everyone's lives a tiny bit more unsafe, and the alternative transport they use in the meantime might be a lot less safe. Shutting down railway systems after crashes, or grounding huge airplane fleets ditto, can kill, on the roads. And of course "safety is dangerous" has numerous applications besides and beyond transport.

But third, just as important, "safety is dangerous" has just the right degree of counter-intuitive outrageousness, such as will arouse interest and stir up debate. Because this soundbite is, literally speaking, untrue, it could cause opponents of the truth it flags up to get drawn into a stupid argument about its truth, and its unfairness. "It's not true!" "Ah but you're missing the point, what it says is true." Etc. etc., blah blah. The sense of outraged logic of the victims of the soundbite could be all part of the fun, and will cause TV interlocutors to keep on throwing this soundbite in their faces, simply because they hate it so. Like all good soundbites, it could supply a cushion for the lazy TV compere to fall back on.

Well, maybe. Most attempted soundbites are like newborn fish, doomed to die immediately. But maybe this one will prove to be a fish with legs, if you'll pardon the expression.

It could be that "safety is dangerous" needs more work done on it. Maybe it should read: "Safety is unsafe." Or maybe the even shorter: "Safety isn't." Personally I think that "Safety isn't" is too brutal towards the banal truth that safety, properly understood, is indeed safety. Also, the claim is too absolute. It isn't being claimed that "safety" is always unsafe. Just sometimes. You might have to change "safety is unsafe" to "safety can be unsafe" and then the word count starts to rise. ("Safety is to a definite extent unsafe.") "Safety is dangerous" is the best, I reckon.

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These simple truisms go a long way to explaining MP & blogger Tom Watson's support for passing laws regarding the use of fireworks. On his blog, and on this blog in our comments section, the Honourable Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East calls for more regulation and makes it clear that fireworks will simply be banned if that does not produce the desired effects. And yet when talking about an incident in which a woman was injured by some idiot throwing a firework he himself notes:

Granted the little thug that conducted this assault was breaking existing laws

…and then proceeds to ignore that fact from then on. I do not know Tom Watson personally but I heard him speak in Houses of Parliament and he seems both affable and reasonable for a politician. But as Brian Micklethwait's article today says regarding the 'problem' of obesity, it is only to be expected that a person whose salary depends on passing more laws to, well, always insist on passing more laws.

The United States, for all the many, varied and egregious flaws in that constitutional republic, has at least managed to some degree to place whole sections of civil society off-limits to the law making Tom Watson's of the world. For example free speech is largely protected against erosion in ways that have not proved to be the case in Britain with the advent of so called 'hate speech' laws.

In so many ways it is where the USA has managed to constrain regulatory democracy from intruding wherever vox populi wishes it to, and the resulting politicizations of social interactions that entails, that its vast economic power and admirable civil virtues spring. Similarly it is where the United States has departed from those principles (RICO, civil forfeiture, IRS reversal of burden of proof, etc.) that things have gone very badly wrong.

And therein lays the problem at the heart of modern democratic states: so much of society has been made amenable to literal force (i.e. political action) that it makes little difference in the long run who is in control of the democratic means of coercion, the end result for civil liberties and several ownership (including self-ownership) will be the same. Face it, in Britain there is little to choose between Tory Michael Howard and NuLabour David Blunkett when it comes to which of them has abridged more civil liberties whilst serving as Home Secretary. Likewise, Janet Reno may have presided over the mass murder of a bunch of wackos in Waco, Texas, but is anyone really going to claim John Ashcroft is not continuing the process of shredding the much vaunted Bill of Rights?

The problem is the whole meta-context of seeing as axiomatic that politics is always acceptable just so long as it gets the imprimatur from a plurality of the politically engaged. Until enough people are willing to look to the moral basis of a law and simply refuse to accept the legitimacy of laws just because they are laws, we will always have politicians singing their siren song for your votes to empower not you, but themselves, by offering to solve your every problem with more laws. It is not enough to just not vote for them, you must find innovative ways to not cooperate with them.

Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force.
Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
-George Washington

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Like some undead creature from a B-movie, the festering Political Compass refuses to lie down and die.

I have not changed my views of this daft test one jot. Hand me another sharpened stake.

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I do believe that Tom Watson was the first serving Member of Parliament to set up a blog. If that is the case then he deserves to be congratulated for his initiative and originality.

However, his latest project, of which he appears most proud, is rather less praiseworthy for it appears that Mr.Watson has been instrumental in passing new laws on the sale and use of fireworks:

West Bromwich East MP Tom Watson, who helped push the new law through the House of Commons, said today: "While these new powers will not be in force for this year’s fireworks season, I’m delighted and also relieved that the Government is so determined to come down hard on the misuse of fireworks.

My worry when the Fireworks Act became law was that it could take years for the Government to put the powers into practice. The fact that the zero tolerance approach will come into force as early as next month is a great victory for the thousands of people in Sandwell who have sent in letters and signed petitions calling for a crackdown.

They are sick and tired of the misery and disturbance caused by fireworks going off late at night in the early hours. They are sick and tired of fireworks being used as toys and even weapons by teenagers. And they are sick and tired of fireworks so loud that their neighbourhood often resembles a warzone.

The time has come for this to stop. We will now have the powers to deal with the problem and I hope that the police and local authorities will make full use of them."

As best as I can tell, the thrust of the new regulations is to prohibit sales of fireworks to people under the age of 18 and to make it a criminal offence to set off fireworks late at night. On the face of it, they are not wildly unreasonable measures. There are already all manner of restrictions on the retail capacity of minors and setting off fireworks in the wee small hours is a genuine nuisance for people who are trying to get a decent night's sleep.

But the question here is not so much 'what' as 'why'?

It would be churlish to try to pretend that fireworks are always harmless. They are, after all, incendiaries or low-grade explosives the misuse of which can and does spell danger. However, there are already long-established laws which can and should be invoked to deal with these eventualities, such as the laws against breach of the peace, assault, arson and criminal damage.

If, as Mr.Watson avers, unruly teenagers are using fireworks as weapons, then the problem is not a lack of law but a notable and palpable lack of enforcement. If the police are either unable or unwilling to enforce the laws that already exist then why does Mr.Watson or anybody else assume that they will suddenly spring into action to enforce new ones? The problem is not that the state has 'come down hard on misuse' but, rather, that the state's agents clearly cannot be bothered to 'come down' to any measurable degree at all.

I therefore predict that the new regime of which Mr.Watson is so proud will make not a jot of difference. The thugs who terrorise their elderly neighbours with firecrackers will simply carry on regardless and that will cause a whole new round of hand-wringing and cries of 'something must be done'. Sadly, it will add impetus to the already vocal lobby demanding the nationalisation of fireworks or their outright prohibition. As with firearms, rather than bring the full force of the law to bear on those who misuse, it is easier to simply abolish all use. This is another 'thin end of the wedge'. Not because it achieves the desired objective but because it won't.

To be fair to Mr.Watson he is far from alone in believing that he has struck a blow for the little guy. It is axiomatic in Britain today that lawlessness can only be cured by passing more laws. It is not so much a policy as an article of faith. Indeed, there is an air of 'moral crusade' in the zeal of Mr.Watson and his supporters.

There can be little argument that anti-social behaviour and malevolence can and does cause fear and anguish but the way to curb it is to punish it and punish it hard. The pusillanimous alternative of trying to cram the whole polity into a legislative straightjacket enables politicians like Mr.Watson to bask in the warm glow of self-righteousness but leaves law-abiding people still at the mercy of the obnoxious hoodlums who do not give a damn.

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Increasingly, in my discussions about public policy matters, I find myself advancing the apparently novel notion that:

You tend to get more of what you reward, and less of what you punish.

When discussing my views with devotees of various social welfare schemes, this idea is met with reactions ranging from blank incomprehension to spitting rage at my cold-heartedness. Yet, to me, it seems the most self-evident common sense.

Most social welfare schemes reward certain behaviors, and almost invariably result in an increase in those behaviors.

Two examples (more can doubtless be supplied by the commentariat):

1. One of the centerpieces of the expansion of the welfare state was payments to single mothers, often on a piecework basis (the more babies, the more bucks). Lo and behold, an enormous increase in single motherhood ensued.

2. Wisconsin recently adopted a new health insurance scheme for the uninsured working poor. As a result, many employers have dropped their insurance benefits, reasoning that their employees can get coverage from the state, so why should they pay for it? Effectively, the new scheme removes the competitive disadvantage of employers who did not offer insurance, thus rewarding such employers and increasing their number.

Yet proponents of these social welfare schemes never cease to be amazed that their schemes do not seem to be alleviating the "problem" they are supposed to address, and indeed the problem often grows worse! Leading to a demand for more of the subsidies that feed the problem, of course.

On the flip side, I recently saw how the punishment meted out by the regulatory state gives predictable results. The regulatory state, of course, punishes economic activity by adding to its cost and by adding the risk of enforcement action.

The repair and service department at the Subaru dealership in downtown Madison is incredibly decrepit and run down, even though Subarus sell like hotcakes in Madison and the place is always busy. I mentioned this to the manager, and he told me that they had not done any work on the place in many years, even though it cost them business and made it hard to keep good workers. Reason was, any renovation would trigger a raft of regulations that would require environmental testing, remediation, handicap access, sound reduction, etc. ad nauseum, which would cost more than the dealership is worth.

Taxation, of course, is another punishment meted out by the state, again with predictable results. It is not unusual to hear young people say that one of the reasons they don't get married is because, under the US tax code, their tax burden will go up if they do. Examples, I am sure, can be multiplied ad infinitum.

The odd thing is, through the regulatory and welfare states, we seem to be subsidizing the behaviors that we don't want, and punishing the behaviors we do want. The increase in (subsidized) irresponsibility, and the decrease in (penalized) productivity, may be unintended, but are hardly unforeseeable, and indeed are inevitable.

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Philip Chaston is a regular contributor to the Airstrip One blog. He believes that the current political climate in Britain presents an exciting and unique opportunity.

Last Monday I went to the University of London Union to watch a concert given by the band British Sea Power. With me were a couple of friends, a carpenter and a handyman from South London. Just prior to the gig, I had been assailed by their voluble and bitter complaints while we downed some pre-concert alocohol in the Toucan Bar which is just around the corner from Soho Square in Central London.

The level of dissatisfaction with the government and the public services in London and the South East has risen over the last few years as people have seen their taxes rise without any perceived improvement in public services. This has been linked to increasing concern over levels of immigration. As my friend said, "I'm going to vote BNP in protest. Who else can I vote for?"

Anecdotal evidence can be indicative of changes in the structure of British politics changes that will provide more opportunities for libertarian ideas to gain popularity and influence. The first question would be: why does this opportunity arise now rather than back in the 1970s when there was a far greater crisis in the role of the state and its effect upon individual lives. My answer would be that the crisis of the 1970s revolved around the issue of governance, between the trade unions and the Labour Party an issue that never brought the role of the state itself into disrepute.

Libertarians in the 1970s could console themselves with the rise of the New Right under Margaret Thatcher in the economic sphere but witnessed the rebirth of economic freedom alongside a strengthening of the state. The concept of establishing a libertarian political party was stillborn as the two party system prevented third forces from "breaking the mould" as the SDP (a group of social democrats who broke away from the Labour Party) proved with its costly failures in the radical centre. From what little I know of the era, libertarian strategies of starting the long march through existing institutions and propagandising their ideas proved more influential than playing at party politics. These have proved successful in propagating a receptive atmosphere for libertarianism (in all its variations) with sympathetic quarters and camp followers in all three of the main political parties.

For the first time since the 1970s, the level of dissatisfaction and disillusionment with Parliament has risen to extraordinary levels, characterised by low turnout and shrinking political movements. Unlike that decade, this takes place against a background of economic stability and New Labour hegemony. The lack of economic crisis or volatility, so dear to the memories of many of us, and the collapse of the Tories has opened up the question for many people: what else?

My friends were aware that their taxes were being squandered, that the present incumbents had no answer to the problems of transport, health or education and they were receptive to new ideas. Unlike the crisis over the trade union movement, the present problems arise from the state delivery of services and there is a realisation amongst many that provision by the state is inefficient and incompetent.

But as the English electorate have pointed out: for them, there is no alternative to the state-socialist BNP (the self-styled "Voice of the Silent Majority") as a protest vote, unless they are Green or on the far left supporting the Socialist Alliance.

This is not a call to establish a libertarian political party. It is merely an article demonstrating that an overt political channel may have opened up for spreading this meta-narrative: an additional strategy to be deployed in the armoury of ideas and institutions.

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This is from an email Glenn Reynolds received concerning his post on the Afghan beauty contestant:

I have greatly enjoyed your blog and read it daily, but at times such entries are rather telling. I am neither a fundamentalist Christian or Muslim, but sometimes your lack of any semblance of discernment about anything other than pragmatic economics or foreign policy is appalling.

Mr. Reynolds, is there anything other than a particular brand of conservative politics that informs your world view? What is it that informs your understanding of what it good, true, and beautiful? Are goodness, truth, and beauty even a part of your world view? From whence comes your sense of ethics or morality? Have you ever asked yourself these questions?

[emphasis mine :K.]

One would think that any 'daily' InstaPundit reader would know not only that Glenn is a libertarian, but that his 'particular brand of libertarian politics' is approached from the left. But that is not the case here. Nor, experience tells me, is it in many, many others.

This is why it is important, not only that we keep discussion of such arcane matters as n-dimensional Nolan Charts strictly 'in house', but we endeavor to create an even simpler model than the original to annunciate our distinct perspective. As most people, even those who consider themselves 'intelligent', see a cartesian grid and mumble "oh, math," as their eyes glaze over like Homer Simpson, and in their mind's eye, the chart we are showing them turns into a freshly-cut 9"x9" tray of fudge brownies.

More on this later.

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Many of you know me already. As I have been haunting the blogosphere for the last three years through comments, emails, and guest articles. Those of you that do not will in due time, so I will skip the typical bio/Curriculum Vitae stuff. I was going to post a Micklethwaitian tale of my 50 mile journey of Southern California's quite righteously maligned public transit system to Brian Linse’s blogger bash, where I met Perry & Adriana face-to-face for the first time. But that got a bit longish for a forum such as this, so I guess I will have to save it for a chapter in my memoirs.

One of the subjects which has piqued my fancy recently is the concept of N-dimensional variants on the classic Nolan chart. This was initiated a few weeks ago when I read this TCS article by Eugene Miller, on a link from Virginia Postrel. In it Miller attempts, quite successfully, to typify political philosophies on a Nolanesce grid – embrace of change forming one axis, and the need for control over change forming the other.

click for larger image

It occurred to me that one could map this function on top of the typical Nolan chart by equating 'liberty' with 'change'. Further analysis led me to sumise that this conjunction of the two concepts was better expressed in differentials. But, for the purposes of both brevity and accessibility, we will spare that dissertation for another day.

Further indulgence of my curiosity led me to this article by Kelley L. Ross. Therein, Ross expands upon the basic Nolan chart with another dimension of what form of government safeguards what liberties (or not). It’s an interesting read. But the average Samizdata.net reader would likely find the first ten pages review, and should skip right to Liberties in Three Dimensions. Although, this little graphic, concerning the US Supreme Court is rather interesting:

click for larger image

The final seven or so pages constitute the meat of the article, where he makes the point that democracy is no guarantor of liberty. In it, he makes an interesting and rather open-ended point with this:

A Republican form was envisioned by people like James Madison, who wished to impose practical, and not just theoretical limits on government by the use of the Separation of Powers and a system of Checks and Balances. This worked well enough but was ultimately undermined by one grave oversight: The United States Constitution provided no mechanism for its own enforcement. That task was soon taken up by the Supreme Court, but Thomas Jefferson realized that the Supreme Court, as a part of the federal government, could not be trusted to faithfully maintain the limits to the power of the federal government itself: "How can we expect impartial decision between the General government, of which they are themselves so eminent a part, and an individual State, from which they have nothing to hope or fear?"

[Autobiography]

In the end, especially during the Civil War, World War I, the New Deal, and the Sixties, the Supreme Court began to concede extra-Constitutional powers to the federal government simply on the principle that it wanted them. The only mechanism that existed to check the failures of the Court was the torturous avenue of Constitutional Amendment, politically impossible when so many people had begun to believe that unlimited power for the federal government was actually a good thing. And then again, it is hard to know how a newer version of the 10th Amendment could be more plainly worded than the old one. A new Amendment would have to descend to the ignoble level of contradicting specific Supreme Court pronouncements that the original Amendment was simply a "tautology" or "truism" that wasn't really meant to limit federal power. (See Two Logical Errors in Constitutional Jurisprudence.) An effectively updated Constitution would have to address all the sophistry and dishonesty that was used to undermine the original one, besides providing for such additional checks and balances as would abolish the dictatorial powers of the Court.

Indeed, how does one establish practical limitations on power within a republic? Jefferson's answer was to have an armed revolution every twenty years or so. Serious talk of that today will get you twenty years or so behind bars.

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Glenn Reynolds has an interesting article at his other blog about breaking the law, and the simultaneous growth and loss of legitimacy of the regulatory state.

There are too many laws — many of them contradictory or obscure — for any person to actually avoid breaking the law completely. (My Criminal Law professor, when I was a law student, announced to us that we were all felons on the first day of class. There were too many felonies on the books for us not to be: Oral sex in Georgia? Oops!) And given that many laws are dumb, actually following all of them would probably bring society to a standstill, just as Air Traffic Controllers and pilots can make air travel grind to a halt by meticulously following every safety rule without exception.

Stop and think about that for a minute. What does it say about a society, when strict adherence to its laws would be an unmitigated disaster?

The other problem is that law is like anything else: when the supply outstrips the demand, its value falls. If law were restricted to things like rape, robbery, and murder, its prestige would be higher. When we make felonies out of trivial crimes, though, the law loses prestige. As the old bumper stickers about the 55 mile-per-hour speed limit used to say: “It’s not a good idea. It’s just the law.”

Instawisdom, in my book.

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Almost anything you say about how ideas spread and eventually get accepted and acted upon is liable to be (a) true, but (b) over-simplified, because the whole truth about how ideas spread and get acted upon is far, far too complicated ever to keep complete track of. Where the definite falsehood creeps in is when people say, or more commonly imply through the other things that they say, that ideas can only spread in this way or that way, and that all the other ways they can spread don't count for anything.

There is one such implied falsehood which we at Samizdata, for humiliatingly obvious reasons, are likely to be particularly interested in and cheered up by contesting. This is the idea that what matters when it comes to spreading ideas is sheer weight of numbers. It's the idea that getting some other idea to catch on and be acted upon is a question of assembling a sufficiently huge number of people who believe this idea to be true or good or appealing, and then for this vast throng of supporting people to prevail against the other almost equally vast (but not quite) throng of people who believe the opposite.

Clearly, as a partial description about how some ideas spread, at some times and in some places, this kind of thing can definitely happen. Political elections are often just like this. This vast throng of humanity votes for this idea, that throng votes for that idea, and the winners are the ones who appeal to the biggest throng.

But as a complete description of how ideas spread this picture is false. Most things, after all, are not decided by political elections. For example, I would say that when historians look back on our era, they will say that the development of the Internet was a huge historical event, up there with the first printed bibles in local languages, or with the development of the railways or of the motor car. Yet neither the internet, nor printing, nor railways, nor motor cars were any of them set in motion merely by political electorates, and nor, once they had got underway, were any political electorates ever invited to vote against them.

The weight-of-numbers model is even seriously false when it comes to understanding the full story of most political elections. Yes, elections decide who will occupy various political offices, and what will be written about in newspaper editorials for the next few years. But these elections seldom decide very much about what actually gets done from these offices. Instead, democratic true believers (the ones who really do believe that absolutely everything should be decided with a head count) constantly rage at how "undemocratic" democracy typically turns out to be. They have a point.

I will now offer you a thought experiment, the point of which is to explain how unimportant mere numbers of believers in an idea can be, and how much more interesting and complicated the spread of and adoption of ideas can sometimes be.

Suppose that a group of about a dozen men are stuck in the first floor of a building, the ground floor of which is seriously on fire. They can't run down stairs, because if they do they will be greeted by a deadly wall of flames. Worse, if they don't somehow escape by some other means they will also die horribly, just as soon as the fire reaches the first floor, and only a few minutes later than they would if they tried to run through the flames.

What to do?

There are two schools of thought, consisting of One Man with a Plan, and Eleven Men telling that One Man that his damned Plan is crazy.

The One Man with a Plan says: We must all jump out of the window.

The Other Eleven all say: No! The ground on which you want us to jump is hard, not soft. The window from which we must jump is quite a long way off that hard ground. Most of us are likely to get hurt, and maybe some of us quite badly. One or two of us might even die.

Not content with denouncing the Plan of the One Man for being mistaken, the Other Eleven – who are panicking and consequently desperate for someone or something to blame – actually get quite angry, and start calling the One Man a fiend and a sadist and a murderer, who seems to want them all to get hurt and even to want all of them to die. What kind of monster are you? – etc. etc. etc., blah blah blah.

Nevertheless, the One Man wins the argument, and all twelve of them do duly jump out of the window.

Many of the gloomy prophecies about the harm this might do are proved right. One guy does get killed, and almost all of them suffer more or less severe injuries. As a result of these misfortunes, although some of the Other Eleven realise afterwards that the One Man was right and even say thank you to him, others among them go to their more or less speeded up deaths cursing the One Man for "making us do that".

The reason this One Man won this argument, and his Eleven opponents lost is that the contending ideas were of two different kinds. The Eleven were not actually offering any answer to the question posed by Reality, in the form of the fire. They were merely saying that getting out of this mess was going to be painful and dangerous, which added nothing to the debate because all present already knew that. They might just as well have said "oh bugger", for all the difference they were making with their "argument". The One Man, on the other hand, was answering the question posed by Reality, and was supplying the only answer that anyone was offering. Therefore, that is what ended up being done.

That Reality is what it is doesn't mean that men like my One Man will always be heeded. I can reveal that this One Man had spent the previous few years before the fire arguing that the building they all ended up jumping out of needed a fire escape. He also argued for better anti-fire safety procedures in the restaurant below that started the fire. The Eleven pointed out, again quite correctly, that a fire escape would be costly, and furthermore that it would increase the chances of burglary. They added that starting an argument with the restaurateurs downstairs would be most unpleasant, and once again, they were correct. And because not having a fire escape and not arguing with their neighbours were decisions which it was possible to make without immediate disaster, that is what was decided, even though the One Man was later able to claim that he'd been proved right about all of that also. So sometimes, weight of numbers wins.

But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it is enough simply to flag up, so to speak, a set of ideas, which are of the sort that can now be ignored in relative safety and relatively easily, but which in the future will not be so easy to ignore, because in the future Reality may be asking different questions. At which point, this set of ideas stands ready to save the day.

Our answers here at Samizdata may not now be doing very well, numerically speaking. But the questions can change, and if they do our answers might suddenly become very popular indeed. Meanwhile we must keep them visible and ready. (This is one of the reasons why sheer repetition is such an important propaganda technique. Repetition means that if the question changes to something more favourable, the answer will still be around to answer it.)

Final point. My "thought experiment"? All very nice in theory, Brian, but give us an example. Right? Okay: Margaret Thatcher. She had a Plan to rescue the British economy from going down the toilet in the early 1980s. Her vastly more numerous opponents merely said ad nauseam that her Plan was itself decidedly toilet-like also. They were right about that, but they lost the argument that mattered most, the one about what should be done. That there were about a thousand of them to every "Thatcherite" had nothing to do with anything. She had a Plan. Her opponents, as she constantly challenged them to admit – "There is no alternative!" – had no Plan. Therefore, she won.

A week or two ago, it was rather fancifully suggested in a comment thread here that the British electorate had voted to "roll back the state". They did no such thing.

All they did was prefer Britain jumping out of the window to Britain getting burned to death. At which point my metaphor breaks down because then we get involved in arguing about whether what I've been calling "jumping out of the window" wouldn't actually be rather a good thing, which of course really jumping out of the window wouldn't be.

But as I said at the beginning of this, it can get complicated. Any short description of how ideas catch on and get acted upon is going to be an over-simplication, but I trust that this particular over-simplication has been useful.

I hope to have many further over-simplications to offer on this topic of how ideas spread and catch on in future postings.

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Another day, another public enemy.

The campaign to add so-called 'junk food' to the tobacco-alcohol 'axis of evil' has been fulminating for quite a while. There is nothing on the Statute books yet but I think we all know that it is only a matter of time.

In the not-too-distant future, the Samizdata will be reporting the police raids on clandestine onion-ring factories and publishing underground recipes for 'academic and research purposes only'. By that time, I sincerely hope that there will be a wider understading of the social-working class mentality that has led to that woeful state of affairs. Nothing could illustrate that mentality more starkly than this article from the UK Times:

People are incapable of saying no to junk food and other health risks, and it is the duty of the State to influence them, according to a senior public health official.

In defence of the "nanny state", Professor Dr John Ashton, regional director of public health in the North West, said yesterday that government intervention was needed to protect those incapable of protecting themselves. "Individuals cannot protect themselves from bioterrorism, epidemics of Sars, the concerted efforts of the junk food industry, drug dealers and promoters of tobacco and alcohol," he said.

Thus lumping together consumer choice, forces of nature and murderous aggression into one misleading and grossly stupid soundbite.

He said that it was the job of the State, not of the individual alone, to resist health problems brought about by drink, food or drugs. The State had a duty to protect and influence young people, many of whom were building up problems by adopting sedentary lifestyles and eating junk food.

"It is in no one's interest to have an obese generation, riddled with diabetes and degenerative heart disease and a burden on the taxpayer," he said. "The Government has a duty to take action about it.

It is in no-one's interest to have a power-obsessed generation, riddled with this kind of contemptuous paternalism.

The State is the guardian of the weak and underprivileged. It should intervene to encourage people to eat healthily and take exercise.

"Furthermore, it has a duty to ensure that those less well-off in society have safe, warm, low-cost housing, convenient transport links to shops and amenities, and the protection of police on the streets. The State is our protector and we must defend its right to fulfil that function."

There are no citizens, only 'clients'.

He has three grown-up sons, but recently became a father again with his partner Maggi Morris, 47, a director of public health in Preston. Their baby has been named Fabian Che Jed, after the Fabian Society, Che Guevara and the Old Testament prophet Jedediah.

And doesn't that say it all.

There are lots of dark forces at play here but the oft-overlooked one is the element of kulturkampf. What these people mean by 'junk food' is hamburgers, hot-dogs and milk-shakes. For people like Dr.Ashton the hamburger has become a symbol of what they consider to be American cultural imperialism and that is the real basis of their animus.

Quite aside from the fact that the fashionable demonisation of 'fatty food' is ill-founded (which it is), an Indian or Chinese meal contains more fat and calories than McDonalds could ever dish up. As does the homegrown popular delicacy of 'Fish and Chips' (all deep fried). Nonetheless when these people speak it is 'burgers' that they invariably identify as the alleged enemies of public health.

The 'War against Junk Food' has been carefully crafted to fulfil both the practical and ideological needs of the social-working class. Not only will its successful prosecution provide them with more wealth and status but it also opens another front in the cultural and political war against America.

[My thanks to Nigel Meek who posted this article to the Libertarian Alliance Forum]

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It took a while but the truth is no longer 'out there', it has landed smack dab onto the pages of the Guardian. Yes, the Guardian.

This long-overdue confirmation of the real centre-left agenda comes courtesy of David Walker who is gleeful about the viral growth of tax-consumers:

Tony - reform is my middle name - Blair isn't obviously the public sector's friend. Nor, for all his protestations of affection, is Gordon Brown, the man who insisted on putting the safety of London's tube travellers in the hands of profit-maximising companies.

Yet under them the public sector prospers. Since 1999 it has just kept growing as a source of jobs; the UK's approximation to full employment owes a lot to council, NHS and government recruitment. Paranoid rightwingers, for whom the Guardian's thick advertising sections are a weekly torment, don't know the half of it. Under Labour, "indirect" employment has also boomed. Yesterday John Prescott published an evaluation of his new deal for communities, a set of participative projects in run-down areas. Between the lines it noted that a sort of reserve army of tenants and activists has been recruited, subsisting of government grants.

Imagine how 'paranoid' those 'rightwingers' would get if they suspected the truth about how many people are suckling at the state teat? Why, it would be enough to drive them round the twist.

Now here come new figures for direct government employment. Whitehall is booming. During the past year, the Inland Revenue took on 8,500 extra people, at a time when total civil service numbers increased by nearly 4%. Even the tiny Department of Culture, Media and Sport, 450 strong in April last year, added 30 people to its roster.

Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice!!! Roll on the glorious day when everyone works for the state!

In theory, that ought to mean up to 6 million households -perhaps 15 million people - with a direct interest in buoyant public expenditure, and hence in having a government likely to keep it that way. Labour's formula for permanent re-election, you might think. But turkeys will vote for Christmas.

And to think it is capitalists like me who are generally regarded as 'self-serving'.

Not once does Mr.Walker even attempt to invoke the mendacious tropes about 'social justice' and 'caring' and while his candour cannot be regarded as admirable it is, nonetheless, refreshing. His is as bold an admission as I can imagine that the motivation behind voting Labour is to increase one's chances of joining or staying on the government payroll. Of course, libertarians have been saying this for years and I suppose I must extend some muted thanks to Mr.Walker for publicly admitting that we were right.

But being right is one thing and prevailing is something else. In order to prevail this message must filter down to the remaining 45 million or so other British people who struggle to support themselves and carry the burden of this parasite class on their backs.

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These must surely be salad days for our Labour government. Free of any concerns about an effective opposition, they can roll up their sleeves, spit on their hands and get down to some really serious looting:

Gordon Brown is considering imposing capital gains tax on the sale of all houses in an attempt to plug the widening gulf between his spending plans and public finances.

The Telegraph has learnt that Treasury officials have held confidential discussions with private sector tax consultants on extending the levy to domestic properties.

The reform would mean homeowners facing a tax of up to 40 per cent on any profits made from the sale of their home, which for many people is their principal asset. The levy would, however, raise £11 billion a year, equivalent to 4p on the basic rate of income tax, according to government figures.

I think some clarification is required because the opening paragraph is not entirely correct. Currently a tax of 40% is charged on all capital gains which includes the capital gain made on the sale of property or land. However, one's principal dwelling home has always been exempt from this charge. Now HMG is proposing to abolish this exemption (although the effect is the same as imposing the tax on ordinary homeowners).

The Chancellor has already indicated, however, that he believes that homeowners are "lightly taxed" and is looking for additional methods to control the buoyant housing market.

'Lightly taxed'?!! The guy has got some nerve. And it's abject drivel that this is about controlling the 'bouyant housing market. This has been on the cards for a while. Gordon Brown has already plundered private pension funds and I knew that it was only a matter of time before he turned his avarice on the last stores of privately owned wealth. There was no way he could leave all that booty untouched with a ballooning public sector into which money must be shovelled like coal into a roaring furnace.

It's a no-brainer for the government. A general election is still as much as three years away and they are going to win it handsomely anyway. In the meantime they can placate their opponents on the left and reward their supporters in the state sector.

The way things are now, there is nothing to stop the state from growing until the bones of the last taxpayer have been picked clean and left to bleach in the sun.

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Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy fans will remember the ultimate cocktail drink; the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. Imbibing this infectious blend was like being hit in the head by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick. But does the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster remain the ultimate cocktail? I think I may have stumbled across something even stronger.

Imagine a blowtorch. A really fierce one glowing bluely in the dark. Turn it up a little, hear that roar. Stuff a small lemon into the top of an Irish whiskey flagon. Lay the flagon on its side, perhaps propped up on some old hitchhiking towels, and place the blowtorch against the flagon's newly exposed underside. Retire to an unsafe distance. When the flagon explodes, try to catch the whiskey-flavoured lemon between your teeth. Suck it and see what you think. Because that's what it's like reading Hans-Hermann Hoppe's book, Democracy: The God That Failed, first published in 2001. As the latest professor of economics at the University of Nevada, and senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises institute, this book out-Rothbards Hoppe's old Austrian mentor, Uncle Murray Rothbard. Did you even imagine this was possible? Check this:

The mass of people, as La Boetie and Mises recognised, always and everywhere consists of "brutes", "dullards", and "fools", easily deluded and sunk into habitual submission. Thus today, inundated from early childhood with government propaganda in public schools and educational institutions by legions of publicly certified intellectuals, most people mindlessly accept and repeat nonsense such as that democracy is self-rule and government is of, by, and for the people.

Schwing, Baby. And that's just the warm-up. Try this, if you like your lemon juice even sharper:

Hence, the decision by members of the [libertarian] elite to secede from and not cooperate with government must always include the resolve of engaging in, or contributing to, a continuous ideological struggle, for if the power of government rests on the widespread acceptance of false indeed absurd and foolish ideas, then the only genuine protection is the systematic attack of these ideas and the propagation and proliferation of true ones.

Sounds like a great idea for a web site.

And if you like it really rough, try this:

As a result of subsidizing the malingerers, the neurotics, the careless, the alcoholics, the drug addicts, the Aids-infected, and the physically and mentally challenged through insurance regulation and compulsory health insurance, there will be more illness, malingering, neuroticism, carelessness, alcoholism, drug addiction, Aids infection, and physical and mental retardation.

Crazy, dude.

Hoppe's book is subtitled 'the economics and politics of monarchy, democracy, and natural order'. It is based on the premise that the privately-owned governments of the monarchical age, such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, were bad, but far better than the publicly-owned governments of the democratic age, such as the United States of America. Having established this platform in the first third of the book, Hoppe then moves on to describe how government-free countries adopting the spontaneous natural order of liberty would be the best option of all, and how we could achieve this against the odds of worldwide statist malevolence.

Hoppe goes beyond Von Mises and Rothbard, his intellectual predecessors, both believers in democracy, and tries to answer the question many of us have recently struggled with on Samizdata. (Any socialists reading this may wish to turn away now.)

Given that libertarianism is clearly the best way of organising society, which will maximise the desired ends of everyone alive, and given that humans are clearly intelligent beings, most of whom have at least the potential to see this, even if they haven't reached that point yet, why is the western world currently drowning in a swamp of welfare-dependency, increasing poverty, decivilisation, family break-up, graffiti, random violence, drugs culture, anti-social behaviour, fecklessness, and all the other evil stigmata associated with socialism? And furthermore, given that at least the United States of America, and possibly the United Kingdom, approached a near-Golden age of liberty over 200 years ago, which only started collapsing around the time of the First World War, what is it that is driving these virulent forces of socialism and neo-conservatism along, when all the evidence around us shows us clearly that collectivism is the worst thing that humanity has ever had the misfortune to stumble across? That the situation is only going to get worse is also apparent, but still we sleepwalk on into the socialist super states of NAFTA and the EU, and their eventual combined world government, muttering the mantra 'More Government, More Government, More Government'. Nothing seems capable of halting this 'inevitable' steamroller. Why?

Hoppe thinks he has the answer: Democracy. Its growth in the western world is linked directly to the growth of socialism and Big Government. Hoppe wonders whether this is coincidental or causal?

We've been living in a dream world, he says. All this time we thought democracy and its associated documents, such as the Magna Carta and the American Constitution, were our salvation from the demagoguery of rogue government, but all along democracy has just been a longer chain to wrap us up in, another way of persuading us that Big Brother, Uncle Sam and Aunty Nanny State always knew best.

Hoppe's essential argument is that when a monarchical king owned a territory, over which he possessed a governmental monopoly of tax and judgement, he passed it on to his heirs with some amount of farsightedness. He always tried to preserve his state's capital value. Although he also tried to raise revenue from this monopoly of power, and pushed this to the limit, the population around him always knew who their enemy was, the king, and restrained him accordingly. Thus, taxes never rose above eight per cent, and in most cases rarely got above five per cent. In the centuries-long battles between the City of London and the English King in Westminster, it was often the king who came off worst. And because the king was also chosen at random, through inheritance, and could only come from a small in-bred royal family, the general population never entertained the idea of entering government themselves. It was therefore always something outside of their experience, or possible future experience, so they always tried to restrain it. Quite successfully, for the most part.

But this attitude changed with democracy. Now anyone could enter government and become the caretaker-king (or president). But the caretaker-king could not pass on the capital wealth of his country onto his heirs. He could be replaced in the publicly-owned government by anyone else at almost any time. However, he did have temporary control of his country's resources. Therefore it made sense to forget capital values and to concentrate on revenues, something the caretaker-king did own. Hence taxes rose in direct proportion to the amount of democracy in a country, all the better to buy off the voters with their own money at the next election, to maintain the current caretaker-king's power. Democracy also kicked out the second prop against rising taxes. Because now anyone could entertain the idea of being caretaker-king. This meant less people of intellectual substance opposed the rising confiscatory power of the government, for they too could foresee a future in which they themselves took up the caretaker-king's Ring of Power. An alluring prospect, as any Tolkienesque wizard will tell you.

Add to this the selfish mooch process, where we all abuse our majority democratic voting powers to force other people to give us their possessions, and the democratic rollercoaster whizzes down to the present age, with its inflated paper currencies, 40% taxes, and regulations covering every single tiny aspect of our lives right down to how much cardboard and plastic waste we have to put out for our garbage collectors.

Given that in any aspect of life there will always be more 'have-nots' than 'haves', the 'have-nots' will always be in a terrorising majority, able to steal the goods and the services of the 'haves', in whichever sphere you choose, whether it's in schools, health, or plain old redistributive taxation. That this will destroy the incentive to create the things worth having in the first place is forgotten, in our rush to steal from our neighbours, thereby breaking down society's natural order and in turn creating decivilisation and higher time preference values where we all live for the moment. Why worry about the future? If we make anything, the government will take it from us. If we don't make anything, the government will take stuff from those stupid enough to keep working and hand it on over to us. Whoopee! Live for the moment. Wealth consumed is wealth enjoyed. Let the devil take the hindmost.

This lack of foresight thus encourages crime, hedonism, and self-destructive behaviour, because all the bad consequences which may follow from these acts occur only in an increasingly blurred future. As for criminals, they can see the increasing ineffectiveness of state monopolised justice, where more is spent and less is done, as in all monopolies. So steal away. It's what the tax authorities do anyway, rob from the rich to give to the poor. I'm poor, so I'll help myself. The chances of actually being caught and put away are minimal anyway, so what's the worry?

You can also add to this the government's need to break apart the independence of the family and turn us into government dependants, to head off any strong familial resistance at the pass, hence social security, pensions, and 'free' healthcare and education systems. So why do families need each other now? They don't. They only need the government. Pensioners don't need children to support them in their old age, so the birth rate goes down; nobody needs to save, so capital investment goes down; children don't even need their parents, so divorce rates rise, and so down the rabbit hole we go, Dorothy, all living on current income, often lifted from the pockets of other people. The government will take care of the future. Except of course we know the government doesn't even have a clue about the next five minutes. Witness the scandalous borrowing of current world governments who haven't a clue how all of this money is to be repaid. Oh well, we'll worry about that after the next election. Look at that lovely hospital we've just built!

Having persuaded us that he is right, and that democracy all along has been a red herring, Hoppe's plan for our ultimate emancipation from the yoke of government essentially boils down to a secession of all of us, as best we can, from all the processes of government. We all need to do a 'Perry de Havilland'! We must also persuade as many others as we can to do likewise, and show up the Emperor for his lack of clothes. This includes an alliance with what Hoppe calls those true forces of conservatism who also believe in a natural order, as opposed to those neo-conservatives whom Hoppe dismisses as right-wing socialists, particularly those propagating welfare-warfare wealth destruction. Hoppe is also scathing of leftist-leaning libertarians, recalling Rothbard's earlier definition of a 'Modal Libertarian' (ML):

The ML does not, unfortunately, hate the State because he sees it as the unique social instrument of organized aggression against person and property. Instead, the ML is an adolescent rebel against everyone around him: first, against his parents, second against his family, third against his neighbours, and finally against society itself…The ML's modal occupation is computer programmer…Computers appeal indeed to the ML's scientific and theoretical bent; but they also appeal to his aggravated nomadism, to his need not to have a regular payroll or regular abode…The ML also has the thousand-mile stare of the fanatic.

As a former leftist-libertarian myself, accused occasionally of being a mad-staring-eyed lunatic, who makes his nomadic living from computing, I find this description rather too close to the knuckle. But it clearly demonstrates that Hoppe is opposed to the libertine aspects of libertarianism, preferring instead the idea of a world intolerant of deviation, based on family and kin, and spontaneously arising aristocratic elites, though elites which fail to assume the monopolies of taxation and jurisdiction typically associated with monarchy, but which fit more into the conservative idea of noblesse oblige. I think Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress may be the best fictional guide to the natural family-based order Hoppe desires. It is also this return to a family-based welfare-independent community, which Hoppe uses to form the bridge between Austrian anarchic libertarianism and true natural order conservatism, two schools of thought he tries to link into one.

The final third of Hoppe's book rounds off his general argument for how we can throw off the yoke of publicly-owned government, and how to eliminate the errors of liberty, such as the belief that constitutions can effectively limit governments, a view Hoppe describes as utopian, with some choice words for Ayn Rand thrown in, just for fun. He particularly takes issue with the general pride of Americans. He states that they are right to be proud of their not-so-distant past as a land of pioneers, in an anarcho-capitalist order of natural liberty. He also thinks they should be proud of the American Revolution, where they threw off the yoke of European government, but that they are fundamentally flawed when it comes to being proud of the American Constitution. A sharp intake of breath, perhaps?

This document was created by elitists whom most early American colonists knew nothing about. It cast in stone the idea that the government could legitimately tax its subjects and establish a monopolistic jurisdiction over them. This had never ever happened before, even in bad old Europe. Here kings had obviously taxed and judged their subjects, in their given territories, but this monopoly governmental right had never actually been legitimated. Only in America.

And from that point on America was sunk. Because once you accept that a government has these two territorial monopolistic rights, of taxation and judgement, socialism is inevitable. It is only a question of time. Or in America's case, about 200 years. So today we see people like Tony Blair swatting aside his opponents in the British Parliament, because given that government is a legitimate institution which has the legitimate right to tax everyone within its jurisdiction, parliamentarians of different parties are only arguing over the details as to which group of 'have-nots' is going to raid the property of which group of 'haves'. And because Tony Blair has more charisma and is more immoral than any other crook in Parliament, he is the Prime Minister. End of story. If you believe in democracy.

Or as Hoppe puts it:

Given that the characteristics and talents required for political success – of good looks, sociability, oratorical power, charisma, etc. – are distributed unequally among men, then those with these particular characteristics and skills will have a sound advantage in the competition for scarce resources (economic success) as compared to those without them…Therefore entrance into and success within government will become increasingly impossible for anyone hampered by moral scruples against lying and stealing. Moreover, even outside the orbit of government, within civil society, individuals will increasingly rise to the top of economic and financial success not on account of their productive or entrepreneurial talents or even their superior defensive political talents, but rather because of their superior skills as unscrupulous political entrepreneurs and lobbyists. Thus, the Constitution virtually assures that exclusively dangerous men will rise to the pinnacle of government power and that moral behaviour and ethical standards will tend to decline and deteriorate all-around.

So bang goes the American Constitution! Sorry.

As for the unwritten British version, poor old Iain Duncan Smith! My kiss of death obviously failed to come soon enough. As to those men in civil society who've succeeded due to political machinations, rather than business ability, a few spring to mind. But none whom the libel laws of several continents will allow me to name. You may be able to fill in a few of your own.

Hoppe then tries to square that anarcho-capitalist circle of how we defend ourselves against other aggressive states, via the use of powerful insurance corporations. The SAS Prudence Company certainly has a ring to it, or the Scots Guards Cooperative Society. That non-libertarian states will still exist, he is in no doubt. There will be no fully-libertarian world, under Hoppe's plan, because otherwise we'd have nowhere to exclude people to. Because much though Hoppe's rhetoric appeals to my increasingly Austrian nature, one final quote does give me pause for thought:

There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society. Likewise, in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. They – the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centred lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism – will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order.

Whoa, Baby! Professor Hoppe's writings should certainly be avoided by the faint-hearted. Will these excluded people repent of their ways, see the benefits of conservative-libertarianism, and try to re-apply to Hoppe-World? Or will they form up into aggressive socialist states with nuclear-tipped missiles pointed at the Lichtensteins, Singapores, and all the other Hellenic-style cities which will make up the Hopperite Libertarian Confederation? I'm unsure. Let's hope the SAS Prudence Company operatives will take out these socialist leaders, in sufficiently well-targeted pre-retaliatory strikes, before they turn the rest of us over into a world government socialist hell.

Hoppe concludes with a plan to get from where we are now, to the Libertarian Confederation outlined above. Given that America managed to secede from Britain, but that the southern states of America failed to secede from the northern ones, how are we to establish Hoppe's vision of a world of independent privately-owned anarcho-capitalist territories? He acknowledges that it's going to be tough. But thinks America may be our salvation again, this time via small territories gradually seceding to the point where they are virtually independent of the United States.

They will then be much more successful than surrounding areas, which will then gradually follow their example until it can be seen that these micro-territories are the best way for everyone to go, creating a flood of anarcho-capitalism around the world. In particular, like frogs in hot water, we must be gradualist about this and fail to provoke central states into retaliatory action. It must be all over before they're sufficiently roused to do anything about it.

It seems the Free State Project has a lot riding on it. I wonder if Professor Hoppe is going to move from Nevada to New Hampshire?

As to the book, itself, I would recommend that you think of it as being the fifth in a series, the first four being written by Uncle Murray; Man, Economy and State; Power and Market; The Ethics of Liberty and For a New Liberty. You might want to describe Hoppe's book as the missing fifth volume. It is also written as a series of independent chapters. This made it heavy-going as a serial read, for many of the same ideas and passages are repeated multiple times, which often caused your humble reviewer to think he was on the wrong page. It's also one of the books where the footnotes are struggling to become a book in their own right. It's like watching one of those DVD movies where the director keeps interrupting the film every 30 seconds to spend two minutes discussing why he adopted a particular camera shot. However, although the footnotes can almost swallow entire pages, leaving some of them with only three lines for the main text, some of the most interesting anecdotes are contained within them. They're well worth reading.

But now I've read it once, it will entail further study to try to disentangle all of these parallel ideas. It would've been much harder for Professor Hoppe to write, but I hope if he puts this hand-grenade of a book into a second edition, he tries to blend the anecdotes into the text and leaves the footnotes purely for references.

Even so, despite this dual-book nature, and the numerous repetitions, this book is an explosive monster, and one which ought to be read alike by every serious libertarian, Chicagoan, Austrian, Minarchist, Randite, or plain mad-eyed-staring lunatic.

It ain't your Grandmother.

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Here is an idea all libertarians can agree with: removing marriage law and regulation from the State.

My only disagreement is they do not go far enough. The State has no place in matters of faith or of love. It is up to individuals to make their own decisions on such matters and self-regulate within the framework of their choice, whether it be church or private marriage registry.

It is nice, just for once, to see a wronged minority calling for a solution requiring less government intervention. The 'solution' of problems created by government by demanding more government is sadly the rule, rather than the exception.

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Being a rather lazy person about everything except thinking, I love to think about how to ensure that the few feeble bursts of libertarian effort I manage to put in every few days actually have some beneficial impact. The well known link between fondness for strategy and fondness for sitting in armchairs is no mere coincidence.

So I was delighted when Alex Singleton chose, for the talk he gave at my most recent last-Friday-of-the-month meeting in my London SW1 home (email me if you want to be notified of future events in this infinite series), the subject of libertarian tactics and strategy, winning the ideological war for libertarianism, etc. etc. (Like me, Alex continues to use the L-word.)

Despite the word war being in the title it was a relaxed and good humoured evening, and not just because Alex is a relaxed and good humoured person, although that helped. More importantly, Alex is optimistic about the difference that free, self-controlling and even self-funded individuals or tiny groups of individuals can make to the libertarian cause. Because of that, he felt no urge to lay out a master libertarian strategy which all must be commanded, which in practice means begged, to sign up to. We were presented with no Big Central Plan for Libertarian Success. Which makes sense, given that we are so suspicious about Big Central Plans for other things.

Alex made much of that familiar scenario where there exists a universal statist consensus, which one individual then breaks. Peter Bauer breaks the consensus that Foreign Aid is an automatically Good Thing. Terence Kealey breaks the consensus that in the modern world Pure Science must be funded by the government in order to proceed satisfactorily. E. G. West breaks the consensus that The State was responsible for the rise of mass literacy and mass education in the now rich world, and that without State funding for mass education, mass education would cease.

In his own recent line of business, Alex and his small group of collaborators at the International Policy Network have been busily helping to chip away at the widely held belief – nothing like universal in this case (thanks e.g. to Peter Bauer) – that "globalisation" in general, and international free trade in particular, is a bad and scary thing, and that the only answer is a gigantic global tax system. (Not all globalisation is bad, it would seem.) A huge number of delegates can assemble for some international drone-fest in some First World enclave in the Third World, but it only takes a quite small number of cunning activists to piss very visibly into the consensual soup that is served up on such occasions, if only because the media do so love an argument. Free Trade bad? Just find a handful of local Third World farmers who love Free Trade and whose only complaint about it is that there isn't more of it, tell all the media about them, and take some good photos of them and stick them up on the Internet.

The Internet has helped all this tremendously, as I surely don't need to say here but will anyway, by putting professional presentation and idea-spreading into the hands of individuals and small groups, who now need only to be canny operators with the gift of the gab. Appropriately enough, Alex is about to start another job with another quite small group of schemers, namely the Adam Smith Institute (he's already their blogmeister), who are likewise regularly assumed by those familiar with their ideas and impact but not with their working conditions to be a whole lot bigger and grander and better funded than they really are.

Plenty more of interest got said by those present, but that will do as a first reaction to a most convivial evening. I meant to stick this up on Saturday morning, but got diverted from doing that by not doing it. Luckily, there are some ideas in this world that are good enough to last a few days, the significance of individual and small team action definitely being one of them.

(0) (8)

"Business bad? fuck you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? fuck you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? fuck you, pay me!"

Some of our officials have become so self-important that they not only charge through the nose for imposing their regulations upon us, they even want to charge those who can no longer afford their attentions. Last year I reported on the Scottish care home which, when it was forced to close by the cost of regulations imposed by social services, then received a bill for £510 from the same department for giving the owner permission to go out of business.

A similar problem has been presented to John Swain, whose metal finishing firm Anopol employs 30 people in Birmingham. Some years ago, as a service to other metal finishing companies who used his chemicals, he offered to accept their used chemicals back for storage in holding tanks and safe, environmentally-responsible disposal. Under EC directive 91/156, however, he then had to acquire a waste management licence, for which he had to pay the Environment Agency £3,897 a year.

This helped to make Mr Swain's service uneconomical, so he told the agency that he wished to surrender his licence. He would continue to use the tanks for his own waste chemicals, but could no longer assist his customers. The agency sent him an eight-page questionnaire and a bill for £2,427 as a "surrender fee".

This isn't 'government', it's Goodfellas!

(0) (1)

It is good to see we have a new generation of activists coming up through the ranks. Andrew Danto, 18, is running for the O'Hara (Pennsylvania) Town Council. It started out as a Fox Chapel class project on government... but you know how these things can turn into a life's work.

We wish him luck!

I escaped to Ireland fifteen years ago just before the local LP decided to draft me as a Pittsburgh City Council candidate or some such thing. My regards to Henry Haller if he's still active there.

(0) (44)

In a recent article Steven den Beste discusses the fate of human shield Faith Fippinger. If I were to look at this in a narrow context I'd probably agree with him. However... there are parts of the argument expressed by den Beste and others which I find troubling.

I cannot imagine myself standing in a Saddamite factory to stop speeding american bullets, but I can indeed arrive at scenarios in which I would find civil disobedience of this sort or even greater personally justifiable. So let us play "invent a scenario".

It's now 2015 and a bunch of us libertarians have gotten so fed up with statists that we've built a floating island and anchored it to a Pacific seamount. Unlike an earlier group displaced by a Tonga gunboat, we're well armed, well trained and ready to defend our new country.

Everything goes well for a few years. We expand the island with landfill and more platforms, the population grows and our little libertopia waxes wealthy and happy as we always imagined it would.

We won't join the UN or become signatories to any of its treaties. After all, how can we? We don't have a government. Any individuals on our island may sign if they wish, but by doing so they bind no one else. They can not even bind their own children once they leave home... and in some families not even before...

Some are making a good living with little floating pot-patches. Free market banks are popping up all over the island with rules on privacy which would have made a 1930's Swiss Bank president smile. We do not recognize tax collection attempts by other countries. Sure, a bank may cave in if it wishes, but there are other banks and the market will decide. The new cloning business is bringing in money hand over fist. A bunch of the top nanotech people have moved in and are pushing things ahead quickly. Several commercial space launch companies got fed up with the spaceship size stacks of regulatory paperwork and left America. They now consider themselves citizens of the island... or whatever you call yourself in a place without a government.

However... there is a fly in the ointment. All of the above are extremely threatening to the existing world order. Our very pacific existence undermines the rest of the world. One day after some dastardly world event it is decided by the President and her men that we are an easy target. Our banks won't give them details on fortunes hidden from tax collectors and we're getting all too technologically successful.

Now as either a resident of that island or a resident in the US, I know exactly which side I am on. The issues are crystal clear to me. I do not support or give allegience to a flag; I give it to particular principles and the people who at any given time best embody those principles. For most of the last two centuries and certainly for all of my lifespan, that has been the USA.

But what if some place comes along that is freer and is considered a threat to the USA because of it?

I would suddenly find myself an Enemy of the State.

(0) (7)

'Petrol Price Rise Announced' blares the BBC Headline:

Fuel duty will rise by 1.28p a litre from 1 October, the Treasury has confirmed.

The increase, which will add five pence a gallon to petrol and diesel prices, is in line with inflation, it said.

So it isn't a 'price rise' at all. It's a tax increase

I think the public has a right to be told in less ambivalent terms.

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Steve Dasbach reminds us that 'conservative' George Bush loves big government and grandiose new bureaucracies just like his predecessor did

He's going to - drum roll, please - appoint a manufacturing czar [the proposed formal title: Assistant Commerce Secretary for Manufacturing and Services].

It's a classic political move. If a president wants to make it look like he's doing something, but has no idea what to do, he appoints a 'czar'. However, a 'Manufacturing Czar' will do nothing to help the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs.

President Nixon started the trend in 1973 by appointing John Love as Energy Czar. Of course, his appointment did nothing to help solve the energy "crisis", leading President Carter to up the ante and create the Department of Energy. That didn't accomplish anything either, other than create a gigantic new bureaucracy.

Since then, we've been blessed with Drug Czars, Heath Care Czars, Aids Czars, and Privacy Czars, to name just a few.

President Clinton even appointed a 'Counter-Intelligence Czar' just before he left office, charged with developing:

a national counterintelligence strategy identifying and prioritizing the keys to American prosperity and security. Informed by such a strategic analysis, the czar will then coordinate the efforts of the intelligence, defense and law enforcement communities.

We saw how well that worked on September 11, 2001.

The President's new "Manufacturing Czar" isn't going to be any more successful than his fellow Czars, given that the decline in manufacturing jobs is largely irreversible. It's also beneficial to the economy, though extremely painful for those individuals whose jobs no longer exist.

This trend in manufacturing jobs parallels our earlier experience with agriculture. Employment in farm occupations went from 71.8% of the population in 1820 to 37.5% in 1900 to 2.7% in 1980. Does anyone think we would be better off as a society if President Cleveland had appointed an "Agriculture Czar" to stem the loss of farming jobs?

Whoops... I forgot. He created a cabinet-level Department of Agriculture instead, which has become pretty adept at dispensing corporate welfare and paying farmers to NOT produce food, but has utterly failed to prevent job losses in farming. Our new Manufacturing Czar isn't going to fare any better.

There are many reasons for the decline in manufacturing jobs. Better technology and production methods have led to substantial productivity gains. Fewer people are able to produce more goods and services for less cost, just as was the case in agriculture. The economy as a whole benefits from better and cheaper products, leading to expansion and new jobs in other industries.

Of course, some manufacturing jobs are being lost to foreign competition. But many of these losses are self-inflicted, caused by short-sighted trade and labor policies enacted by the same politicians who claim to be "protecting" American jobs.

One example is the steel tariff imposed by the Bush administration early last year. The tariff saved approximately 1,700 jobs in the steel industry. However, the tariff cost more than 200,000 jobs in American industries that use steel, representing more than $4 billion in lost wages. To put this in perspective, the entire American steel industry employs fewer than 200,000 people.

If the new Manufacturing Czar tries to save American jobs through protectionist trade policies like the steel tariffs, the result will be even more suffering, out-of-work Americans.

Instead of appointing yet another Czar to make it look like he's doing something about unemployment, President Bush should consider a completely new approach - repealing counterproductive laws and regulations that stand in the way of job creation.

He can start by repealing the steel tariffs, along with similar trade restrictions in other industries. Then, he can try asking America's small business owners for help in identifying the most onerous rules and regulation that need to be scrapped.

And instead of creating yet another useless Czar, President Bush should consider getting rid of the rest of them instead, with some useless agencies and cabinet departments thrown in for good measure.

However, don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen. It's just so much easier for presidents to wish upon a Czar.

About the author: Steve Dasbach was National Chairman of the Libertarian party, 1993-1998 and National Director of the Libertarian Party, 2000-2002.

(0) (5)

Our friend Sean Gabb is no stranger to radio or TV broadcasting. Indeed, so commonplace are his incisive contributions to both that Sean himself appears to regard them as somewhat mundane.

But yesterday was different. Yesterday, Sean travelled the studios of BBC Radio Oxford to take part in a phone-in debate on law and order. One of the other studio guests was none other than Tony Martin. As Sean himself says:

This is a case that has at times filled me and many other people with incandescent rage. It is the perfect summary of all that is wrong with modern England. Now, I was invited to meet the man at the centre of the case. Let alone driving - I might have walked the entire circuit of the M25 to be with him. So off I went.

If it is possible to be incandescent with envy then I am.

As is his custom, Sean has written about his afternoon with Tony Martin:

There is in any society an implied contract between state and citizen. We give up part of our right to self defence - only part, I emphasise - and all our right to act as judge in our own causes. We resign these matters to the state and obey its laws. In exchange, it maintains order more efficiently and more justly than we could ourselves. In modern England, the state has not broken this contract. If it had simply given up on maintaining order, that would be bad enough - but we could then at least shift for ourselves. No, the state in this country has varied the terms of the contract. It will not protect us, but it will not let us protect ourselves. If we ignore this command, we can expect to be punished at least as severely as the criminals who attack us. That is what the Tony Martin case is all about. This is not just a matter for the country. The towns have it just as bad, if not worse. If you are a victim of crime anywhere in this country, you are in it alone and undefended. Call for the Police, call for a home delivery pizza - see which arrives first.

Sean has a gift for commentary which few can emulate. This article, as with so many of his other writings, has all the solemn dignity and moving power of a hymn. His melancholy conclusions alone deserve the widest possible audience if only as a chronicle of these troubled times. Seldom has the phrase 'read it and weep' been quite so literal.

[Update: I think 'whoops' is the appropriate phrase. I drafted this and posted it up without realising that Brian was doing exactly the same thing only marginally sooner. But even duplication can be quite instructive as both Brian and I live up to our respective reputations of him being optimistic and me being pessimistic in response to precisely the same article.]

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When the Olympic games were held in Sydney in 2000, a number of public viewing areas were set up in public spaces throughout the city. Giant video screens were erected, and large crowds gathered to watch sports events and enjoy the atmosphere.

Like in Britain, liquor licensing laws in Australia are quite strict in that if you enter a bar and buy an alcoholic drink, you must consume it on the premises of the bar. Although you have bought it, you are not permitted to walk off with it. During the games, a few portable bars were actually set up in the public spaces with the video screens. However, in order to comply with local liquor laws, certain relatively small areas of the public spaces were designated as alcohol drinking areas and barriers were erected to cordon people in these areas off from everybody else. On top of this, people in these areas were only sold drinks in cans or plastic cups. (These enclosures were quickly nicknamed "playpens", on the basis that drinkers were being treated like small children). The dangers of broken glass were considered sufficiently great that people were not allowed to buy drinks in glasses or glass bottles. This was all very paternalistic, in the way that alcohol licensing laws in the English speaking world often are.

This past weekend, I happened to be in Germany. When I visited the Kurfürstendamm, the main shopping street of what once was West Berlin, I discovered that some kind of event was happening, declaring itself to be the "Global City 2003" festival. Now any city that is sufficiently insecure that it feels the need to declare itself to be a "global city" or a "world city" actually isn't one. There are plenty of interesting and enjoyable things to do in Berlin (including some of the most magnificent museums of cultural treasures anywhere) but when it comes down to it the city is not London, Tokyo, or New York. And the "Global City" festival was not all that global. There was a ferris wheel and a few other rides. A catwalk had been set up in the middle of the street and there were some fashion shows. A stage had been set up and there was some live music. There were stalls selling souvenirs of various kinds.

However, the most important thing was clearly eating and drinking, and this was done in a very German way.

There were a vast number of vendors selling barbecued sausages of various kinds, and there were a very large number of portable bars set up in the street. These were really quite clever. They were modied trailers, which had been towed into the street before the festival, and they were then able to unfold to become full service bars, with awnings that folded out to protect customers from the weather, and with beer taps and presumably large internal holding kegs containing the beer.

And, in the Kurfürstendamm over the weekend, a lot of beer was consumed and a lot of sausages were eaten. As an Australian, I come from a beer and barbecued sausages culture myself and so this was really all very pleasant. Although the crowds were large and much beer was being consumed, there seemed no need to regulate this in the way that would be done in Australia. People were drinking beer out of glass mugs. It would be an insult to the fine German beer to do anything else with it. None of the fears that caused ridiculous regulations to be enacted in Australia seemed to be coming to pass in Germany.

Of course, when I purchased a glass of beer myself, I discovered that there was a reason for this. The beer cost €2.50, but I was charged €5.00. Once I finished drinking it, I was able to take the glass back to the counter, and get a refund of the additional €2.50. (I didn't figure this all out until I went to my second beer selling establishment, which is why I have a German beer mug in front of me now with Herforder Pils - Premium Exquisit written on it below a nice coat of arms. I do not really feel bad about this, as it is a good souvenir of what I actually did on the weekend, and I did pay for it). Different bars charged me different amounts for the glass: it varied from €1.00 to €2.50 depending on the fanciness of the glass. I can only assume I was being charged approximately the replacement value of the glass in each case.

So the situation is simple. Essentially, the customer is forced to buy the glass while he is using it, and then to sell it back when he is finished. The most obvious reason for this is that it benefits the operators of the bar, because it means that people bring their glasses back, reducing effort, and ensuring that they do not walk off with the glasses. If they do walk off with them, then it doesn't matter as they have paid for them. In addition, it means that the customers take the loss in the case of any breakages.

This is all true, but it is not the major benefit of the practice. The last point is the key one. Because customers essentially own the glasses when they are using them, they care about breakages far more than they would if they did not have to take a loss. Therefore, they take far more care. Therefore, very few breakages occur. (I did not see a single broken glass, and I saw a lot of beer being consumed). Because there is essentially no broken glass, nobody gets injured from broken glass. Because of the increased safetly, nobody feels the need to nanny the customers as happened at the Olympics in Sydney, and the festival can take place and everyone can have a good time. I certainly did.

Just as a tiny further observation, German beer measures are far superior to French measures. (And for that matter, German beer is far superior to French beer). The French for some reason drink beer out of tiny 250ml glasses. In ordinary bars, the Germans generally offer a small 300ml glass and a large 500ml glass, although I believe a one litre glass is also common in Barvaria. There is nothing wrong with metric measures if they are approximately the right size, which these are. While George Orwell didn't find a half litre adequate, I have to admit that I have no problem with it, particularly when the beer is as good as what I drank in Germany. (The half litre is also a standard size for beer bottles sold even in England, and nobody seems to complain).

Presumably for the sake of simplicity, the portable bars at the festival generally only served one size, which was 400ml. Rather than serve only large or small, they served a compromise that was in between. The size of the measure was clearly advertised everywhere, and nobody had any problem with this. I certainly found it adequate. Of course, as I pointed out in a previous post, if an English bar wanted to compromise in a similar way by serving three quarter pints it couldn't, because this would be illegal. For now I am with the Germans.

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And so, as the great heat swamp of Old London Town finally begins to subside towards the cold dark wetness of autumn, which for some of us is a very great relief, we in England can begin to think of Christmas. Oh yes, we can dream of Yuletide hymns, rich puddings with brandy sauce, and gifts under the evergreen tree of renewed pagan life. And what better a gift idea could there be, for this ancient festival of change, than a brand new book by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr, the current holder of the flame of Herr Hayek, Von Mises, and Murray N. Rothbard? No other gift idea comes close, in my humble opinion. And if you agree, you might want to slip over to the Mises Blog for hot-off-the-press details from the man himself.

Best of all, for intellectual pygmies, such as myself, the book, Speaking of Liberty, apparently comes in at under 500 pages, and is formed from a collection of Rockwell's best speeches integrated into a cohesive whole, to create his personal manifesto on politics and economics.

As I'm trying to cure myself of impulsiveness, I paused for almost a whole nanosecond before deciding whether to attempt to get hold of a copy. And then I read this:

It is not, needless to say, my version of Human Action or Man, Economy, and State! Instead, while based on Mises and Rothbard, it's aimed at just about anyone who seeks to understand the relationship between economics and freedom, and not to be fooled by the media-government complex.

Followed by this:

Mises was the intellectual fountainhead of the modern freedom movement — both here and in Europe — and I've always wanted him to get the credit. It is a great pleasure to explain his life and work and why they matter...Later in the book, I address other thinkers, including Henry Hazlitt, Hans Sennholz, F.A. Hayek, and, of course, the great Murray Rothbard, who had the most direct influence on me.

Sold, to the gentleman in the black slip-on sandals.

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I'm reading a law paper by Eben Moglen whilst sitting on a bed with sunlight pouring in the windows... [oops, I spoke too soon. Here come the rain. This is Ireland.] In short, he explains why Copyright is dead meat. Although written in 1999 it is still relevant. The death throws of Copyright will require a few more decades to play to their final denouement, but there is little doubt of that end.

To say I agree is an understatement. I've expressed my thoughts on this many times over the years, for example in this 1995 article. As I said then and in more depth in 1999, Copyright depends on the embodiment of ideas in physical form. It is a creature of Gutenberg's invention. In the 21st Century we are moving on towards something else. I'm about as likely to project correctly what that "something else" is as would a writer in the first decades of the printed word so I won't even try.

And here comes the sun again...

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By the end of today I will have been on BBC radio of various sorts twice. I just did a little spot on a Radio 2 talk show about taxes for or against. Guess which I was. I played the consumer electronics card. This is the one that says that since quality in things like computers and music boxes has in recent years skyrocketed and prices have sunk like so many stones dropping out of the sky, but that in the public sector this great stuff hasn't happened, private sector hurrah public sector bah. Governments are catastrophically bad at spending money. The rapacity of governments in collecting money and the damage that does had already been covered, by George Trefgarne.

As usual in this sort of radio, I could have done better and I could have done worse. You land a few punches, give a few tried and tested memes a bit of a dust-over and maybe give some less familiar ones an outing. In among that you do some unnecessary um-ing and aah-ing and waffling. Then you put the phone down and get on with your life, which in my case now means boasting about having done this on Samizdata.

And then, tonight at 8pm, I will be contributing to a Radio 4 programme called "The Commission".

The Commission has a similar format to The Moral Maze. They have regular panellists, and irregular "witnesses", of whom tonight I will be one. Tonight's show (8pm London time) is on the subject of organ donation, organ markets, and related matters such as whether it is good for people to be poor (I say no), and whether life for poor people would be improved if, for their own good, they were forbidden to do business with rich people. ( I say that would keep them poor for ever.)

Tonight's performance by me is likely to be a little more fluent than the one I've just done, because it will have been pre-edited. But will not the biased BBC edit out my best bits? I don't think it works like that. In that matter, I do genuinely trust the Beeb. BBC bias in my part of the radio landscape doesn't consist of the BBC silencing me. It merely consists of them having the damned gall to also have lots of other people on their radio shows who don't think as I do. But so long as I get to do a few of my memes, as I have over the years, I am content.

The Radio Times features this show as one of its two radio choices of the day, with a little write up:

Nick Ross returns with a new series examining major public policy issues, starting with human organ donation. From a doctor who says we should have to opt out of donating our organs after we die, to the mother of a boy whose organs were retained in the Alder Hey scandal and a current kidney-transplant patient, each witness provides thought provoking tesimony – from both sides.

And me. And me. (Bias!!) How about that market in organs that I argued for, and will, I believe, be heard arguing for tonight? Oh well. I guess they prefer in-the-flesh experiences, so to speak, to theoretical abstractions however provocative.

Just one final point, about what I am trying to achieve by appearing on shows like these, aside from a little pocket money. I believe that a mistake often made by people trying to spread ideas is that they spend too much time and effort trying to be liked and agreed with, and too little time and effort trying to be understood. They confuse, that is to say, idea spreading with party politics. I would far rather be sworn at for saying what I do think, than liked and agreed with because I said nothing nicely.

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Brian Micklethwait did a posting a blog age ago (on Saturday) about higher education, and commenters have been gouging occasional lumps out of each other ever since. Normally such comment wars can be left to the consenting adults (or not-so-adults) directly involved. However, the latest comment (number 47) in this particular ruckus is such a choice one that it deserves a separate posting here. Brian not sure if it is entirely fair to its victim, but he loves it anyway.

Guessedworker,

I am very far from being an idealist, I am however an ideologue in that I am a consistent advocate of the doctrine of pure anarcho-libertarianism.

You are quite right that the dogmas of the liberal left are a menace and they need to be refuted, I spend much time doing that whenever I encounter such people, especially the marxoid greens who abound. However also a threat to liberty are the equally pernicious dogmas of the social conservatives, of which you are an advocate. I do not think that the state should be supporting or oppressing any groups at others expense. You may not want to sort out the laudable traits in people but I certainly do and the only way to do this meaningfully is to allow the market to work.

There has been nothing like a free market in personal behaviour and self expression for the last forty years. There has been instead a mixture of on the one hand repression and on the other hand state subsidy of fecklesness. This looks to you like a free market because you haven't the first idea of what a free market actually is. It may well be that we have an 'eternal nature' as you say but your narrow and clumsy understanding of it is a useless guide to policy, it is the dumb interplay between the fools on the left and you fools on the socially conservative right over the last forty years that have brought forth the 'rivers of pain'.

For my own lifestyle I seek no subsidy but I certainly will not tolerate any repression. I want not equality but freedom.

Paul Coulam

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Just over a decade ago, the US and the EU conspired to conduct what has proved to be a very successful war against low-tax jurisdictions and banking secrecy. Under a fig-leaf of a campaign to eradicate 'drug-dealing' and 'terrorism' (but truthfully to maintain the integrity of their various state-welfare arranagements) they employed a combination of legislation, diplomacy and outright bullying to effectively hobble (and, in some cases, shut down) the Western offshore-investment industry.

As expected, the EU went further in this war than the US where the 'anti-money laundering' regime metastasised into a ludicrous campaign against what they called 'unfair tax competition'.

Well, now the chicks are coming home to roost. Or, more accurately, they are flying the nest:

The world's major private banks are beefing up operations in Singapore, anticipating that up to a trillion US dollars worth of offshore assets in Europe may be looking for a new home in the next couple of years.

Changes in banking secrecy and tax laws due to take effect in the European Union from 2005 are expected to encourage offshore investors in traditional havens like Switzerland and Luxembourg to start moving their money to other centres.

Singapore, with its stable political system and excellent infrastructure, is seen getting a big share of this money.

"We have estimated that from Europe about a trillion plus could be highly movable without too much difficulty," said Roman Scott, vice-president at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). "Some of those guys are going to say; 'I need an offshore centre that's not going to be squeezed down'.

All the European places are being squeezed. You can't go into the US, so you suddenly start to look at Asia as attractive," he said.

Western political elites are rather like heroin-addicts. No amount of argument, persuasion or reason will do anything to deter them from their narcotic fix.

Lessons generally have to be learned the hard way.

[My thanks to Dr.Chris Tame who posted this article to the Libertarian Alliance Forum.]

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Blogging is unpredictable. It began as innocent posting by me about the Segway, which is a sort of mobile Zimmer frame, on Transport Blog.

Then Patrick Crozier, presiding boss of Transport Blog, made this rather more profound comment.

I have no idea whether the Segway is a good idea or not. But it strikes me as one in a long list of good ideas eg. bikes, roller skates, the C5, which might have been the answer to all sorts of our problems had it only been possible to give them the right sort of road space.

Take roller skates. Small, fast, relatively easy to learn. They should be fantastic. Lots of people should be using them. Why aren't they? Because if you skate on the pavement you are constantly bumping into people and if you skate on the road you get run over (if not arrested).

But what if you had dedicated roller skate lanes or even dedicated roller skate highways? Different story – perhaps.

Incidentally, this is one of the most compelling reasons (I think) to want a free market in transport – because if entrepreneurs could do their own thing we might actually find out what forms of transport were actually (given all the factors) the best. We certainly aren't going to find out so long as the state runs the show.

From the ridiculous to the sublime.

David Sucher of City Comforts Blog, copying and pasting all of Patrick's comment onto his blog, responded thus:

1. Why not look at the way things are as the result indeed of a free-market of choices but in a vast time frame and not bound by the use of coin? There's an expression "people get the kind of government they ask for." I believe it. Think of it as people, individuals, corporations, etc making choices over the span of several centuries or even longer. In the USA, at least, state creation/control/limitation of the transport system has emerged out of the desires of the populace. (Perhaps that is difficult for either the extremists – I don't mean the people at Transport Blog, of course – of left and right to accept, finding as they do on every hand a conspiracy to enslave the people.)

2. Crozier raises a valid question about the state monopoly over road space. This monopoly is an outgrowth of eminent domain.

And the reason we have (and forgive me for repeating myself yet again) eminent domain (compulsory purchase) is because earlier generations, going back hundreds of years, found it impossible to create transport networks without such a mechanism. Our tradition of eminent domain goes back to an era when The King's Highway was to be taken literally. (Though I am an anti-monarchy – not that what the British do is any of my direct business – I can also readily concede the evolutionary necessity for kingship and pay it its historical due.) You cannot create a network which crosses the properties of thousands (or at least hundreds) without compulsory purchase; and you cannot leave compulsory purchase in the hands of a private party as that leads to the very abuses which so concern libertarians. So we have a double bind: the bargaining problem, the "hold-out" problem makes it structurally impossible to create a network without eminent domain and yet to delegate eminent domain to private parties is even more horrendous than leaving it with government. I think that any discussions of the government as monopoly over road space must start with those assumptions.

***

Perhaps I demonstrate my lack of imagination but I cannot visualize a scenario in which our routes and corridors are transferred to private parties. Does that mean that we might lose efficiency compared to how a private party might manage the space? Perhaps in theory yes a private party could build/manage a street grid (and in Seattle, btw, that consists of roughly 50% of the land area of the city) better than the government does. But that's in theory.

I just can't see how it would either evolve or be managed. Indeed, that does mean that lots of good ideas – more dedicated bike paths – will be ignored by conventional majoritarian thinking. But the transaction costs of the market itself require that government (or something similar) step in to create common, network systems because The market is incapable of doing it itself.

Or else it would have already done so.

And now a very few brief comments from me, because what I really want is for the Samizdata libertarian commenters gang to lay into this guy, politely of course, as politely as he lays into us.

First, I've long ago lost count of the number of times when an arguer against the free market confuses his own inability to imagine a market-based solution to some entrepreneurial problem or other with the permanent inability of any entrepreneur, in any market, anywhere, ever to come up with such answers. Sucher at least has the grace to use the phrase "Perhaps I demonstrate my lack of imagination …" in using this line of attack. Usually this argument is not so politely put, but the impolite version is no different in substance to Sucher's version.

Second, doesn't Sucher's argument boil down to saying that might is right? "People get the kind of government they ask for." David Sucher says he believes this. Does he really believe it? I was going to put: Only in America. But the truth is more like: Not even in America. The fact that something hasn't yet happened maybe opens up the possibility that it is impossible, but it doesn't prove it.

We now live in the Age of Democracy, as surely as people in earlier times lived in the Age of Kings, and earlier than that in the Age of Caesars. And democratic assemblies and electorates all of them seize control of "infrastructure", and by the ubiquity of their thieving they suggest that such theft is necessary, and impossible not to have. And their apologists certainly say so, endlessly. (They say similar things about education and healthcare.) I daresay in earlier times people felt much the same about military conscription, capital punishment, interrogating prisoners with torture, and the upper classes raping the women of the lower classes with impunity, all of which are things which still happen a lot but which are not any longer considered inevitable or necessary if civilisation is to keep advancing.

But we shouldn't be diverted from the outrageousness of the claim that, in general, governmentally speaking, people get what they ask for to divert us from the particular debate about whether linear and connected infrastructure of all kinds can or cannot be supplied in a purely free market.

Suppose a democratic assembly existed which had been persuaded that, although it could steal all the infrastructure it wanted to, it nevertheless ought not to. And suppose it further defcided that nothing infrastructural could be done without the consent (purchased freely) of all the property owners in the path of such plans. How would matters then develop? Would the assembly really be obliged to intervene, in order for us to have any running water at all, or any roads or footpaths? Would the concept of "right of way" lead necessarily and inexorably to the democratic equivalent of the King's Highway, which the King (democracy, with taxation money) would then be obliged to look after, because if he didn't no one would.

These are important questions, which I usually approach here at Samizdata from the other end. In my wonders of capitalism posts I often end by asking (by way of explaining what the post is really about) something like: Wouldn't it be great if the stuff now engulfed by the public sector could be as good as [insert capitalist wonder of choice]? What if roads were constructed as carefully and as artfully as the vehicles that now travel on them? What if one could choose one's water supply as happily and in the light of as many choices as one now chooses wine or fizzy drink of the sort that comes to us in supermarket bottles? What if improving the road system could be as relatively painless as the switch from LPs to CDs, or from VHS to DVD?

It would be a great shame for civilisation to miss out on such wonders merely because the people who believed them desirable accepted by default the argument that they are impossible, rather than because they really are impossible.

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Tax greed is running rampant in California these days. The Statists have managed to, if not quite kill, make the golden goose quite ill. Revenues are falling and they have no way to fund more welfare for politicians and bureaucrats. They need a new victim - one that has not yet been bled to within an inch of its' life.

The American Indians are in their sights once again. Over the last decade or so many tribes have gone from rags to riches. They've done it the old fashioned American way: capitalism. Some of this may be due to the leadership of people like American Indian Movement leader Russell Means, although I cannot state that as proven fact.

Russell's imposing warrior's frame is well known in the Libertarian community: he ran against Ron Paul for the 1988 LP Presidential slot. He lost the nomination but gave a memorable concession speech, spiced with his signature line, "Individual liberty; Individual Responsibility". His after-the-vote party was also much more fun than Ron's... almost as much fun as a Kansas Caucus.

Reservations are far from libertarian. They've been inundated by socialist activists for many decades. Even so, Marxism has not displaced the traditional culture. As Russell wrote in a paper long ago in his more radical youth, socialism is just another alien European philosophy. It has nothing to say to Indians.

It's time again for the American Indian's to string their lawyers and sharpen their lobbyists. The Great White Liars in State Houses across the continent are once again on the march to expropriate Indian wealth.

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Here's an interesting titbit of news, which I just got from following a trackback to something else to this guy (and his blog).

The Guardian is starting a blog devoted to the single issue of abolishing agricultural subsidies.

Today (Monday, August 18, 2003) with only a few weeks to go before the World Trade Organisation meets in Cancun the Guardian is launching a new website with a single aim:

Help the poorest countries by kicking into oblivion All Agricultural Subsidies
(kickAAS)

This is, you might say, lefties giving leftism a libertarian hook, to refashion one of Perry de Havilland's most favoured memes. I say, good for them.

I've always felt that in the long run (okay, the very long run), if libertarianism (okay, the Samizdata meta-context) were ever to triumph in the UK, it would be via the Guardian and by outflanking the traditional right, which has always had a lively sense of the revolutionary and hence to them regrettable nature of the free market. Guardianistas are trouble-makers first and only socialist centralists second and because this makes trouble for smug establishmentarians. If there's libertarian (Samizdata meta … etc.) trouble to be made, they'll make that too.

The message is bound to get spread around in some very unlikely places, many of them very angry and hostile places for such a message, that state spending doesn't work at achieving its publicly stated goals and most especially doesn't work at making poor people richer.

I expect a lot of regular Guardian readers to be angry about this. Good.

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Virginia Postrel's latest NY Times column highlights what may become a growing weakness in the regulatory state.

Oscar Wilde defined a cynic as someone who "knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing." To many people, that sounds like an economist or an executive.

But Wilde's witticism ignores what prices do. They convey information about how people value different goods, including the intangibles an aesthete like Wilde would care about most.

. . .

Public policy often regards aesthetic value as illegitimate or nonexistent. This oversight comes less from ideological conviction than from technocratic practice. Unlike prices, regulatory policy requires articulated justifications and objective standards. So policy makers emphasize measurable factors and ignore subjective pleasures.

As the info-industrial economy advances, the regulatory state will look increasingly out of step and, one hopes, irrelevant and undesirable. Regulation is all about conformity, and while top down conformity might appear to be tolerable in a society that is struggling to make ends meet, one hopes that it will become increasingly intolerable as it becomes more of a barrier to the kinds of pleasure-seeking and self-realization that people are willing to go to great lengths to achieve when they have the means to do so. As Ms. Postrel points out, the pricing mechanism of the market lets people pursue these essentially aesthetic ends as far as they want (or can afford), while top-down policy-driven efficiencies all too often preclude these pursuits.

Future debates over the regulatory state may play out as a struggle between the competing values of risk-aversion and efficiency on the one hand, and self-individuation and aesthetics on the other.

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Those liberty-loving cyber-guerillas over at Bureaucrash have cooked up a wry little animation the subject of which is a Canadian (I presume) politician caught red-handed (and gold-wristed) in the act of selling snake-oil.

Well worth a look.

[My thanks to reader Ernest Young for the link.]

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David Sucher asks: "why are libertarians so much wittier than liberals?"

The answer is that the sense of humour comes from a libertarian understanding of the world. Statists see a world of oppression and pain, and get depressed because of global warming and evil multinationals. Libertarians see the world in a different way, seeing the bad in the world, but also seeing the great advances that humankind has experienced over the past few hundred years. They have greater confidence in humanity, progress and the future. So they can afford to not take life completely seriously. The sense of humour is profoundly libertarian. (Thanks to Madsen Pirie for giving me the idea for this post.)

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My first reaction to this story was "Aha! Another reason to despise the UN and its tranzi fellow travellers! As if I needed one." And indeed, there is plenty to despise in this story. It turns out that a thriving market in endangered animal skins has sprung up in Afghanistan to serve the demands of the UN and NGO personnel assigned there.

When I asked him if he had any coats made of snow leopard skin, he said no. But the reason was far from reassuring - he had sold out.

They have become so expensive for us - $500. Too expensive for Afghans but foreigners can buy them," he said.

We have asked most of the foreigners not to buy these things and if there is not a market from the foreigners the Afghan people probably don't need it," [Afghan Environment Minister Yousef Nouristani] says.

"It's the market created by the foreigners - particularly those who are working with the UN or other NGOs."

The tooth-grinding hypocrisy of UN and NGO personnel flouting international law banning the trade in these skins is bad enough. The fact that most tranzis are also pious "movement" environmentalists is merely salt in the wound.

However, for dedicated libertarians, it raises one of the perennial dilemmas: what to do with wild animals? Laws restricting the harvesting and sale of wild animal skins, organs, meat, and whatnot would appear to run afoul of libertarian principles espousing free trade and free markets, and indeed the Afghan government is trying to reach the benchmark for protection of these animals set by, gulp, the Taliban.

The dilemma is sharpened in Afghanistan because the dire poverty of many people there puts their interests in direct conflict with protection of endangered species.

Snow leopards are most commonly found in north-eastern Afghanistan in an area known as the Wakhan.

I spoke to Ali Azimi, the author of a report on Afghanistan's environmental problems, who has just returned from a 10-day trip to the area.

"I was struck by the abject poverty of the people," he said. "Most can barely afford to have one meal a day.

"And the meal usually consists of a type of grass that grows in the Wakhan six months of the year. Six months it is snowbound.

"What they eat is what has been collected over the summer months - and it is a desperate situation for them. So they're facing poverty and starvation in the Wakhan."

This poverty and starvation is forcing people to hunt animals that would normally be the prey of the snow leopards - and the thousands of dollars that some people are prepared to pay for their skins is encouraging poachers to hunt these rare and beautiful creatures.

The long-term solution to these environmental issues is, of course, to raise the level of income and wealth in Afghanistan so that no one is forced to compete with wild animals for survival, and so that the "luxury good" of protected lands and species becomes affordable. In the shorter run (and in the long run as well) it is difficult to see how wild lands and, especially, wild animals can be protected from the tragedy of the commons without some form of state intervention, whether it is via market regulation outlawing the trade in animal products, the purchase and "protection" of lands, the regulation of hunting activity, or some variant or combination of all three.

Thanks to the inevitable and ubiquitous Instapundit for the first link to this story. Thanks also to (this hurts, folks) the BBC for originating the story.

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The American Liberty Foundation has an hilarious advert in progress called "Suzie and the Senator" which you can listen to here. They have previously produced some of the best Second Amendment adverts that have ever aired and are now targetting Washington DC with intent to Down Size.

If you like what you hear, you may make a donation via the website. It is up to you to ensure "Suzie and the Senator" and ALF's other marvelous adverts go on the air.

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If anyone doubted that the libertarian 'vibe' is seen by many as powerful and attractive, then the fact so many people who represent its antithesis keep trying to hijack the term to mean 'someone opposed to liberty' should make it clear that the word 'libertarian' is hot, hot, hot (i.e. much as the term 'liberal' within the Anglosphere was hijacked when it was hot and which has now come to mean 'illiberal', which is to say, socialist).

I have argued before that Libertarian Socialism is an oxymoron... well the same applies to Libertarian National Socialism. But then given that National Socialism and Socialism are just tactical variants within the same old statist collectivist class of political philosophy, it is hardly surprising the arguments as to why one is absurd to call itself libertarian applies equally well to the other.

The only real difference is that the Nazi variety of socialist collectivists just have better tailors and a worse press. The use of the term by overt Nazis is really no more bizarre than its use by Noam Chomsky, that socialist apologist for Pol Pot and several other of the world's collectivist mass murderers.

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All governments love boasting about their achievements and HMG is no exception. A particular favourite boast for the current lot is how many jobs they have created since they came to power. Sounds good, doesn't it.

But there is a whole world of difference between job creation and wealth creation. In fact, the two things can be mutually exclusive:

Labour has hired 344,000 extra people to work for the Government since it took office, with the state now employing 5.3m people, or one in five of the workforce, according to figures released yesterday.

Until Labour was elected, the government payroll had fallen for 15 years, mostly thanks to the privatisations of the 1980s, but that is now being reversed by a massive public spending spree funded from tax rises.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are overseeing a hiring bonanza. Hundreds of thousands are joining the public sector, especially in the National Health Service, where 160,000 more staff have been taken on. The NHS now employs about 1.3m people, reputed to be more than any other civilian organisation in the world apart from the Indian railway.

If those people working in the shrinking private sector want to know exactly why they have to hand over more of their income and savings every year to their government, I suggest that they look here for an answer.

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Here's another for the Samizdata Wonders of Capitalism collection.

In her intro at the top of her blog, Natalie Solent says:

Politics, news, libertarianism, Science Fiction, religion, sewing. You got a problem, bud? I like sewing.

Me too. Not to do it mind, but when I go to Natalie, I hope to be reading about it every so often. But it's mostly about politics, news, libertarianism, etc.

However, yesterday there was a sewing item.

Enough of politics …

Good, good.

… I have got me an overlocker.

What's that?

It cost more than my last car but two.

No, not what did it cost? What is it?

These beasties are to proper sewing machines what the microwave oven is to a proper oven - the quote comes from Jan Saunders of Sewing for Dummies fame, and it's true. An overlocker can't do some things that a proper sewing machine can but it does its more limited range of tasks much faster and, once you have one, the change in the relative cost in effort of each action inevitably changes the whole style of cuisine, sorry, sewing. For benighted readers who do not know what an overlocker is, take off your T-shirts. Yes, very nice. Now turn the T inside out and look at the seams. They were sewn, bound and cut in one operation by an overlocker. The fluffy, softer thread used is distinctive, and overlockers are better at not distorting stretchy fabrics than an ordinary sewing machine is. In the opposite direction, they are also better at not puckering up thin, fray-prone "brittle" fabrics. I have already had the guts to make a child's dressing-up cloak from some ridiculous shiny stuff that I had kept for years waiting for the day when I got my Black Belt.

This is the …

… Janome MyLock 644D for the hordes of sewing-geeks who infest this blog like swarming locusts.

Yes, we have swarms of those too, because we have swarms of everything. But for the benefit of the more typical Samizdata reader, Mr Natalie helps out:

My husband has kindly translated sewing geek language into Engineering: the overlocker is to the ordinary sewing machine what the vertical mill is to the lathe; you can do almost anything on a lathe including vertical milling - but a mill does the job so much better.

Serious point about capitalism, excellence of, to end with: Some of you may not have understood all of what Natalie, or even Mr Natalie, says about her new Janome MyLock 644D overlocker. I think it is clear that she likes it, but I for one can't claim to be entirely sure about all the detail of exactly why. But with capitalism, this doesn't matter. All that is required in a free market is that the people involved directly in a deal understand what they are doing.

In particular, no politicians need get involved, or feel that they have to understand what is going on, before matters can proceed satisfactorily. Imagine how much more primitive and miserable life would be if politicians did have to understand everything and supervise everything.

Well, you don't have to. Samizdata is full of reports about just such circumstances.

Take Cuba, a classic "The Boss has to understand everything" kind of place. Paul Marks and David Carr weren't agreeing yesterday about what will happen next, but between them they describe what a grim and ghastly and easily understood place Cuba now is very well.

And for an example nearer to home of circumstances ever more directly supervised by the politicians and consequently ever more shambolic, look no further than this posting which I also did here only yesterday, about Britain's ever more state controlled examination system.

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Today I received the following email:

Brian,

Brian has started a webring of Brians with blogs. If you would like to join us, go and sign up here.

Brian

What is a webring? If I signed up to it, would the rest of my life be ruined? The Brian who sent me this email seems to be gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that, consenting adults, some of my best friends..., I'm personally in favour of gay marriage, blah blah blah. But if I sign up, will I be bombarded with gay porn for the rest of my days?

In general, I feel that it is good that we Brians are getting together, and if a webring is what I think it may be, we can perhaps sit on one, in a circle, perhaps somewhere in the countryside, and discuss the Brian Issue. That is, we can discuss why cuckolded husbands, send-up substitutes for Jesus Christ, etc. etc., in the movies, all seem to be called Brian. Brian is not a cool name, is my point. Maybe we Brians can get together and change that. (The danger, of course, is that by getting together in such ways as these, we might merely confirm all the existing anti-Brian stereotypes, and cause Brianphobia to become even more deeply entrenched.)

Meanwhile, how many indisputably cool Brians can be assembled? I offer two outstanding contemporary sportsman: the West Indian cricket captain and ace batsman Brian Lara, and the Irish rugby captain and ace centre threequarter Brian O'Driscoll.

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Given its intimate association with brutal and murderous 'ethnic cleansing' it is entirely understandable that the term 'population transfer' raises more than a few hackles.

But it need not necessarily be something to fear. Provided it is thought of in terms of free trade, then I can see a peaceful and voluntary process of population transfer as a beneficial thing.

Indeed, the process already appears to be underway:

A husband and wife in Minnesota, a college student in Georgia, a young executive in New York. Though each has distinct motives for packing up, they agree the United States is growing too conservative and believe Canada offers a more inclusive, less selfish society.

"For me, it's a no-brainer," said Mollie Ingebrand, a puppeteer from Minneapolis who plans to go to Vancouver with her lawyer husband and 2-year-old son.

Nor are these itchy feet to be found exclusively in the USA. There are people in Britain too, like this correspondent to the Guardian (concerning the death of Dr.David Kelly), who see Canada as the 'Golden Medina':

I think he HAD TO BE RUBBED OUT. He knew too much, where the bodies were buried, so his had to be buried as well. Maybe you're more honest than we are: the media and the government are co=conspirators here. So good luck. I"m moving to Canada, land of the free.

Some may see this as a tragedy but I see it as an indirect means of slashing public spending. Surely it is preferable for all these guardianistas and tax-consumers to converge upon one country where they can stew in each other's misery rather than staying where they are, demanding entitlements and whining interminably about the unfairness of it all. Together, they can truly build the kind of society they want to live in.

Of course this process need not, and should not, be a one-way street. Canada has no shortage of ambitious, hard-working people who might see their futures as somewhat sullen in the Land of the Puppeteers. The easiest solution is for them to pack their bags and head off to less stultifying climes where their talent and energy will be both appreciated and rewarded.

In fact, that is what loads of Canadians have been doing:

But every year since 1977, more Canadians have emigrated to the United States than vice versa — the 2001 figures were 5,894 Americans moving north, 30,203 Canadians moving south.

Quite what this means for Canada in the long run I dare not even imagine but for the rest of us it can only be good news. Carry on, I say.

[My thanks to the Brothers Judd for the link and to Peter Cuthbertson for the Guardian letter.]

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As an aspiring student of liberty, I've read some books, such as Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty, which sorted out complex conceptions I'd previously struggled with, and read other books, such as Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, which just blew my mind straight out of the water. But in my quest for classical liberal enlightenment, over the past five years, I've had the occasional good fortune to stumble across a few rare gems which have cracked open both nuts.

These rare and concise works of genius have crystallized my ragged thoughts and exploded them into a dagger-sharpened clarity, to achieve, for me, a double-whammy Wow effect.

You may have enjoyed some of these masterpieces, yourself, such as Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, and Von Mises' The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality. I see the world through a far clearer lens, after having read these paradigm shakers, than I ever did before, through an unformed fog of Platonic statism.

Socialists, particularly, hate these books. Because to read them, and to understand them, is to reject socialism's own evil hate-filled religion. And if we were to let these red Borg force their nauseous European super state upon us, these books would soon get jettisoned onto their mass tribal bonfire. But which one would get tossed on first, in a square, in Berlin? There can only be one. And I think I've just read it.

But before I continue, I must state my position as a late late book reviewer.

I find that size matters. I like small books. To me, small is good; small is wonderful; small is beautiful.

Even better than that, I like small books with very small words. So don't give me no John Stuart Mill; I just can't hack it. Big books, big words, big turn-off.

But before I come to the main subject of this review, there is a big book, out there, which has to be dealt with first. What is this monumental blockbuster? It's a Grand Canyon of a book, it's a Rhodes Colossus of a book, it's an Incredible Hulk of a book. It is Man, Economy, and State, by Murray N. Rothbard.

This near-thousand page monster just has to be seen to be believed. They had to bring it to the house in a truck; it took three men just to lift it to the door, and we had to strengthen the building's foundations before we dared risk bringing the beast in.

And then once we'd settled it onto its bookshelf, it sat there for two long years, basking in its own gravitational mass. I'd completed a major quest to stagger up the North Face of Von Mises' Human Action, and a wise owl had advised that Man, Economy, and State was the next book up. But I just couldn't face it. Von Mises had worn me out, and the thought of wading through this Hummer-sized doorstopper, proved too great a challenge for one so feeble of mind and body.

However, the name Murray N. Rothbard just kept cropping up again and again. I couldn't escape it as the next advised port of call, or the mantra that to read any Rothbard you had to start first with this Magnum Opus. So, with a weary heart, I donned the climbing gear, broke out the ice-axe, and attacked this huge book's forbidding South Face.

But what a joy of leisured utility! Although Rothbard promises you he's about to cover the whole of economics in one mighty swoop, it's a breeze. You almost feel you do understand the whole of economics, in one go, as he whisks you from Robinson Crusoe's island, all the way through to the New York Stock Exchange, via tree berries, grains of gold, and the hideous state-controlled monetary inflation system. I must warn you though; this light-headed feeling of understanding soon passes if you try to explain Rothbard's axioms to anyone else, without holding the book open at the right page.

This effect makes the book a bit like that gold box, in Pulp Fiction, which Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta have to recover, at the start of the film. When you open it, you're happy. When you close it, the book becomes a complete mystery again.

Which brings us to our book review goal; Rothbard's The Ethics of Liberty. This fabulous book of power, clarity, and near irrefutability, has left me almost numb in admiration. Rothbard starts with a section on Natural Law, which he builds up, I thought, in a similar way to Leonard Peikoff, with Ayn Rand's axioms of Objectivism. From there, once Rothbard has created his legal platform, he proceeds directly towards his ethics of liberty.

Rothbard works through, amongst many other things, interpersonal relationships, voluntary exchange, property ownership, self defence, children's rights, human rights, property rights, and contracts. It's all there. And best of all, for a man like me; it's all nice and short.

But the best part of the book is its second half; Parts III to V. Here Rothbard explains the immorality of the state, the nature of tax as theft, the inevitable active aggression of the state towards the individual, and the nature of the aristocratic parasites using the state to feed off the rest of us (virtually all Guardian readers, here in the UK).

Rothbard especially covers how the state came into being, how it maintains itself, often by co-opting these self-regarding Guardian-reading intellectuals, and best of all, how he thinks the state can be laid low. He covers this, in the last chapter of the book, Toward a Theory of Strategy for Liberty.

And it is in this chapter he resolves a difficult issue for me personally, which Brian Micklethwait, and others, may have become slightly concerned over: the Invasion of The Conservatives.

Brian, I'd like to reassure you, and Perry, and anyone else even half-interested, that I am not now, have never been, and will never be, a Conservative, if by that term you mean a rightist statist. However, I am willing to grant you that I may have occasionally strayed into what Rothbard calls the territory of Right Opportunism, a term he neatly borrows from the Marxists.

He regards it as proper, that libertarians should call for the immediate abolition of the state, however, to achieve this goal, temporary alliances may be necessary with other groups (conservatives, civil rights people, and so on), on specific issues, such as the reduction of taxation, or a particular state regulation. But we must never lose sight of the end game, or stray in any way, along the path towards full liberty. For instance, we should not fight for a tax cutting program by agreeing that a conservative government should switch from an income tax to a sales tax. The government should just cut the income tax, full stop, and cut its spending accordingly. Rothbard also disbars the use of collectivist methods to achieve our aims, for example, by murdering successful collectivist opponents to liberty.

Right Opportunism is where you can lose sight of your long-term libertarian goals, in a pursuit of a short-term libertarian gain.

He also describes Left Sectarianism, where some may decry any link-up with any other group, which does not also call for immediate full-scale liberty. He sees this ultra-sectarianism as non-progressive and futile.

But what I like best about Rothbard is his overwhelming optimism. This book was written in 1982, and even back then he successfully predicted the imminent collapse of aggressive worldwide socialism, which occurred at the end of the 1980s, with the fall of the Berlin wall. He also postulated that a collectivist tyranny could only survive indefinitely inside an agrarian society, and due to capitalistic complexity, it could never survive indefinitely within a modern industrial society, without that society inevitably breaking down.

The collectivist state will always eat up any economic reserve, created before the collectivist rise of state power; it will then begin to collapse, as soon as it has to pay out all of its current spending needs with all of its current tax receipts. We saw this in the early part of the twentieth century. The laissez-faire nineteenth century capitalists built up an enormous reserve, which the socialists, of the early twentieth century, took several decades to work through.

Once they'd consumed it all, by the 1970s, everything started going horribly pear-shaped. Essentially, to borrow a phrase from Mr Carr, the drinks ran out.

We saw this process repeat itself, after the economic triumphs of Reagan and Thatcher. These two cold-war warriors forced the Russian communists to cannibalize themselves to destruction, through containment, and then helped western society build up another capital reserve, by rolling back some of the state. Clinton and Blair then went on to squander all of this, in two long socialist parties, one in the US, albeit tempered by Clinton's long lame-duck status, and one over here in the UK, which kicked off in 1997.

So here, in the UK after six years of socialism, the drinks have run out again, and the inevitable hangover is starting. They can't figure it out, as to why New Labour has hit the buffers, with nothing further to offer. But we're down to dwindling tax receipts, and, surprise, surprise, massive government borrowing, as all the dreadful policies of monopoly public service and regulated state franchise run into the sand, like we always said they would. Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.

(Why won't these people just accept that socialism doesn't work? It'd be much easier in the long run, for all of us.)

All the collectivist variations have now been tried out and they've all failed, says Rothbard, so only true freedom is left as a valid option. Let's all say three big cheers to that, and then thank Mr Rothbard for this magnificent work.

Reading The Ethics of Liberty seemed a bit mad, at first, as Rothbard described a way of life without an overarching state, or even a minarchist one. But the way he describes the nature of a state's inherent evil, and its overwhelming short-termist incompetence, he has made it very hard for me to argue against him.

I shall have to run out immediately and buy his other major books, Power and Market, and For a New Liberty, to figure out how he thinks we can have competing police and judicial services, something my previous heroine Ayn Rand thought nonsensical, and something which I intuitively feel doesn't quite make sense. But I've got a feeling he'll prove it to me.

While I'm out doing that, if you haven't got them, I thoroughly recommend you run out yourself and buy Man, Economy, and State, and The Ethics of Liberty. Okay, so this review is 21 years too late, but better late than never, especially as both of these books are worth every grain of gold, a monetary commodity which retains its value, even over two decades!

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An earlier article by Gabriel Syme which was about the observations of a British Army Officer known to us, in which he relates his experiences in and around Basra, in Iraq, attracted a comment from one of our most thoughtful regular commenters. This gentleman argued that it was unreasonable for this officer to be able to enter and search houses of Iraqis without a search warrant. Now as this particular commenter is clearly a thoughtful fellow traveller with whom all the writers of Samizdata.net would find little room for ideological disagreement on most issues which vex us and whose past remarks were so interesting we used them as a 'guest writer' article on Samizdata.net, I thought his views deserved addressing with an article rather than just a comment. I think the core of my problem with the notion being suggested here is one of the most lethal aspects of libertarian thought and why it is so markedly unsuccessful in breaking into the mainstream, at least overtly... this error of which I speak is in fact the flip side of what makes socialism so monstrous... the complete inability to see the difference between normal civil society and society in an emergency situation.

For the socialists, they see how collective action in war works (in effect tribalising society) and try to apply the same logic to peacetime... a Labour Party slogan in post-war 1945 was "If we can achieve so much together in war, think what we can do in peacetime!"... which of course presumes there is no qualitative and material difference between a society at war and one at peace. For them, all economic decisions are subordinated to the collective, which makes some sense if you have to produce more aircraft than Nazi Germany in order to avoid mass annihilation or enslavement but none whatsoever if you just want more people to have more and better washing machines, a wider selection of flavoured coffee beans and responsive dynamic economy... not to mention such bagatelles as personal liberty. Statist conservatives are little better, declaring 'war on drugs/poverty/illiteracy/whatever' and trying to deal with the distortions of civil society they themselves are largely responsible for as issues justifying not just the language but the very underlying collectivising logic of war.

Alas so many libertarians make the same error in reverse. They cannot see the difference between when the network of social interactions we call markets and private free associations that characterise normal civil society are functioning... and situations in which large collections of people are trying to kill other groups of people that characterize wars and major civil disorder or serious crisis. Sorry guys, but at times like those, normal rules of civil interaction simply do not apply. Thermobaric explosions, plagues, rioting mobs and forest fires are not known for their propensity to respect even the most pukka of property boundaries.

For a more 'local' example... if a house is burning down and the only way for some fire-fighters to put it out is to run their hoses across the lawns of someone who does not wish them to do so, the extremist propertarian strand of libertarian thought would argue that as the lawn is private property, tough luck on the guy whose house is burning down. Well that is lunacy (and why I call myself a social individualist rather than a libertarian most of the time). Without a common law right to go where you must when faced with a clear and present danger, a "libertarian" social order will simply fall apart the first time it faces a collective threat (be it a war, forest fire or plague). People will not sit and watch their families burn because someone else has interpreted what Murray Rothbard or Hans Herman Hoppe wrote about the right to defend private property. I am all for private property and the right not to have people kicking down your doors in the middle of the night, but the reality is that much of the world does not look like the relatively tranquil civil societies of the First World. To see the peaceful and mundane logic that does and indeed should pertain in Islington, Peoria and Calgary as applying to Basra, Baghdad and Mosul in the violent aftermath of a war is not just wrong, it is perverse.

In the real world, a few weeks after a war in which a dictatorship that has been in power for over 25 years was overthrown, normal rules of civil interaction do NOT apply. It does not mean all notions of civilised behaviour goes out the window, but search warrants? Oh please. The mafia-like homicidal Ba'athist are deeply entrenched in Iraq and will only be completely destroyed if the occupying powers are willing to do whatever it takes, which means kicking down peoples doors in the middle of the night on little more than hunches and searching for weapons at bayonet point. The only legitimate use of force is when force can be used effectively... and tying up soldiers in such notions as search warrants during a counterinsurgency action means you would be better off just abandoning any pretence that you are using force to suppress Ba'athist remnants in Iraq and just replace the squadies with an equal number of unarmed American lawyers.

Hmmm... considering the likely outcome of doing that and the vastly excessive number of lawyers in the USA, maybe it is not such a bad idea after all.

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R K Jones eschews the crudity of opening a can of whoop ass and prefers to see rebellion served up in shot glasses

Those obsessed with fine whiskeys are perhaps already familiar with Malt Advocate magazine. Those with functioning livers may think of it as the Guns & Ammo for the discerning tippler. Each issue contains detailed looks at the international trade in liquor, almost always with an anti-regulatory bent. People expect to see reasoned support for free trade in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, or (sometimes) The Economist, but a drinks trade magazine? One doesn't expect to buy a glossy, high-end specialty liquor magazine for the political commentary, but the current quarter's issue (sadly, only teasers are available on-line) is worth a look. Any forum where a prominent American distiller opens his portion of a panel discussion (concerning regulation and taxation of the industry) with the words...

We need another Whiskey Rebellion

...is worthy of support.

Given the international, and free trading character of the liquor industry, I suppose the only real surprise should be that the paper mache puppet head brigade hasn't yet begun picketing distilleries. Does the tone of the magazine mean anything about a change in attitude in the world? Or am I deceiving myself? I don't know, but writers of a libertarian bent going back as far as Ayn Rand (and further) have been criticizing businessmen for a lack of ideology. Thus it is nice to see an industry niche publication that 'gets it'.

Self-deception may be central to the human condition, and not exclusively confined to libertarians. However we often seem to have a particularly wide streak of it when it comes to looking at the world around us for signs that others may some day come round to sensible views. Just the same, it is always pleasant to see indications precisely that may indeed be happening.

RK Jones

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For years I've been jabbering away on radio jabber-ins, in favour of the right of people to discriminate in the use of their property, and in particular of minorities to discriminate against majorities, and in particular of the right of gays to discriminate against straights. Are you in favour of such a right? Question mark, question mark. Because I am. And so on. Property rights. The right to fire people because you've taken a dislike to the colour of their eyes. It's their property, it's their money, etc. etc.

So this story gave me particular pleasure, even though it's about something that shouldn't be happening.

A manager of a gay bar was told to discriminate against heterosexuals and ordered to throw out a straight couple for kissing, an employment tribunal was told yesterday.

Nothing wrong with a gay bar discriminating, but they shouldn't be hauled up in front of any tribunal.

Angelo Vigil, the assistant manager of G-A-Y bar in Soho, London, said the venue's co-director and licensee, Jeremy Joseph, ordered him to deny entry to heterosexual couples as well as mixed groups of gay and straight revellers.

The nerve. Who does this Jeremy Joseph think he is? He's behaving like he owns the place. Doesn't he realise that he owns nothing? He is the delegate of the community, in the person of the employment tribunal. The G-A-Y bar in Soho is the property of All Of Us, and if All Of Us, as interpreted by the employment tribunal, say heteros can enter it, enter it they can.

Mr Vigil, of Barons Court, west London, started working at the club, which is owned by the Mean Fiddler Music Group, in September 2002. He resigned three months later and is claiming victimisation and harassment. He told the tribunal in Woburn Place that he understood the importance of preventing homophobia in the bar, but he believed the policy amounted to discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation.

Yes, that's exactly what it amounted to. And if the law forbids this, the law is an ass. Chucking out all non-homos is a nice simple way of chucking out not just the reality of homophobia, but even the mistaken fear of it. Makes very good business sense.

He said when he raised concerns over the policy, he was told by Mr Joseph that he would "face the sack" if he "did not change his attitude".

So. Angelo Vigil, "assistant manager", didn't want to assist the manager in enforcing the manager's preferred policy of who comes in and who doesn't, and how they behave when they're there. So he got the boot. Sounds fair to me.

And even if it wasn't fair, it is their property they wanted Angelo Vigil to help them administer, and it was their money they were paying him to do it.

Even if it wasn't fair, it was still fair, and the employment tribunal should also get the boot.

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The Bush administration may be in the process of revolutionising America's foreign policy but, on the domestic front, it seems like business as usual:

The Bush administration, pressing its campaign against state medical marijuana laws, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to let federal authorities punish California doctors who recommend pot to their patients.

The administration would revoke the federal prescription licenses of doctors who tell their patients marijuana would help them, a prerequisite for obtaining the drug under the state's voter-approved medical marijuana law.

And, of course, his predecessor was no better:

Contending that the drug has no medical value, the Clinton administration announced in January 1997 that doctors who recommended marijuana would lose their licenses to prescribe federally regulated narcotics. Doctors in many fields need federal licenses to remain in practice.

Proof that, regardless of who is sitting in the hot-seat, the absurd and insane 'war on drugs' just has to go on and on and on.

[My thanks to Dr.Chris Tame who posted this article to the Libertarian Alliance Forum.]

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Q: What is the difference between a social democrat and a socialist?

A: A social democrat is a socialist who has realised the socialism doesn't actually work.

A perfect illustration is provided by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, the very model of a modern social democrat, who has announced that things must change:

If we want to generate growth and jobs, we must lower those costs that eat into take-home pay.

Financial constraints are not the only driving force behind our reform programme. The reform of the welfare state is also a precondition for the success of future generations. In the past, the main topic of welfare politics was the redistribution of wealth. First, we must remember that wealth can only be redistributed once it has been generated. Second, we should note that redistribution has limits, beyond which mere monetary transfers encourage dependence. Third, elaborate systems of redistribution tend to produce "side-effects" in opposition to the desired results.

Do my eyes deceive me or is this doyen of the 'Third Way' demanding tax cuts and warning of the dangers of a dependence culture and unintended consequences? No, I think I am reading it right and if Herr Schroder keeps this up he might find himself being invited to write for the Samizdata one of these days.

And neither is this manful attempt to grapple with common sense a breaking of the ranks or a solo frolic in the fields of sanity because I could not help but notice that it follows hot on the heels of this rather more nebulous and ill-defined attempt from Peter Mandelson to say something along similar lines.

Coincidence? No, I don't think so. Nor is it due to mere fickle fate that both of these portentious editorials appear in the pages of the Daily Social Worker where messages like this are about as common as gay bars in Riyadh. Now, I'm taking a calculated guess here but I'd say this is all part of a cunning plan to prepare the ground ahead of a big summit on 'Progressive Governance' (subtitled: 'Oh Christ, we've been rumbled. What do we do now?) to be held here in London this coming weekend.

Could all these ominous warnings and pleas for an open-mind from the likes of Herr Schroder and Mr.Mandelson be a means of softening the ground for heavy blows ahead? Because to the extent that anything at all emerges from this gathering of professional pick-pockets and incurable busybodies, it is bound to be triumphal, shiny 'reform' and 'new deal' initiatives of the kind that pretty much herald an end to the welfare-state settlement.

If I am right (and that remains to be seen) then it is obvious that some of the brighter stars in the left-wing firmament have seen the writing on the wall and they know only too well that carrying the 20th Century state-socialist models into the 21st Century is a guaranteed one-way ticket to palookaville.

Wouldn't it be fun to watch them emerge from their smoke-free rooms next week and jointly announce to their tax-consuming constituents that the booze has all run out, the snacks have all been eaten, the guests are all tapped out and that the party is definitely over.

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I think they have been having a day of broody reflection over at the Daily Social Worker.

Peter Mandelson says:

Political projects that fail to renew themselves are soon swept away and deserve to be. That won't be allowed to happen with New Labour. It is one reason why the progressive governance conference, which starts on Friday, comes at a crucial time for the international centre-left.

Meanwhile, Jeanette Winterson says:

How could we double spending on schools? We could start by abandoning the fetish of higher education, where armies of illiterate, innumerate kids are signed on to courses that are as useless as they are. Why are the kids useless? They haven't been taught properly in school. Why haven't they been taught properly in school? No money. So why do we insist on university targets when we aren't able to educate all children at a basic level?

A far cry from all the smug triumphalism of the late 90's, isn't it. And is it just me or do I detect that these people are gripped by a mounting sense of panic? Perhaps even they have have realised that they have run out of ideas and that they need to clutch at something, anything before their entire project unravels.

Or maybe I am reading too much into it.

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Dave Carr's post reminds me of an idea I've had for ages.

I often consult for long periods in in Manhattan. It's normal there to see people standing outside on the street for a cig break. It's such a common sight you just stop noticing it.

It also takes up a lot of peoples time. Some co-workers in one company I consulted for (pre dotBomb) went out for a puff nearly every hour.

Perhaps NYC Libertarians should carry gummed stickers sized to fit the US cig package warning. Every time you see someone standing on the street, give them one.

Imagine thousands of New Yorkers standing on the street with packages saying: "If I'd voted Libertarian I wouldn't be standing here".

Use your imagination.

There is room for a similar tactic here in the UK. Our health Nazi's are so overt it leaves them open to really easy ridicule. Why pull punches at all?

"Health Nazi's make an ASH of themselves."

"ASH doesn't know shite".

"I vote Libertarian: my diseased lungs are my own business".

The mind just boggles.

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lib·er·ty n. pl. lib·er·ties
1. a. The condition of being free from restriction or control.
   b. The right and power to act, believe, or express oneself in a manner of one's own choosing.
   c. The condition of being physically and legally free from confinement, servitude, or forced labor. See Synonyms at freedom.
   
2. Freedom from unjust or undue governmental control.
   
3. A right or immunity to engage in certain actions without control or interference: the liberties protected by the Bill of Rights.

Like some undead zombie in B-grade horror movie, we have pumped the hideous thing full of lead from our rifles and shotguns... it falls riddled with logical holes and yet somehow the creature staggers to its feet again with bits falling off, lurching forward once more.

Gauche is clinging remorselessly to the term 'Libertarian Socialism'

But I'm still an enthusiast for egalitarian self-managed market socialism; and I still want the state to leave us all alone as much as possible. My big difference with libertarians of the right is that my ideal minimal state concentrates not on maintenance of property rights and defence of the realm but on redistribution of incomes and wealth to provide basic needs to everyone as of right (citizen's income and free healthcare, education and housing) so we can all get on with whatever we want. And OK, I know that’s utopian. But so what?

Well on one point I am in complete agreement with Gauche... his view is utopian. In fact, the notion that a state which redistributes wealth by force and provides 'education' to its citizens can be a minimal state is more than just utopian, it is fantastical. Wage control? Nationalised healthcare? Nationalised education? Nationalised housing? And how, exactly, would this be different to the non-libertarian modern socialist (i.e. social democratic) states found all over the western world?

The answer is it is exactly the same thing. The only liberty in Gauche's libertarianism is the liberty to take the money of others by force without prior consent and to run the economy on political, rather than social, interaction.

Sure, there is a long history of people calling themselves libertarians. But so what? Liberty means not having one's life under the force backed direction of others... socialism means using force backed politics to direct people's life in accordance with socialist political ends. The two are antithetical.

Arrrggg... I'm a...libertarian...too!

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Amid the recent revival of the spectre of large tax increases, a simply splendid post by David Farrer pointing out exactly why the political classes need them:

The truth is that the welfare state is bankrupt and almost no one, not the Scotsman editorial writer and certainly not the Tories, is willing to say that the Emperor has no clothes.

And not just the British welfare state either. For all the robust free market rhetoric that frightens the piss out of European lefties, the American welfare state is in just as parlous a condition:

Are we really broke? The answer is clearly, YES, but living on borrowed time and money. A recent study was done by Jagadeesh Gokhale and Kent Smetters which measures our government’s current debts and projected debts based on the proposed federal budget and revenues for 2004. By extending the numbers in constant 2003 dollars, they have come to the conclusion that the Federal government is officially insolvent to the tune of $44 trillion.

According to Financial Sense Online (from whence the above quote is lifted) both Medicare and Social Security will be bankrupt by 2010 or 2011.

This is really the big, global, dirty, open secret: the 20th century welfare state constructs are lurching, creaking and on the verge of collapse. Yet, in polite circles, this looming disaster cannot even be discussed, let alone addressed. Such is the taboo status of the welfare state that most Western politicians would rather be seen to publicly champion child molestation than any serious reform agenda.

It is for this reason that the reactionaries are trying to float various methods for the state to plunder everything and anything they can in the desperate, febrile, frantic hope that they can put off the Day of Reckoning for just a few more precious years.

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Social individualists of the world unite!
You have nothing to lose but your chains
and a whole world to win!

Although intended as a humorous meme-hack, the statement is also quite clearly true. The irony is that for individuals to preserve their individuality, they must unite with others to fight the collectivist political pressures that would deny that we are moral free agents and make us so much less than we are: to fight involuntary collectivism we must voluntarily act collectively.

And so that is why I set up Samizdata.net and lured others to dive into the blogosphere with me head first.

It was my attempt to give a platform to shout out to the world for like-minded individuals who rejected the intrusive force backed collectivist view of the world. We are not really trying to 'convert' people, though that would be nice, rather we are trying to change people's meta-context and let the ideology take care of itself. That is our 'mission statement' if you like.

A meta-context is a person's frames of reference through which they interpret the world around them. It is not an ideology or a political 'ism' or even a philosophy... it is 'just' a series of axioms and 'givens' that colour and flavour how you think about things and come to understand them via a set of critical or emotional preferences and underlying assumptions. We all have a personal meta-context.

For example, it is one of the reasons that although I have written many articles on Samizdata.net about the issue of private ownership of firearms in the USA, I very rarely discuss the Second Amendment. Why? Because an individualist meta-context does not have rights as something which are dependent on The State.

The Second Amendment of the US Bill of Rights is a legal artifice, but it is not the source or reason that people should be able to own weapons as a matter not of privilege but by right. In fact, no state and its laws is the source of any right whatsoever: rights are objectively yours to begin with and are not given to you by anyone. Thus I will never argue an American has the right to own a gun because 'it says so in the Second Amendment' because they would have a right to do so even if it said nothing of the sort.

Yet that is not to say I think the Second Amendment is a bad idea, just that it is nothing more than a useful profane tool to secure an objective right, not a source of rights. To me as an individualist, I see do not see the state as central to my life or quite frankly to civil society... as I am not a fully convinced anarchist I do see some role for limited government in securing the rights of individuals, but just as an adjunct to far more important the networks that are primarily social rather than political.

And so if we are trying to change people's meta-context to include more individualist and less collectivist frames of reference, then it behoves us to use phrases which assist in this process rather than those which are loaded with 'trigger words' that may well get our views unhelpfully pigeonholed in places that does not really reflect where we are coming from. Now I certainly regard myself as a libertarian of the minarchist flavour... what is sometimes called a 'Classical Liberal'. However the term 'libertarian' is increasingly loaded with meanings that generate more heat than light, and thus I have started using the term 'social individualist' rather than 'libertarian in Samizdata.net's introduction in the sidebar. We have not changed... certainly I have not... and I intend to continue arguing that the term 'libertarian' can only be used correctly to describe people who promote the individual liberty to chose how you interact with the world via social interaction rather than force backed political interaction. Just as Living Marxism changed its name to Spiked in order to shed the 'baggage' of the term 'Marxism' without actually changing a thing ideologically, we started life as 'Libertarian Samizdata' back in our early days on-line and then just became Samizdata.net in order to better reach beyond the worthy true believers. We are no longer Libertarian Samizdata but our thinking is really no different to when we started.

Yet if the term 'libertarian' gets in the way of what we are trying to do, it is time to start de-emphasising it. I am still a member of the executive committee of the London based Libertarian Alliance and I still regard myself as a pukka libertarian. But a more accurate description of my views than just the broad church of 'libertarianism' would be that I reject collectivist views of the world as utterly falsified, but at the same time I do not regard individuals as atomised objects existing in splendid isolation. Unless you live alone in a log cabin in the middle of Canada subsisting on nuts and moose meat, you are an individual within a social environment: a civil society. And it is the extent to which you can freely act within civil society as an individual pursuing self-defined ends by right, without political coercion or permission, that is the measure of whether you are free or not.

Additionally, I have long regarded socialism as the most ironic use of language in the history of mankind, given that it means to replace social interaction with entirely political interaction. It is time to reclaim the word social and reject the newspeak inversion of it into meaninglessness.

And it is addressing those issues that make this a social individualist weblog.

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Responding to a posting a fortnight ago on CrozierVision, I posted a piece the day before yesterday on my (Brian's) Culture Blog entitled Do blogs convert people? Jonathan Wilde commented on that piece in a manner which suggests that the early editorial meetings concerning Samizdata may have been bugged. By Jonathan Wilde. He certainly gets what we're trying to do here:

As I stated in my original post on Patrick's entry, I do believe that blogs at least influence people, if not convert them. Yet. I was a libertarian prior to finding Samizdata, but over the 18 months or so that I have been reading Samizdata, I have been directly influenced by what I have read. I used to be a reluctant voter thinking that to be a libertarian meant being a Libertarian (i.e., member of the American Libertarian Party) and that taking part in the political process was the only way to be a libertarian. When I read Samizdata, I saw people who didn't really care that much which political party was in power, but were in the business of changing 'meta-contexts' and going around the state, rather than through it. Further, I saw people who were influenced by Mises, Popper, and Hayek rather than the usual Rand and Rothbard that you find in America, yet arrive at the same basic conclusions on most issues. I saw people who were proud of Western culture. I saw people who were proud of defeating the Nazis in WWII rather than simply seeing it as just another state war, with all of its side-effects. These were all things that made me believe that it was okay to be a libertarian and agree with those ideas.

Since this is a culture blog, let me mention that the 'culture' of Samizdata had a lot to do with its success. Yes, the brilliant writing on the blog is vital to convert readers. But the culture is also essential. Pictures of Samizdatistas drinking, acting goofy, fondling women, and making fun of war protestors gives the impression that libertarians aren't angry gun nuts from Montana (the stereotype in America), but are simply regular, everyday people.

And the last way in which Samizdata influenced me is to start my own website with similar characteristics – a group blog focused on Austrian economics, with a 'laid-back' non-angry-gun-nut atmosphere, and periodic 'off-topic' content.

I was already a libertarian, and perhaps I'm not the best example of blogs influencing, if not converting people, but the blogosphere is young. If our ideas are better than the rest, then they will rub-off with time. After hearing Perry being on a forum with 'mainstream' media on BBC last week, I really think that Samizdata has a chance to be something special. And it's a classic libertarian strategy: carve a new niche, go around the established paths, and succeed on what you do best. The blogosphere is the new niche, and Samizdata is at the top.

Jonathan Wilde

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Who, precisely, is busting out all over? People who call themselves 'socialist libertarians' are busting out all over, that's who.

The latest addition to this roll-call of the ragged is a certain Mr.Paul Anderson who, I am advised, was previously a columnist for the left-wing newspaper 'Tribune'. Mr.Anderson has started a blog. Good for him. His blog is called 'Gauche' which is fine insofar as his Francophonic pretensions are entirely a matter for him.

My annoyance, however, is with the subtitle of his blog which reads:

Democratic Socialism with a Libertarian Punch

May I humbly suggest a clearer alternative to that meaningless bit of cant? How about:

Vegetarian cooking with just a hint of roast beef

That is what he might as well be saying. In fact, that is what he is saying and, one supposes, with a straight face to boot. Mr.Anderson has clearly not yet been advised that he can either be a socialist OR he can be a libertarian but he cannot possibly be both. Nor can he plausibly pass himself off as representing some sort of squishy compromise position between the two. If Mr.Anderson wants to know exactly why, then I can do no better than to recommend this comprehensive exposition on the subject by Perry de Havilland.

I have no intention of apologising for the tetchiness of my tone but, you see, this is something of a 'hot button issue' for people like me. We at Samizdata will be tarred, feathered, damned and consigned to purgatory before we sit back and allow the word 'libertarian' to be hijacked in the manner that the word 'liberal' was once hijacked and then handed over, gift-wrapped, to people who have since proved themselves to be anything and everything but liberal.

Were it not for the fact that I perceive a silver lining in this cloud, I would be a great deal angrier than I am now. For a silver lining there most certainly is.

First off, it is clear that, due to the tireless work of such wonderful organisations as the Libertarian Alliance and (with a temporary suspension of modesty) we here at the Samizdata, the word 'libertarian' has become worthy of attempted theft. After all, I have not yet come across any persons of the left going around calling themselves 'socialist wahabbist'. No, they are trying to nab it because they think it has good and positive connotations. That, of itself, is a micro-triumph.

Secondly, and more deeply, it is a trend which speaks volumes about the extent to which the confidence these people once had in their own ideas has been dramatically corroded. Perhaps the more intelligent people of the left (yes, they do exist) have reached a point in their lives and their thinking where they can no longer stand full-square behind the ideas that energised them in their youth. If indeed they are grabbing for the word 'libertarian' as a means of papering over the cracks that have started to appear in their own heads, then I do sort of understand it, if not condone it.

Given the years of effort they have put into their causes, I can see why it is so hard to make that emotionally fraught leap from one camp to the other, leaving behind all their friends and writing off maybe a half-a-lifetime of dedication and commitment. Hence the gradual terminology-creep from 'socialist' to 'social democrat' to 'centrist' to 'liberal' and, now, 'libertarian'. That way they can still maintain the pretence, at least to themselves, that they remain firm members of their own gang, while increasingly seduced by the siren songs of our gang. By trying to shoulder their way under the cover of the libertarian umbrella they can postpone the day when they finally have to stop kidding themselves that socialism is anything but a crock of sh*t.

Now I must confess I did not spare the time to read through Mr.Anderson's blog. I daresay he has a lot of interesting and exciting things to say. But if he wants to go on saying them with anything resembling credibility then he is going to have to stop trying to straddle precariously on that fence of his own shabby construction. Either he is going to fall off or people like us are going to push him off.

Of course, it could be that Mr.Anderson is just such a person as I have described above. In that case, he may like to know that there is way that he can spare himself the pain and humiliation of trying to be something he is not. He could always look down the road to that bright, sunlit oasis to which he is inexorably being led by on his ideological journey and decide instead to jump straight in to the inviting waters without wasting any more time. If Mr.Anderson decides to do that, then he should know that the waters are warm and he will find friends here who will welcome him.

[My thanks to Harry Steele for the link to Mr.Anderson's blog.]

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Well, I must say I am shocked, SHOCKED to discover that the gazillions of pounds of taxpayers money that has been thrown at the state health and education sectors have not made a blind bit of difference. Who says? Why, none other than our Glorious Leader, Tony Blair:

Higher taxes will be needed to fund health and education improvements, Tony Blair indicated yesterday after admitting that his first six years in power had failed to deliver a promised "transformation" in public services.

'Higher taxes'! Of course, that's the answer! Damn, why didn't he think of that sooner? Er, except he did think of it sooner. He thought of it back in 1997 and we have been paying increasingly higher taxes ever since. Oh never mind, just hike them up again, that's bound to work.

Keep digging, Tony.

(2) (6)

Are you gainfully employed? If so, does your wicked employer make all manner of unreasonable demands upon you, such as actually turning up for work or doing the job you're being paid to do?

Up until now, there was no means of redress for such manifest injustice and rank exploitation. But, lo, the dark ages are at an end. Thanks to the Health & Safety Executive, all employers must now comply with a 'Stress Code':

Employers will have to protect their staff from stress - or risk legal action, a watchdog has warned.

The Health and Safety Executive has launched a six-point code which firms must abide by.

They must support their employees and ensure they do not feel overly pressured in their roles.

Now I don't profess to any expert medical knowledge or even any medical knowledge at all but even I know that a broken foot is a broken foot and pretty easy to detect. But how on earth is something as subjective as 'stress' going to be either properly identified or measured?

Well, the bright sparks at the H&S have come up with a forumla:

Companies will be assessed to see if they have reduced stress to manageable levels.

If fewer than 65 to 85% of all staff feel each standard has been met, the company will fail its assessment.

If that isn't a charter for malingerers, clock-watchers, perennial malcontents and compensation-sniffers then I don't know what is. And, short of being paid to go the park every day and feed the ducks, what job doesn't involve some level of stress at some point or other?

Up to 13.4m days a year are lost due to stress at work.

And I wonder how many of those are actually 'I've-got-tickets-to-the-football-match' kind of 'stress'?

It would be tempting to suggest that there is some insidious political agenda behind this but I honestly don't believe that much thought has gone into it. More likely it is another classic case of bureaucratic empire-building which, as in this case, is usually done on the back of quackery, junk science and manipulated statistics.

The result is the same regardless. British entrepreneurs, already snowed under with laws, regulations, diktats and directives, have yet another welfarist function to fulfil and, I daresay, yet another sheaf of related forms that they will be required to waste their time completing.

I have a dream about just how much more prosperous and innovative our society could be if its wealth-creators were not required to spend so much of their productive time jumping through government hoops and avoiding state-created bear-traps that have no right to exist. It is rather similar to the dream that, one day, somebody in the parasitical public sector will realise that there is only so much blood they can draw out of the private sector before the latter simply rolls over and dies. I am not at all confident that either dream will be realised any time soon.

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Having been involved in British libertarian circles since I was in my late teens about 18 years ago - god that makes me feel old - I have gotten used to the charge that the likes of us are crazed dogmatists. In Britain's notoriously anti-intellectual culture, being interested in ideas, and worse, ideas which question the need for most of what governments do, is to be branded as a dangerous nutter. (Mind you, having read abusive comments directed at yours truly by various LewRockwell.com types, I feel almost quite moderate and middle-of-the-road these days.)

Step forward Aidan Rankin, who in The Spectator magazine, charges that eurosceptics within the Tory Party and among libertarian circles are the "new Trotskyists," every bit as militant and dogmatic as the old left. In a way, that is a backhanded compliment of sorts because it shows that folk like Rankin are at least becoming aware of our existence, even though they prefer to construct straw men for the purpose of easy knock-down pieces rather than describe us more accurately. Anyway, let us fisk:

On Europeans and other issues the Tories are still impeded - not by indecision as in the recent past, but by an insidious ideological rigidity, a right-wing version of political correctness.

Huh? Really? Has the Tory Party, in recent years, called for, say, total withdrawal by this country from the EU? No. But to read Rankin you would assume that to be the case.

Public scepticism about the single currency is matched by the lack of public support for Eurosceptic campaigns. This is because even to sympathetic observers such campaigns appear so often to be bitter and bigoted.

He has half a point. I think the eurosceptic lobby would do better to focus on the essentially illiberal nature of the EU rather than on the fact that is being run by vile Frogs, etc.

He then turns his gaze from Europe to other issues. Here we go:

"Libertarians, whose influence in conservative circles is growing, are free market fundamentalists.

We think that the market, which is a place where sovereign individuals freely transact and deal with one another, is better than any other form of human order devised, such as state planning. Fundamentalist is a boo word.

Like Marxists of the most dogmatic kind, libertarians reduce the individual to homo economicus: the man or woman as a mere unit of production or consumption, without any cultural reference points.

Complete Bull. Many libertarian thinkers, of which Ludwig von Mises was an outstanding example, did not reduce Man to a "mere" economic being. Rather, he used the insights of economics to help show how human beings behaved. Libertarians understand that people seek to acquire and keep values, including non-material ones, and that in an open society, such action will produce things like markets.

Libertarians combine economic purism with a naive commitment to counter-cultural values.

Speak for yourself, ditto. A perusal of the literature should show Rankin that libertarians often value things like marriage and other institutions, which are the opposite of "counter-cultural", presumably in the way Rankin means it. What of course he objects to is the fact that libertarians insist that membership of institutions be voluntary.

Like the politically correct Left, libertarians believe in open borders and the abolition of immigration controls.

I take it Rankin believes in immigration control. And anyway he overlooks the fact that libertarians like me would only support totally open borders if the Welfare State were to be abolished first. I would also support the right for states, or even better, private communities to sell rights to citizenship for a price and even trade them on an open market.

At its most extreme, it (libertarianism) celebrates family and community breakdown as forms of liberation, or drug dependency as consumer choice.

Speak for yourself, ditto.

They [evil libertarians] oppose with revolutionary ardour any public money for faith-based institutions, single-sex schools or regiments, or anything not "open to all.

By George, I believe this man has been paying attention. Actually, I am even more extreme than that. I oppose spending of public money on schools, be they co-ed or whatever. Let schools of any type exist, funded by consenting adults. Libertarians do of course differ between minarchists who favour some kind of tax-funded spending on courts and the armed forces, and anarcho-capitalists who do not.

I could Fisk some more but you get the general drift. Aidan Rankin is a conservative, I would guess, and obviously deeply alarmed at the libertarian meta-context.

He should be.

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George Monbiot made one valid point in his debate with Perry (and others) on B.B.C. Radio 3. Although I suspect that Mr Monbiot did not believe in his own point.

George Monbiot stated that a Parliament does not have to pass laws so his World Parliament need not mean world regulations. I suspect that world regulations are exactly what Mr Monbiot wants (indeed he admitted this by talking about 'fair trade' rules in the same discussion). However, a Parliament need not be, indeed should not be a legislature.

Having a group of people elected to pass laws is a terrible system. It leads to endless laws to please this or that special faction (which may represent only a tiny fraction of the general population), and even laws passed to satisfy the whims of politicians.

When libertarians and others denounce 'delegated legislation' (rules made up by officials), we should not forget that laws made up by politicians are no good either.

Whether one believes that law should be established by deduction from the principles of justice (i.e. property rights - the nonaggression principle), and-or should evolve in a Common Law way - the whole concept of a body of politicians creating laws (a legislature) just does not make sense.

But can a Parliament just be a check on the Executive - deciding on the budget and (under some systems) throwing out the Executive if the Prime Minister or President becomes too bad to tolerate.

Does not having a body of politicians sitting there and then saying "now do not do very much" involve a fatal contradiction? Someone is not going to go through all the vast effort of getting to be a member of this body and then do little or nothing - human nature just does not work that way. Individuals and parties are going to mess about.

Once you elect a body of people (called a Parliament or whatever) do they not inevitably become a legislature - creating laws as they choose? That is part of the basic anarchist libertarian case.

Constitutional limits on the power of such bodies have proved largely ineffective (although in the case of the United States Constitution this may be because it relies for its enforcement on a body of appointed judges).

Perhaps the way to go is the way of the Constitution of Texas - have the 'legislature' meet for as few days as possible, this structural limit (rather than policy limit) may have some effect in limiting the number of crazy laws such a body can pass.

I hope there are not too many absurdities in the above (sleeping in the last day or so might have been a good idea), but let those who will open fire.

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A quick suggestion - given the differences within the libertarian section of the political jungle about the case for or against armed intervention in other states, what do fellow contributors and commenters think about us setting up a one-day conference or suchlike on this topic?

I'm really interested to set something up, probably here in London. (But of course I would hope some non-Brit folk could be persuaded into coming).

Blogging is fantastic but sometimes there is still a place for face-to-face debate. And you get to hold the event right next to a pub!

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On a recent visit to Lancashire (a county in the north of England) I found a 1906 Chambers encyclopaedia in the house I was staying in.

Now whilst the encyclopaedia had lots of the then newly fashionable statism within it (the "historical method" in economics and other such nonsense), it did have some interesting articles and the one on Iceland caught my eye.

Most libertarians are aware of the Iceland example of a basically free society. How incoming settlers arrived in an empty land (apart from a handful of monks in a tiny area), and established a private property based society without such things as taxes.

Also how things first went well over time - for example with slavery dying out (the Norse settlers started off with Irish slaves - but, over time, the practice of slavery fell apart) without any civil war.

However, then (after centuries of settlement) tithes were introduced in the 1080's (Iceland had become Christian in 1000 - so Christianity did not mean religious taxes at first). And then (after a couple of more centuries) a few families tried to monopolise the courts of justice (which arbiter one went to had been a matter of choice), fell into conflict - and the Icelanders made the fatal mistake of inviting in the power of the King of Norway.

First under the Kings of Norway and then (far worse) the Kings of Denmark statism grew in Iceland, with state control of much land, monopoly of trade and on.

A sad tale - supposedly one well fitted for grim minded people like myself.

However, the story did not end there. I have long known that in stages in the 18th and 19th century a lot of freedom was restored to Iceland (by later Kings of Denmark), but I did not know just how much of a free society Iceland became again.

Reading the Chambers article was instructive. Not only was Iceland a free trade country (which I knew) it was also a land of a fairly high cultural level.

In about 1900 (a time when there were hardly any state schools in Iceland - indeed when there was very little government at all) virtually every person could read and write (they were taught, by their families, in childhood) - and a large proportion of adult men could get by in several languages.

This was at a time when in, for example, Sweden (with its system of state education) about one in four people was illiterate.

Certainly after 1904 local government was allowed to grow in Iceland - but the fact remains that Iceland had, for a time, become a basically free society again.

It is these sorts of things that makes me (much to the confusion of the people who know me) take a fairly positive view of the future of the human race. The growth of statism is not inevitable - government control can decline without a collapse into chaos and a free society can be rebuilt.

Modern Western nations are (as is well known) fiat money, credit bubble, welfare states. They will fall apart, most likely quite soon - say over the next ten years.

However, I do not think that this will mean a collapse into savagery (mass starvation, cannibalism and so on). I believe that (with hard effort and good luck) something much closer to a free society will emerge.

I do not expect to live to see it (my own position is not a good one, and I am a fairly realistic man - not in the habit of accepting comfort from lies), but I firmly believe that many libertarians now living will see it.

You have both my best wishes and my confidence.

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David Farrer links to this story, about a call from a Scottish lawyer to legalise not just cannabis, but all drugs.

A LEADING Scottish criminal lawyer yesterday called for the legalisation of all drugs.

Donald Findlay QC said legalising narcotics such as heroin, cocaine and cannabis was the only way to "break the link" between users and dealers.

The advocate also attacked politicians and the Scottish Executive for failing to get to grips with the problem of drug abuse, accusing them of fostering a "tough on crime" image rather than looking for radical solutions.

However, politicians last night hit back at Mr Findlay, describing him as "irresponsible".

The Executive also denied Mr Findlay’s claims, pointing to a raft of recent policies to tackle drug abuse.

Mr Findlay, who last week attacked the Executive’s policy on crime, said: "Drugs is a huge issue and there is no question that what drugs do to families and communities is the biggest problem that we have had in recent years, and it is a problem that politicians just will not tackle.

"Since the mid-1980s we have had drug offences. It is now more than 20 years on and the problem is continuing to grow.

"From the law’s point of view, there has to be much more effort to break the cycle, and I really think we should be having a proper look at legalising drugs. You have got to try something to get people away from the dealers."

Mr Findlay said simply decriminalising cannabis did not go far enough.

Alas, there's no chance of Findlay QC winning this argument in the near future in Scotland, because, as David notes, Mr Michael McSomeone has said that this would "send the wrong message". There was, Mr McSomeone added, "a clear need for a consensus", by which he meant everyone agreeing with him.

I also believe that there is a clear need for a consensus, by which I mean everyone agreeing with Findlay QC and with me. This would send the right message, namely (and with thanks to P. J. O'Rourke for saying something along these lines on a Cato tape I once listened to): (a) do what you want with what's yours, and (b) accept the consequences.

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It is hot and humid Monday morning here in Britain and, right about now, millions of people are waking from their slumber to the start of another week.

Bleary-eyed and sticky with sweat, they will munch their toast, slurp their coffee, grab their keys and head out of their doors to do battle with another working day. A day, on the face of it, much like any other day.

Only it isn't. Not quite. For today, 2nd June, is Tax Freedom Day in Britain. This is the day when we stop working for HMG and start working for ourselves. From today, we can begin supporting our families and not the state. Up until today, from January 1st, we have laboured non-stop for the benefit of the public sector; for all those legions of bureaucrats and rubber-stampers without whom life would be worth living.

There will be no celebrations though. No party hats, no holiday cheer and no group hugs. For the vast majority, the day will pass by without so much as a brief acknowledgement of the temporary release from bondage. There is something sad about a whole nation being so inured to the painful bites of the government that they do not even notice when the biting ceases.

Nearly half a year. Nearly half a life. What a waste.

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There are many pleasurable benefits in writing for a blog such as this, not least of is revelling in the quality of our readership. This being the case, I can think of no finer endorsement of our efforts than that we attract thinkers and writers of the calibre of Andy Duncan, a regular reader who has produced an analysis of the strategy behind the EU project that I cannot possibly leave languishing at the bottom of a heap of comments where it currently resides.

Andy's hypothesis is so startlingly good, not just because of the thought that has gone into it but also because he admits to having once been a 'creature of the night'. We can therefore safely assume that he knows whereof he speaks. So let him speak:

I'm unsure as to your political orientation, but if you were a follower of Karl Marx's fallback idea of creating a social democratic Utopia, via the ballot box rather than via the bullet in the back of the neck, how would you do it? Putting my devout Marxist hat on, (and I was such an idiot, until well after my 30th year), this is how I would do it:

Marxist Hat ON

• I would base myself in my philosophical homeland of Germany and France, the roaming ground of Hegel, Marx, Napoleon, Kant, Sartre, and other assorted violent destroyers and idiots.

• I would pretend to be democratic, having seen honest revolutionaries fail in Russia and elsewhere.

• I would slowly subvert democracy, steal or distort the language of liberty to throw off my accusers and enemies, and gradually form an unspoken aristocracy of fellow travellers. What better than to call this a "liberal" elite, to really turn white into black, and make two plus two equal five? :-)

• I would gradually raise taxes, intervene, cause capitalist failure through regulation, thereby allowing myself the excuse to interfere even further, raise even more taxes, etc, etc, until at least half of the economy was in my hands (though 40% will do nicely).

• I would take over the schools, with other fellow travellers, and educate children away from capitalism. I would never ban non-state education, as this would raise too many alarm bells, but would gradually tighten the screw to make it less and less palatable, either financially or "morally".

• Once secure in my own domain, I would link up with other like-minded fellows, and form a "common market", gradually moving towards a "community", then a "union".

• I would remove all defended borders, using the language of liberty (free market, trading partners, etc), I would then start linking further countries together one by one, as their social democrat governments topple capitalism bit by bit, through ever increasing statism, the failure of each new control, leading to ever more controls. Lovely.

• Using that favorite Marxist phrase, "The Inevitability of History", I would then start taking direct control of these countries, tiny increment by tiny increment, so that the ratcheting process is barely noticeable. This process would be never-ending. Capitalists are so smug, living off the backs of the workers and the fat of the land, that they'll never notice anyway.

• We'd slowly introduce ID cards, remove habeas corpus, juries, and all the other paraphenalia of a failed history, which would get in the way of later true command socialism. The People decide the laws, and who is in need of re-education (and I will represent the people).

  One day, without even knowing the exact day, the People will wake up free from capitalism, into a perfect state run by the workers, for the workers, with me and my friends in temporary control until the state withers naturally away (though this may not be possible until we'd extended this Nirvana across the face of the globe, and removed all potential aggressors - eg. The United States.)

  The lesson of history has taught we Marxists that we must be less direct. We must sneak up from behind, and use every capitalist trick we can to prevent the enemy from seeing our subterfuge. We must hire as much of the workforce as we can, to get them to vote for us, we must blame supra-national organisations, or capitalist greed, for all the bad things that happen, we must talk continuously of the "Inevitability" of our destiny. And then, when we finally slough off the evil of capitalism, the People will be truly grateful, for we will have delivered them into a world of peace, opportunity, and freedom. The birds will sing, and choirs will form spontaneously, singing Hallelujah. Before we burn down the churches, of course. Except where they're really pretty (and I will be the judge of that.)

  Marxist Hat OFF

  Well, that's how I would do it. Does the process outlined above remind you of anything? Again I ask you, if you were to try to create a socialist utopia, in Europe, how would you do it? I would suggest it would not be too dissimilar from what has actually happened.

  But aside from all that, the most worrying aspect of the Euro constitution is not all the fancy-dancy detail, about which ex-President can do what shilly-shallying to whom. It is the absolute central removal of the right of a future British parliament to repeal this dangerous Act, whatever it's to be called (I would suggest the treaty is signed in Nuremburg, to give it a really evocative title.) This Constitutional Act's signing, by the Queen, will make it illegal for her, or her successor, to repeal it. As she will be passing that legal right upwards to Brussels. That is why it so fundamentally changes the unwritten constitution of this country (that any parliament may repeal the acts of any other previous parliament), and that is why it is so dangerous, and why we absolutely must have a Yes or No referendum on it. Or just plain abandon it.

  As long as a future parliament can remove and clean up the mess Tony Blair and his useful idiots have created, this country stands a chance. Once he makes himself and his gang a permanent feature, as this move is surely intended to do, and we can't get rid of socialism, we've had it; better book those German lessons and get used to being free to do whatever it is you're told to do.

  Forget the detail, concentrate on the main big point. This constitutional move is irrevocable. That means one of two things. It will either last forever, or there will be a war. Assuming that nothing ever lasts forever, that means a war. That's how wars happen. Go and buy a history book if you don't believe me.

  To all of my idiot irrationalist Marxist friends reading this, with whom it's not really even worth debating the price of fish, as your brains are such mush, Valery Giscard d'Estaing really has made all this a bit obvious. Couldn't he have waited until we'd been shoe-horned into the Euro, when it would've seemed less obvious? But that's socialism for you, always failing, always another generation of idiots waiting to give it yet "another" try. Vive le UK! ;-)

A Guide to Marxist Subversion as supplied by a former marxist. As weapons in the armoury of liberty go, this has to rank as one of the sharpest. I defy anyone to read through this without experiencing the hackle-raising chill of eerie recognition in the universal policies of modern Social Democrats and I know that I was far from the only one who saw the handprints of Herbert Marcuse and Antonio Gramsci all over them.

Well, we may have been right. Andy Duncan has set out and codified in the enemies battleplan in all its gory detail and we must thank him. Knowing how the enemy intends to wage war is essential to defeating them.

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Whilst perusing Harry's Place, I discovered a reference to an essay written by Labour MP Peter Hain in 2000 about 'libertarian socialism' over on the Chartist website called Rediscovering our libertarian roots.

The whole notion of this alleged form of libertarianism is something I have commented on before, but I have probably never seen a more clearly written explanation of the true thinking that underpins 'libertarian socialism' than this article by Hain.

It is very important to understand what Hain's essay is and is not. It is not a philosophical paper making logical links between socialism and libertarianism. What it is is a tactical paper very much along the lines of the one I wrote called Giving libertarianism a left hook, only with the opposite objective.

Rather than fisking Hain's article, I will just quote what I think are the most illustrative sections:

The key elements of libertarian socialism - decentralisation, democracy, popular sovereignty and a refusal to accept that collectivism means subjugating individual liberty.

[...]

Discredited by its association with statism, socialism’s rehabilitation can only be achieved through a recovery of its libertarian roots, applying these to the modern age through Labour’s Third Way.

[...]

Underlying libertarian socialism is a different and distinct notion of politics which rests on the belief that it is only through interaction with others in political activity and civic action that individuals will fully realise their humanity. Democracy should therefore extend not simply to government but throughout society: in industry, in the neighbourhood or in any arrangement by which people organise their lives.

[...]

However, power can only be spread downwards in an equitable manner if there is a national framework where opportunities, resources, wealth and income are distributed fairly, where democratic rights are constitutionally entrenched, and where there is equal sexual and racial opportunity. This is where socialism becomes the essential counterpart to libertarianism which could otherwise – and indeed sometimes is – right wing. It means nationally established minimum levels of public provision, such as for housing, public transport, social services, day-care facilities, home helps and so on. The extent to which these are 'topped up' and different priorities set between them, is then a matter for local decision.

[...]

Most individuals need active government to intervene and curb market excess and distortions of market power. For choice and individual aspiration to be real for the many, and not simply for the privileged few, people must have the power to choose.

Nevertheless the old left nostrum that markets equal capitalism and the absence of markets equals socialism, is utterly simplistic. As Aneurin Bevan argued, the extent to which markets are regulated or subjected to strategic intervention by government is not a matter of theoretical dogma, but a practical matter to be judged on its merit. That is why a Third Way Labour government is not passive, but highly active, working in partnership with business and investing in the skills and modern infrastructure which market forces and the private sector do not provide.

There are so many problems and manifest contradictions that leap off the page it is difficult to know where to start. The core of what makes this so wrong lies as usual at the meta-contextual level. The problem is one of the distorting lens of the writer's world view, based as they clearly are on utterly utilitarian principles. Hain says libertarian socialists are characterised by a "refusal to accept that collectivism means subjugating individual liberty", whereupon he follows with an article which lists the many ways in which his socialist system would in fact do precisely that.

The core of Hain's view is that politics, which is a euphemism for 'the control of the collective means of violence backed coercion', is the essential core around which 'society' exists and interacts. Thus when he says society must be 'completely democratic', he means society must be completely political. Yet the argument that it is only by this that individual liberty can be realised falls at the first fence by virtue of the fact you cannot opt out of a political society and particularly a democratic political society: if my neighbour gets to vote on all aspects of "any arrangement by which people organise their lives", then clearly my individual wish regarding what I may do with my own life is by no means my choice unless that choice is quite literally a popular one.

Secondly, if democratic rights are to be 'constitutionally enshrined' and the society completely democratic in all its aspects and therefore completely political, then how can the individual rights of people be insulated from the democratic political process which may seek to abridge them? You can either have complete democracy enshrined or, as the American founding fathers tried with limited success, you can have individual rights enshrined and placed outside the reach of democratic politics, but you cannot logically have both.

The notion that a completely politicized democratic 'society' of the kind advocated by Hain could by its very nature allow any personal liberty whatsoever in a meaningful sense is manifestly absurd. If you cannot opt out of something you have not previously agreed to, in what manner are you free? If society is totally political, then you may have 'permissions' to do this or that, won by the give and take of democratic political processes but you do not have super-political inalienable rights at all. Politics can in theory make you 'free from starving' perhaps (in practise of course it tends to do the opposite), but what about being free to try or not try, some course of action? When every aspect of life is subject to the views of a plurality of other people, there is no liberty to just try anything at all on your own initiative. What Hain is arguing for is by his own words collectivism.

It seems to me that one thing all forms of collectivism share is that individual choice is always subordinate to The Group, be it the fascist volk or a local soviet or an anarcho-syndicalist people's council or whatever other fiction of 'society' the state decides to use. So talk of individual rights within the context of a collectivist 'society' is either incoherence or if not is nothing more than a tactical ploy to conflate a violence based system of total governance with its antithesis in a manner well understood. As I wrote in a recent article, unlike a collectivist kibbutz, which is a voluntary collectivist commune, you cannot just walk out of the door of a collectivist 'society' and start setting up private arrangements with other willing people if the majority do not want you to do that: they will in fact deputise the use of violence to prevent it.

The logical flaws in the 'collectivist society replacing collectivist state' notion are so obvious that they have been pointed out a great many times by a great many people, but I will add my voice to the throng anyway. Hain, like Marx before him, clearly sees libertarian socialism as working towards the 'withering away of the state' as a true collectivist 'society' comes to replace it. But to maintain such a condition of total political governance will require the use of force to prevent any consensual but not democratically sanctioned acts between willing individuals. To maintain this suppression of spontaneous several relationships, a collectivist socialist 'society' must be organised and structured in certain ways that make it indistinguishable from a collectivist socialist state.

So if for a collectivist 'society' to function there must be a high degree of politically imposed non-spontaneous behaviour from its 'citizens' (such as preventing a person selling their own labour for less than the political community will allow them to), and those mandates must be backed with the threat of violence (i.e. law) if they are not to be ignored, then what we have a political State by any reasonable definition of the word 'State', much as Rousseau would have defined one. In fact, socialism must be the most ironic use of language in the history of human linguistics: it is the advocacy of the complete replacement of social interaction with political interaction, the very negation of civil society itself.

Now of course all societies have laws, be it polycentric law or state imposed law. Even the most libertarian society plausibly imaginable will have force backed prohibitions against the unjustified use of violence, which is to say (in very crude and simplified terms) libertarian law deals with 'that which you may not do without consent of the person to or with whom you are doing it'. You may not cause me harm with dioxin from your factory because I have not given you leave to put your chemicals in my lungs. This law is based on the principle that the individual's rights to his body (and property) are his own.

However the collectivist places the protection of the political collective as more important than the individual and thus collective law is whatever the political collective says it is. If the political collective says 'a factory may not put dioxin in Fred's lungs because we want a more environmentally safe place to live for all of us', then that is the law because the political collective has said so, not because Fred has the right to control the contents of his own lungs.

But if they say 'a factory may indeed put dioxin in Fred's lungs because we want a better economy and more stuff for the rest of us' then that too is the voice of the collective. And Fred? If he does not like it, well, it is "only through interaction with others in political activity and civic action that individuals will fully realise their humanity". And if Fred finds himself in the minority? Now Fred has a problem because as the society is 'totally democratic', we will have none of this nonsense of independent and politically neutral courts stepping in to support the objective and several rights of Fred against the collective, as if that could happen in our libertarian socialist paradise, we would no longer have our totally democratic society.

So as Hain says it is only through trying to control the means of collective coercion, the means to use force to make people do things, that Fred can 'fully realise his humanity', how is this 'libertarian socialism' going to protect the individual called Fred's rights? What if the majority in Hain's total democracy don't like Fred? And who will define these 'individual' rights? The political collective, of course. Forget constitutions which constrain democracy because those are anti-democratic (which is rather the point). Forget consensual several relationships because everything is democratic, meaning no politically unpopular relationships will be allowed. Forget custom and culture as a means to moderate interactions because that is not political. If Fred is not popular, Fred is just out of luck.

Fascist collectivists try to prevent mixed race sex, socialist collectivists try to prevent 'undemocratic' private trade, but the principle of collectivism is always the same. If an individual does something he wants to do in a collectivist 'society', it is because the political collective allows him to do it, not because it is his right to do as he pleases with those who are willing participants.

Clearly this democratic 'society' of Hain's is willing to use force to prevent free trade between willing individuals unless they happen to be acting in a manner which is politically favoured. Much as most states currently use force to try and prevent free trade in drugs between willing individuals, the same will be done to any relationship the political collective dislikes. Put another way, this democratic society is in fact a state which will be organised to enforce the political will of the plurality on an epic scale, given that this would be a totally political society. Any time some tried to opt out, they will quickly discover just how 'withered away' the state is under 'socialist libertarianism'.

Of course just as modern states may be more repressive or less repressive (running on a continuum from, say, Switzerland to North Korea), some implementations of so-called 'socialist libertarianism' may be more or less savage in their interpretation of an unfettered total political democracy at a given point in time. An individual who shares the views, aspirations and prejudices of the majority may well think that life seems equitable and good. After all, if he is allowed to do the things he wishes to do, why complain? But as the democracy advocated by Hain is total, what if he wants to do that which not popular?

I have long thought that supporters of collectivism (be it of the socialist, nationalist or conservative kind) who are homosexuals or who are people with others lifestyles that will never be popular (in the literal sense of the word) are extremely unwise indeed to advocate anything that does not reserve rights to individuals before collectives. Socialism is by Hain's own words seen as "...where socialism becomes the essential counterpart to libertarianism which could otherwise – and indeed sometimes is – right wing". Of course by 'right wing' Hain means individualist. Libertarianism puts the rights of the individual as the first of all virtues. Libertarian socialism is individualist collectivism. Libertarian socialism is an oxymoron.

So what is Hain's total political 'society' in reality? It is locally organised totalitarianism with Big Brother based in the local town hall rather than in Whitehall.

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It isn't often that one finds a damning indictment of state regulation in the pages of the Guardian, so I cannot possibly let this opportunity slip by unblogged.

The background to this comes courtesy of one of these 'food safety scandals' that periodically burst into the media spotlight and engender all manner of 'shock, horror' headlines before slipping quietly down the memory hole into oblivion. This time, the scandal involves chicken. Or, more accurately, a simulacrum of chicken because it appears that the British market is being flooded with cheap chicken products that have been pumped with water to artificially inflate them and stuffed full of hydrogenated beef proteins.

And the distributors are getting away with it, despite the existance of a plethora of complex food safety and labelling regulations and whole slew of portentious-sounding Euro-agencies to enforce them. The Guardian's Felicity Lawrence is beside herself:

The food standards agency, which we might expect to be our champions in the matter of food quality, seems to think this is all right so long as someone mentions it on a label at some point. Except, of course, since they communicate in Euro-regulation speak, what the white rabbit actually says as he puts on his spectacles is: "This is a labelling issue and a composition issue. It is not a public safety issue."

So it turns out that all these bureaucrats are good for is issuing sanctimonious press releases and little else. I believe that Ms.Lawrence has (quite accidentally of course) stumbled upon the principle of moral hazard. She, like many others, has hitherto placed her faith in regulations and state enforcers to ensure the quality and safety she requires, only to find that she is left dangling when the crunch comes.

But her tale of woe does have a happy ending. Almost certainly through frustration rather than dazzling insight, Ms.Lawrence comes to exactly the right conclusion:

We must wake up to the reality and to the fact that no one but ourselves will sort it out. Don't buy cheap chicken.

Bingo! Hopefully Ms.Lawrence has now come to appreciate the perils of assigning over personal responsibility to agents of the state and then hoping and praying that they do the right thing by you. They rarely have and they rarely will.

Regulatory regimes are not just a waste of time and effort, they are actually damaging. They suck a huge amount of otherwise-productive wealth out of society that ends up translated into nothing except sinecure jobs and state pensions.

In any event, the only traders who bother to comply with all these regulations are the ones who are worried about their reputation and, ironically, it is those traders who can be relied upon to provide us with good quality products without the monkey of the state on their backs. They want to make money and stay in business and they don't achieve those aims by poisoning their customers or brushing them off with inferior, shoddy goods.

So let's take all these regulations and put them on a bonfire. Yes, there will still be rogues and con-men but, as this story has clearly illustrated, enacting more laws doesn't stop them anyway. The combination of profit-motive on the supply side and a bit of personal responsibility on the part of the consumer is a better recipe for safety and quality than any number of faceless pen-pushers wielding absurd and counter-productive diktats.

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As I have had a couple lengthy e-mails asking me to explain my hostility to PoliticalCompass.org, I thought I would do so in a new post.

My big problem with PoliticalCompass.org is that it makes inherently statist and left/right valued assumptions to which there is no appropriate answer unless you share those assumptions, making the test fine if all the world fitted neatly into the left/right, socialist (US=liberal)/conservative continua... but the world just ain't that simple.

Although they claim to provide a more sophisticated representation of political views than the crudity of left and right, they in fact strip away some of the true issues that differentiate statists and anti-statists. At best they differentiate one form of statist from another, separating social democrats from communists from conservatives. If you think you can usefully differentiate an agorist or anarcho-capitalist libertarian from a minarchist libertarian from a Kritarchist libertarian using the political compass tests, you are sadly mistaken.

I would argue that as the very meaning of their 'libertarian' axis is badly flawed, if they tell you your political coordinates are x,y, as they have no real understanding of what one of the four axes represents, the test and thus the coordinates on the 'compass' it generates, are highly suspect, to put it mildly.

There is no such thing as voluntary collectivism when applied to an entire society, which means 'collectivist' libertarianism does not accept several liberty and thus is not libertarian at all: if you live collectively on a kibbutz, one day you may decide it was all a big mistake and just say "screw this crap" as you walk out the door. If the other people in the kibbutz use force to stop you leaving, it is they who are the criminals... try doing that in a collectivist society (which in reality means a collectivist state) and you will find that the door to a non-collective existence is in fact a prison cell or a chimney.

If the test can only work for 'some people' then the test itself is of dubious value if the idea is to be able to represent the totality of modern political beliefs in a succinct way. Given that 'libertarian' is on one axis, it seems perverse that the test does not 'work' for most self-described libertarians whilst at the same time 'working' just fine for violence based collectivists who call themselves socialist libertarians, like Noam Chomsky. But a violence backed command economy run at a local level is no less tyrannous than a violence backed command economy run from a centralised state: libertarianism without liberty? Oxymoronic. This test tells you nothing about the range of actual libertarian thought but reveals a great deal about the people behind PoliticalCompass.org.

Rather than defining 'libertarian' by the values actual libertarians hold, they are defining 'libertarian' by values people on the statist left and right ascribe to 'libertarians' based on what statists of all ilks regard as axioms that are beyond debate. As those axioms are in reality rejected by almost all libertarians, clearly the questions asked are pointless at best and misleading at worst.

I do not think the very concept of PoliticalCompass.org is itself flawed, just its execution. In all fairness I do note that since I initially savaged the test back twice in 2001, they have indeed refined it somewhat, though leaving the objects of my derision largely intact. Perhaps if they actually had some real libertarians helping them draw up the questions, as opposed to faux libertarian socialists, the concept might even work.

Just take the first question:

If globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations

Clearly the question is framed in such a way that I am supposed to define 'humanity' as being in opposition to 'trans-national corporations'! If I do not accept there is even a dichotomy, I cannot answer the question at all. It may be easy to define 'trans-national corporations', but what exactly is meant by 'humanity'? Peasant farmers in Guatemala are no doubt what the framers of PoliticalCompass.org had in mind.

What may surprise some is that I do indeed regard some 'trans-national corporations' as really quite toxic organisations to 'humanity' not because they are trans-national or corporations but because they use their money and influence to get states to distort and politicise trade in their favour. Yet I wonder if small information technology enabled but enthusiastically trans-national companies with HQ's in Russia or Croatia are what they had in mind, rather than large banana companies with HQ's in the United States? Are these companies in opposition to the general weal of humanity? Somehow I don't think so, so how exactly do I answer such a question?

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Michael Totten has stepped in that steaming pile on the information superhighway known as PoliticalCompass.org and thereby concluded he is 'one of us'... well... sort of.

Now as Michael is a thoughtful sort of leftie, it would pain me not at all if he holds onto that thought and bounces it around for a while. Maybe he will conclude that rational libertarianism may indeed be a better intellectual home for him than either the statist left or statist right.

However he will not find the answers to that question by taking the preposterous test offered by PoliticalCompass.org

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Anyone who regularly peruses the left-wing press in this country (and I congratulate them on their intestinal fortitude) would be left with the impression that Britain is rapidly turning into Galt's Gulch, a rugged, darwinian, freewheeling gold-rush society where tax collectors have been beaten into plough-shares and the shrivelled remnants of the government have been consigned to a mildew-ridden basement room beneath Whitehall with a second-hand computer and a solitary, naked lightbulb.

You can hardly flick through the pages of any centre-left journal without being assailed by some chest-beating, polemical op-ed excoriating New Labour for abandoning socialist principles in favour of 'market forces' and 'Thatcherism'. They bewail the alleged unstoppable growth of 'free market mania' and demand that the government return to the old agenda of wealth redistribution and public ownership immediately if not sooner.

Those of us living on Planet Earth don't quite see it that way. Like the insensitive dolts we doubtless are, we have noticed the extra chunks of GDP that have been grabbed by the government every year since 1997. Nor has it escaped our attention that the 'Careers Section' of the Guardian has grown as thick as a telephone directory, replete with advertisements for government sinecures.

Well, boorish we may be but it appears that us Earthlings are right:

Chancellor Gordon Brown's tax increases are threatening the competitiveness of the UK economy by increasing the burden on entrepreneurs, according to Forbes Global.

Although France maintains its position at the top of the misery index, Forbes detects "an important change in the Misery Index for the UK. For the first time, and surprisingly, it is rising by more than France's Misery Index is decreasing." The magazine blames increased social security taxes for this development, but says it will still take many years for the UK to "catch up" with France.

I cannot think of a more appropriate term than 'Misery Index' and, believe me, I have tried.

But back to the nitty-gritty. Why this disconnect between perception and reality? Well, it is because Blair and New Labour have pulled off a pretty audacious trick (and it's a good trick, I'll grant you) by constructing a convincing and polished patina of 'Thatherite' rhetoric full of phrases like 'modernisation' and 'reform' and 'consumer choice' which they have used to mask a stealthy but relentless old socialist agenda.

The inescapable truth (for Earthlings that is) is that, over the last six years, the wealth-creating private sector has been subjected to a ferocious blood-letting in order to feed the voracious appetites of the public sector triffids who, in turn, (and by complete coincidence, of course) vote en bloc for New Labour. Combine this with the gradual 'Europeanisation' of our regulatory and legal regime and the result is that a once thriving economy has been plunged into misery of near-Gallic proportions.

There isn't a single state in the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), the only area where comparisons can usefully be made, that is taking less tax from its citizens in 2001 than it was in 1965.

I take no comfort from that fact that we are not alone. If everybody is on the same path of slow-suicide this only serves to convince the looters in Whitehall that they are doing the right thing after all.

Forbes asks: "Are we really living in an era of smaller government?"

No. Nor is that era close at hand. But we're working on it, Mr.Forbes, we're working on it.

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I'm not sure that there's any libertarian principle that objects to planned failure in DVDs, or that there's any logical distinction in the comparative consumer rights between DVD rental and DVD self-destruction. For that matter I'm not sure that there's a logical distinction between (the much maligned) software rental contracts and leasehold on real estate, not while there is Copyright protection, anyway.

I am sure, however, that a great many people of all stripes, including the most avowedly propertarian libertarians, hate the tendency in the entertainment and consumer software industries to enforce their intellectual property rights and create new, lesser rights in their products in which to sell licenses. I am also sure that Copyright is simply losing the minimal respect that is required for a law to be effective. That libertarians should be part of this too should tell us something. After all, we seem quite happy to take un-PC views on the side of big-oil, big-pharmacy, big-tobacco, big-corportate-bogeyman-of-the-week - and revel in how contrarian we seem, how opposed to the "idiotarian" received wisdom. Why not do we not support big-Hollywood too?

Libertarians are generally a pretty law-abiding bunch and, to the extent that they are not, certainly don't boast or casually recount their crimes against property in fora such as Samizdata. But admission of "intellectual property theft" somehow has no stigma. No doubt I will be answered by a clamour of Samizdatistas saying that they disapprove, but I know that many openly engage in filesharing. I am also firmly convinced that much of the support for Napster Inc. and their ilk (the "potential legal uses" defense) is in large part a rationalisation - believed to be true, insofar as it goes, but far from the main motivation for such voluble outrage in their defense.

So what does libertarian antipathy to these developments, and support for filesharing, tell us? I've been meaning to write about this for some time, so let's test a few hypotheses.

1. That when it touches their lives directly, Libertarian principles go out the window and short-term self-interest reigns.

   Not likely. DVDs, Napster/Kazaa/Gnutella and Microsoft Passport may affect libertarians directly. But so do schools, NHS services, and the London underground, as well as passive smoking, GM foods, and the family of asylum seekers moving into the B&B next door. This hypothesis doesn't give a convincing explanation of why libertarians side with the "standardised concerned citizen" on intellectual property, while opposing the stereotype on so many other issues of equal personal relevence.

2. Libertarians are luddites. Any change is seen as threatening.

   This hypothesis is laughable on the face of it. Most libertarians aren't Extropians, but most do have broad sympathy with a watered-down version of that philosophy, while smiling benignly on its kookier limits. If a news story says that scientists have grown a replacement human arm in a jar, a potato that cures hemorrhoids, or built a car that drives itself, you can expect Samizdata to be full of rejoicing, not laden with predictions of woe.

   It is true that libertarians really do believe that government only ever makes things worse, and this is reflected in their instinctive reaction to just about any government initiative: any new policy is greeted with deep scepticism at best, even when it seems obvious to a neutral observer that had incumbent policy been the new one, and the change been in the other direction, libertarians would be roundly decrying the destruction of freedom and western civilisation.

   But the entertainment and software industries are not government bodies, they're the "big business" libertarians usually revel in defending. Out goes all pretense that libertarians are just indulging their knee-jerk anti-government emotions. Something else is going on.

3. Libertarians don't like "rental" licenses, only full ownership. A variant on (2) above, but applied to specifically to business model instead of product.

   This hypothesis doesn't explain why so many support or excuse Napster/Kazaa/Gnutella, which undermine sales of "proper" DVDs and software programs and are a major impetus behind short-life business models such as "pay-per-view" and software rental (OK, the rental payments don't address filesharing specifically, but the new business model is designed to support constant updates and required real-time online access to the vendor's infrastructure, which is a response to filesharing. Trust me on this).

   Anyway, if libertarians are happy to rent their homes, their cars and their space in the traffic jam, why would they object to paying each time they want to see "Sigorney Weaver kills yet more Aliens" or play Doom XXVII?

   Something else is going on.

4. Libertarians want something for nothing.

   This hypothesis alleges that libertarians expect some other agency (the industry, government etc) to continue to provide entertainment goods without charge to the consumer. For the response read Chapter 1 in The Standard Manual of Libertarian Dogma, or check the index under TANSTAAFL.
   

So if none of the obvious hypotheses are convincing, perhaps there really is something different about what is happening in the entertainment and software industries that libertarians have intuited, but not yet fully described.

My theory is this:

Libertarians, in common with most other ordinary people, have finally decided that they don't believe in Intellectual Property Rights.

There's been an ongoing discussion about this in the more theoretical reaches of the libertarian world for many years now, and there have been adherents to both camps. But I'm not really talking about a reasoned defence: I'm talking about an emotional commitment.

Libertarians have an emotional commitment to property rights. They don't just believe in them as a reasoned, pragmatic response to certain identified problems, they - WE - feel in our gut that property is good. It is morally right that you should own stuff, and that when you own it you should be be able to do with it as you choose. If someone tries to interfere with your stuff or take it for themselves then it is not just morally justified for you to defend it, but we'll all have a sneaking admiration for you if you take the opportunity to convince the malefactor of the error of his ways while you're about it.

All the rest - the empirical knowledge of the chaos of collectivism and the horrors of big-C Communism, the deep economic analysis of the price mechanism and the profit motive, the easily digestible stories of the "invisible hand" and the division of labour, and the highly indigestible praxeology of the Austrians and the intellectually respectable homegrown IEA -- all of that, it just goes to support and reinforce and justify an emotional commitment to the concept pf Property, which we know, in our gut, to be right anyway.

Intellectual Property is qualitatively different to physical property (either land or chattels). If I take of your land or chattels then, to the extent that I have more, you have less.

True property is a zero-sum game - not in value terms (when I have 2 cabbages, I have one more than I will eat before it goes mouldy, and exchanging my second cabbage for your second chicken probably creates new value), but certainly so in terms of my possessions: if you take my second cabbage, I cannot give it to my neighbour for his dinner. Free exchange adds to the sum of human happiness, but it doesn't break the Law of the Conservation of Energy. Misunderstanding what is and what is not a zero-sum gain when dealing in property (getting it precisely the wrong way around) is at the root of many failings of socialist economics.

Intellectual Property works the other way around. If I upload my copy of The Matrix to you, it doesn't stop me then giving it to my neighbour, and his neighbour, and his neighbour, ad infinitum. Warner Bros doesn't lose anything it can sell, at least not in the same way that they do if I pinch the DVD from the counter at Woolworths.

But Warner Bros does lose something. It loses a portion of the value of its product, which lies entirely in the extent to which it has a monopoly on supply. For all the arguments (frankly, excuses) about how "I wouldn't buy it anyway" and "I buy more music when I can check if I like it by downloading the MP3 first", in terms of Kant's Categorical Imperative Warner Bros gets screwed: if everyone did the download, Warner Bros wouldn't earn a dime.

Of course, the value of blacksmiths' businesses went down when Henry Ford got going, so a loss in value to Warner Bros isn't in itself necessarily a reason not to do it, indeed to suppose it does rather begs the question. But we shouldn't pretend that they won't lose out.

So, to recap, with traditional property you might create value by moving it from one person to another, but you will reduce their possessions; but with intellectual property you will reduce the rights-holder's value and you will not reduce anyone's possessions.

There's a whole bunch of consequentialist complications with intellectual property industries (personally, I don't see any real threat to making music, which any artist can now record and publish from his bedsit - but how a future movie blockbuster could possibly be made without IP protection is beyond me) - but let's pass by all that and assume, for the sake of argument, that either human ingenuity will conquor all, or that the IP industries will go the way of Gothic cathedrals, or both, or (most likely) that something entirely unforeseeable would happen.

We're still part-way through explaining why libertarians, of all people, seem to show no respect for Intellectual Property rights. Let's look at what these rights actually are, which are under attack, how, and why:

• Trademarks
• the law of Confidence and Trade Secrets
• "moral rights"
• Patents
• Design rights
• Copyright

• Trademarks

  Nobody much seems to have a big problem with these. They may seem just as "artificial" as any other IP right, but neither libertarians nor others are complaining that it is an infringment on my free speech that I cannot describe my own cocktail of fizzy sugars as "Coke".

  Trademarks are an extension of the common law of passing off (the rule that you must not sell a thing by misrepresenting its provenence) which is in itself an expansion and clarification of rules against fraudulent dealing. Trademarks are an administrative convenience, which remove some of the defences to the common law of passing off, and create a irrebuttable presumption of guilt in certain circumstances, all with the intention of levelling the playing field in favour of the single target under attack from a swarm of fly-by-night imitators.

  The only serious complaints about trademarks I have heard recently have been complaints about Internet domain names being taken from protestors, who want to use a web site address containing the trademark to bad-mouth the company or its product (www.acmecorporationsucks.com). This is a marginal complaint about application, and does not constitute a serious attack on the principle of trademarks.

  
  

• The law of confidence and Trade Secrets

  Another potential restraint upon "free speech", this is your right to prevent your doctor telling the tabloids about your syphilis. It is also an employer's right to expect his employee to get on with keep quiet while they fix a problem instead of scaring all the customers away. It is also his right to stop his employee revealing the Colonel's Secret Recipe.

  Confidence is an extension of the law of contract: if I contract with you to keep schtum you should, and if we enter into a contractual relationship and I don't explicitly enjoin your silence, then that expectation can sometimes be implied along with the expectation that you won't spit in the soup you just served me.

  The law of confidence extends this to certain cases where the law doesn't recognise an actual contract. Doctors, when providing free treatment, are a good case in point.

  Various whistleblower laws have been nibbling at the edges of the application of this principle, while new protections for "privacy" have been extending it slightly in other cases. Fundamentally, though, it is well founded and not under attack on principle.

  
  

• Moral rights

  This is the right of an artist not to have his work altered after he's sold it in a way that makes him look a fool or an incompetant. Alternatively, it's the right of the artist to have his name taken off the work if it is so altered.

  Moral rights are not recognised in some legal jurisdictions, and in some where they are they can be contracted out of, which rather defeats the purpose.

  To the extent that they infringe on freedom of contract libertarian doctrine is opposed to moral rights. On the other hand, for a film studio to claim that Billy Writer was responsible for the absurd, sentimental mish-mash that made it through the production process is, in extremis, a serious slur on his reputation. And we do have libel laws for that sort of thing, so why not a particular legal right tailored for the particular situation but based on the same principle?

  However moral rights' patchy implementation, even lesser enforcement, and the fact that they only really impinge on real artists and authors (and their employers and direct customers) means this is not a topic of widespread interest.

  
  

• Patents

  Strictly speaking a patent is a precise description of how to build an object - and the monopoly right to build that exact widget, for a limited term.

  The American Founding Fathers said that this was for the advancement of science. Most people like the idea that James Dyson, back-bedroom inventor of colorful and powerful vacuum-cleaners, gets a decent crack at getting rich rather than losing out to copycat products from incumbent manufacturers like Hoover. Libertarians are well known for supporting drug patents in the face of criticisms that they price drugs out of the affordable range of patients who die when they don't receive them. To quote the decidedly un-libertarian TV series The West Wing:

  Toby: The pills cost them 4 cents a unit to make. Josh: You know that's not true. The second pill cost them 4 cents. The first pill cost them $400 million.

  The concept of patents is being criticised at the moment in three main areas: genome research and the like, software, and patents for business models.

  Genome research is alleged to be a discovery, not an invention: it is argued that not only does this mean it is not a "machine" legally capable of being patented, but also that while the suction-pump on a Dyson may be nifty there are other ways of getting dust of the carpet; whereas there is only one true set of bases in the 103rd gene on the 22nd chromosome, and "you can't patent a fact".

  Patents for software algorithms are attacked on the same basis. While software programs, like Microsoft Word, are protected by copyright, it is currently possible in some cases to obtain a patent from the US patent office for any conceivable implementation of a particular computation formula (algorithm). For example, compression algorithms: if you apply a particular set of calculations to a set of data, it is possible to compress that data so that it takes less disk space. GIF is an image format that describes an image on the screen containing 480,000 pixels each with any of 16million colours, for a total of 11,520,000 bits (or about 1.4Mb) compressed into a file of maybe 2,048,000 bits (or a much more faster download of 250kb). GIF depends on the LZW compression mechanism, which is an algorithm patented by Unisys. It doesn't matter in what software language you rewrite that formula, Unisys are still asking for their patent license fees. Needless to say, some people say "Algorithm = formula = maths = truth = unpatentable".

  Perhaps the most surprising patents have been for business models. Ebay has tried patenting online auctions, Amazon has patented its "One-Click" ordering, various different people have been awarded patents which, as reported to a laymen by a lay journalist, appear to grant them exclusive rights to any business mechanism characterised by my computer buying something from your computer without either of us being aware of the specific transaction. Keep checking the papers; this story will run and run.

• Design rights

  Design rights are simply a cross between trademarks and patents: they protect the individuality of the look of your product. The distinctive shape of the Coca-Cola bottle, the green and gold of anything from Harrods (even if you call yourself Harold's), the beaming furriness of a stuffed Bugs Bunny in any size or deportment, these things are all protected by design rights. And most everybody reckons it's OK for the law to protect this, because only Coca-cola is Coke (tm).

• Copyright

  Despite much aggro in the world of patents, Copyright is where the action is.

  Rights holders are extending the utility of their rights both through technology and through aggressively-lobbied legislation. Copyright term protection has increased from 18 years to 30 years to 50 years to 70 years. The software industry has avoided the most product liability and fitness for purpose regulation by imposing "contractual license terms" on customers that depend, for their applicability, on the notion that you must copy software to your PC in order to run it, and so once you've bought the program disc you still need to contract for a license. Under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and the similar European Copyright Directive, you can't even alter the protected item for your own use, e.g. making a DVD designed for Region 1 (USA) play in Region 2 (UK). And, of course, the music and movie and software industries are all trying to move to a pay-per use model, thereby capturing repeat payments from all those who don't need yet another new wordprocessor for their personal letters and like the Beatles, not Ms Dynamite.

  
  Rights holder organisations have Congress, Parliament, the Council of Ministers, WIPO and the 9th Circuit (on both sides of the Atlantic) in the palm of their hand. Nonetheless, the RIAA, MPAA, SPA, MCPS, BSA and the rest of the alphabet soup are all running scared. How can this be?

  It's because while companies that get even moderately successful at abusing other companies' intellectual property rights make a nice easy target for a lawsuit, it is much, much harder to get gazillions of consumers to behave themselves if they don't want to. Most of all, it's because such mis-behaviour became so easy when everyone got on the Internet. Films are still very slow and painful to share; software is much easier, and has a longer payoff for the consumer who downloads it; but music - ah, music.

  Time was, you'd go to the music store and browse through stacks of vinyl; top 10 singles sold millions and album covers were works of art in their own right. Now, people start playing one track, think of another, find it, and can have it downloaded and ready to play while the first one's still annoying the neighbours. The only thing stopping the Internet using public doing this freely is their personal belief that this is morally wrong. And, quite simply, people just don't think that.

  Filesharing programs like Napster and Kazaa depend upon people giving away their music etc., while downloading new stuff from others. They get no direct benefit from doing so, indeed it might even slow down their own downloads, and some programs provide a simple switch to stop sharing your own stuff. The system appears to be open to an enormous free-rider problem, but it doesn't actually seem to suffer at all.

  When upstanding citizens do something represensible normally they feel a twinge of guilt. If you park on a double-yellow line you don't shop with a clear conscience, and it's not just the fear of traffic wardens. Saving extreme anarchists, there's a slight twinge when you lie on your tax return, however swiftly it is assuaged by the "free beer" bought with the little less of your hard-earned that's going to Uncle Sam for division between starving indigents and middle-class holders of bureaucratic sinecures. Should an allegedly respectable citizen walk out of a shop 'accidentally' wearing the dress she tried on in the fitting room, she certainly won't chat idly about her 'bargain' with her friends. Chances are, the guilt and shame will prevent the dress ever being worn at all.

  Filesharing is different. If you watch a file upload complete, you don't feel a twinge of guilt that EMI have just lost a sale that was rightfully theirs to some unknown music-lover in Korea. You feel a sense of pride, of satisfaction that your taste in Country-Soul-Rap-Swing is not entirely without company, and you feel a sense of duty-discharged; you have done your bit to give back to the community that so kindly donated your 60Gb of wall-shaking, neighbour-deafening, environmental-health-officer taunting Mike Oldfield tracks.
  

Which brings me back to the Libertarians. Libertarians, though I love you dearly, can be some of the most self-righteous, morally censorious, dogmatic people I've ever come across. I know one who spent 10 months of unemployment steadfastly refusing to claim State benefits while her life savings drained away, and no attempt to persuade her that it was just a refund on her taxes shook her determination not to compromise her beliefs. I myself have some of these tendencies, and admit to being a little too quick to sneer at those who profess that taxation is theft from their government-grant-funded lecture halls. Yet card-carrying libertarians, myself included, just don't connect online filesharing with that basic, raw, emotional commitment to the sanctity of property.

Nor is it just in "official" libertaria, like Samizdata. Check out Slashdot, one of the oldest blogs: produced by and for computer programmers and sysadmins, Slashdot participants have very strong libertarian tendencies. "In Soviet Russia..." has moved from comment title, to cliche, to joke, to the entire comment. A major topic category, "Your Rights Online" has its own editor promoting stories on Privacy - Echelon, Crypotography regulation, and Censorship, along with other well-worn Samizdata favourites. Read one of the daily stories on the RIAA/MPAA attacks on filesharing, and you'll see many vigourous (well, loud) defenses of the right to share music, and the right to bear arms in case anyone tries to stop you. Sure, there's a lot of talk about potentially legal uses of such software. There are those who claim they only use it for legal purposes - and a few even sound credible. The overall message remains clear: "I share music and stuff. I don't apologise. Any organisation trying to prevent this is bad, and should be stopped".

Mainstream media such as youth, culture and entertainment publications all recognise that filesharing is a fact of life and, with a bare nod to the sensibilities of their advertisers and their lawyers, accept it as guilt-free. Taken as a whole, we're looking at the most widespread civil disobedience since the introduction of speed limits.

In conclusion, I believe that most people, and most libertarians, have decided in their hearts that they don't believe in Intellectual Property Rights. They are willing to accept them as a pragmatic implementation of an aspect of the moral position also protected by the law of contract (confidence), of fraudulent passing off (trademarks and design rights), and of libel (moral rights). They like the idea of the madcap inventor having some protection from Big Bad Manufacturer, and are scared that no patents equals no R&D; equally, people dislike corporate behemoth carving out large and incomprehensible monopolies, especially over things that sound like true necessities or simple facts of nature. But since patents really only feature in the world of business there is little that most individuals care or can do about them anyway. However copyright doesn't enjoy any of these defenses; there are no analogies with basic common law, and if ordinary citizens won't wear it then Copyright is doomed. To believe and choose to respect Copyright, personally, deeply, emotionally, you have to truly believe that an idea can indeed be Property.

It is in the realm of Copyright where individuals, consumers, citizens are making their moral choice heard loud and clear. We can't even be bothered to be mad as hell; we're just not going to take it any more.

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While I am on the subject of Mugabe, it is worth illustrating what he and his warped, psychotic ideology have actually done to the former Rhodesia.

We bandy around words like 'tyrant' and 'dictator' and 'undemocratic' but there comes a point when these words, in isolation, no longer have the power to move in the way they should. Altogether more moving, nay profoundly upsetting, is this graphic description from the UK Times of what African marxism is actually doing to this particular corner of Africa:

Zimbabwe is a country rich in resources and with great potential. It used to have a well-oiled infrastructure that even South Africa, with its far bigger economy, envied. It was robust enough to withstand the first two decades of President Mugabe’s rule but it has now reached the point of collapse. An advanced society is returning to the primitive.

It may be too late to reverse or even halt this process now. The damage has been done and, once again, the world is going to be assailed with a stark object lesson in the consequences of state kleptocracy and forced collectivisation. And, once again, those lessons will be rudely ignored, I'll wager.

In fact, I'll go further. I'm willing to bet that, even with the pictures of starving Zimbabweans rooting around in the dirt for a few berries are beamed into our homes, our own political leaders will continue to devote their energies to ever-more creative and unscrupulous ways of traducing our property rights and confiscating our earnings. Under the mendacious rubric of 'social democracy' Western 'intellectuals' will kid themselves that there is a world of difference between their economic philosophies and those of Mugabe. But the difference lies only in degree and the end result differs only in terms of timescale.

But we must neither forget nor forgive. Even while Mugabe is being glad-handed and back-slapped in Paris, we can exact vengeance on behalf of the society he has destroyed. We can do that by committing ourselves single-mindedly to a ferocious and relentless war against the people who would do to us by increment what Mugabe has done to Zimbabweans in swathes.

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I detect a distinct air of despondency in the ranks of the libertarian camp in ever seeing any point in voting for, or co-opting with, right-of-centre parties such as the Conservatives in Britain (see David Carr's remarks) or the Republican Party in the U.S. (see Jim Henley in similar vein).

I see no reason for being surprised. Even if you support Bush on the war, as I do, albeit while detesting the Patriot act and the Dept. of Homeland Security, what is there to like? The vast increase in the budget deficit is a real worry - and I say that as a supply sider, not as a 'deficit hawk' - we have had the steel tariffs, the Farm bill, etc. Okay, the first tax cut was better than nothing, but not as good as a cut to marginal tax rates across the board. Oh, Dubya did at least stiff the Kyoto Treaty. But while he is probably a tad better than the likely alternatives, his GOP makes an unlikely suitor for libertarians.

As for the Tories, I despair utterly of them being in a fit state for any outreach to us. With the sole and erratic exception of shadow Home Secretary Oliver Letwin, there is not a single top-ranking Tory MP I come across who seems to have a thorough grasp of the extent to which our civil as well as economic liberties have been crushed.

Which leaves us with the usual cul-de-sac of a possible new party. And I cannot see how that is going to work.

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I believe I am guilty of taking the latest Conservative proposals on education out of their context. As a result, I made the mistake of regarding them as an aberration; a singular folly.

However, I should have examined these proposals in the round of their 'Fair Deal for Britain':