(26)

A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years

- Lysander Spooner

(29)

"How fashionable to wear clothes that are distressed. The young on the Westside of Los Angeles dress themselves in jeans worn, sanded, and razored to resemble something a six-month castaway might crawl ashore in. Why? They are trying to purchase a charade of victimisation, as the ethos of the Liberal West holds that these victims are the only ones of worth. but how to go about it? For the jeans can cost over one thousand dollars (one might buy them at Goodwill for two bucks, but, I am informed, they would be "seen through" and, though a closer approximation to true poverty, they are ineffective as a concomitant display of wealth.) It beats me hollow. Look at those Old Rich Guys in their Porsche, the young might say, but the Porsche is perhaps not an attempt to display wealth, neither to recapture youth, but to enjoy that which some years of labor have permitted as an indulgence."

- David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge, page 63.

(57)

I don't think earning about the same as Kenwyne Jones of Stoke City is cause for apoplectic outrage.

- Mark Littlewood of the IEA on the UK political storm about the head of the world's sixth largest bank getting a bonus of something under one... meelion... pounds. (US readers may wish to read that again. A million, not a billion.)

Stoke City is currently the 8th best soccer team in England. It has 44 players in its squad.

(5)

[W]hile SOPA/PIPA may be stalled for now, a big part of the reason is that tech companies got into the lobbying game, too...That’s right, slowly but surely, Congress is sucking the tech industry into their world, making us play by their rules. We have to pay them off, literally with cash, or we get slaughtered.

This is how criminal organizations run protection rackets. Congress is doing just that, only it’s completely legal.

- TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington on the spanner thrown into the works of SOPA/PIPA (for now)

(23)

"More people have heard of Tom Cruise than Ben Bernanke, but that doesn’t mean that Bernanke hasn’t had a bigger impact on their life."

- Matt Zwolinski, a blogger at the recently expanded "Bleeding Heart Libertarian" group blog. He's writing about the benefits and costs of intellectual versus political activism, as relating to Ron Paul.

The failure of Tom Cruise to influence my life is, I guess, something I can live with, although I did rather enjoy the latest Mission Impossible flick.

(2)

Katharine Birbalsingh is an heroic, principled woman who, against hideous odds, is trying desperately to open a free school - the Michaela Community School - in a part of South London woefully ill-served by state secondary schools. It will provide academic rigour, discipline, a liberal arts curriculum including Latin, uniforms, sporting facilities and extended school hours to children in one of the most deprived parts of London, regardless of race or social class or ability to pay. For those children whose parents can't afford to go private, the school will be a godsend – possibly the single thing that makes all the difference in their life between success and failure.

No, it doesn't. Indeed I'd suggest that these comments are actually counterproductive. They draw attention to the fact that criticism of Katharine Birbalsingh's noble project is based not on reasoned argument but on prejudice and incoherent rage. This is why they're so well worth quoting: because they let the enemy do our work for us.

- Delingpole comments on a comment.

(7)

"On the basis of economic theory and historical experience, the life expectancy of a societal model with 50 percent or more government control over the economy does therefore not look promising. The taxing, resources-consuming state-parasite must constantly weaken and sooner or later kill the productive and wealth-creating market-host. When does this happen? Well, we are about to find out, as we are now all part of some gigantic real-life experiment, bravely conducted by the current policy establishment in Europe and elsewhere at our own expense and that of our children. Across the EU, the share of government spending in the economy is already around 50 percent, depending whose numbers you believe. If we could account for regulation and interventionist legislation, the state’s grip on economic decision-making is certainly larger. To call such an economy capitalist is a joke, albeit perhaps not as cruel a joke as the one the economy itself, with its persistently anaemic performance, is playing on the Keynesian economists and their ridiculous clamour for ever more government spending to boost ‘aggregate demand’."

- Detlev Schlichter, making a point that needs hammering home. What we have in the West, right now, is a million miles from laissez faire capitalism.

(4)

"In retrospect, there are some obvious questions an Icelander living through the past five years might have asked himself. For example: Why should Iceland suddenly be so seemingly essential to global finance? Or: Why do giant countries that invented modern banking suddenly need Icelandic banks to stand between their depositors and their borrowers - to decide who gets capital and who does not? And if Icelanders have this incredible natural gift for finance, how did they keep it so well hidden for 1,100 years?"

Michael Lewis, Boomerang, page 36.

And I liked this line (page 37): "Leverage buys you a glimpse of a prosperity you haven't really earned."

(3)

Mr. Sachs here performs the equivalent of, say, accusing someone who advocates sobriety of thereby being indifferent to other values such parental responsibility, financial prudence, and neighborliness. But just as being sober in no way precludes – and likely promotes – other values such as parental responsibility, being a libertarian in no way precludes any of the values and causes that Mr. Sachs lists. Indeed, libertarians argue that these other values and causes are best promoted by individual liberty, and that too many people who insist that achieving these other values requires the suppression of liberty are cynically seeking convenient cover for their own self-aggrandizement.

Of course, libertarians might be mistaken about liberty’s merits. But that Mr. Sachs presumes that libertarians hold cheap such values as compassion, civic responsibility, and honesty proves that what Lord Acton wrote about Robert Kemp Philp’s description of history applies perfectly to Mr. Sachs’s description of libertarianism: "It were well if he knew his subject as well as he knows his own mind about it."

- Two quotes there from Donald J. Boudreaux (responding to this). There is his own own eloquence, and there is the Acton quote at the end of what he himself says.

(3)

They said it would never be agreed. Then they said it would never be launched. Then they said it would fail. When it was a success, the euro-haters still insisted that the single currency was a recipe for economic chaos and political instability. The phobes are proving to be wrong again. At a time when so much of Europe's political leadership is in flux, the single currency is the steadying point in an uncertain and worrying world.

That this has not happened is thanks to the euro. The single currency has taken all this political upheaval in its calm stride.

- From an anonymous editorial in the Observer headed "A tolerant euro".

From 2002, in case you were wondering.

(7)

"And, make no mistake, Marxists did lose a big argument, one we now know as 'the 20th century'."

- Will Wilkinson

(12)

Phyllis Dixey - 1914 to 1964 - Striptease Artiste - lived here in flat number 15.

- The wording proposed last November for a new British Heritage blue plaque, but it proved controversial. I only just came across this story. Since then, I don't know what has happened. Is this plaque actually going to materialise? What it says at the bottom of this recent news item, about another proposed blue plaque in honour of movie actress Margaret Lockwood, suggests not. If not, shame.

(24)

Austrian economic theory describes how purposive action by fallible human beings unintentionally generates a grand, complex, and orderly market process. An additional ethical step is required to pronounce the market process good. Economic theory per se cannot recommend but only explain markets. This is what Ludwig von Mises meant when he insisted that Austrian economics is value-free. Anyone of any persuasion ought to be able to acknowledge that economic logic indicates that imposing a price ceiling on milk will, other things equal, create a shortage of milk. But that in itself is not an argument against the policy. Mises assumed the policymaker would have thought that result bad, but the economist qua economist cannot declare it such. As Israel Kirzner likes to say, the economist’s job in the policy realm is merely to point out that you cannot catch a northbound train from the southbound platform.

- Sheldon Richman writes about How Liberals Distort Austrian Economics

(4)

If we immerse ourselves wholly in day-to-day affairs, we cease making fundamental distinctions, or asking the really basic questions. Soon, basic issues are forgotten, and aimless drift is substituted for firm adherence to principle. Often we need to gain perspective, to stand aside from our everyday affairs in order to understand them more fully. This is particularly true in our economy, where interrelations are so intricate that we must isolate a few important factors, analyze them, and then trace their operations in the complex world.

- from the Introduction of What Has Government Done To Our Money? by Murray Rothbard. To read the whole thing, go here.

(12)

There is nothing in this film for the Left.  Where they demonized Margaret Thatcher, the movie humanizes her.  It is not about the great events of her political life; these are its backdrop.  Her entry into Parliament, her leadership bid, the miners' strike, the IRA and the Falklands War all feature, but the movie is not about them.  Rather is it about the strength of character with which she confronted successive challenges and crises.

- Madsen Pirie reviews The Iron Lady. Unlike Nicholas Wapshott, Pirie liked it a lot, and says it will make those who see it like and admire the lady herself more.

(8)

The maths doesn’t add up; this is just sinking capital into a loss making project. If you’re going to use the power of the state to do that, then you shouldn’t be surprised that this country is getting poorer.

- Steve Baker MP denounces the plan for a new stretch of high speed rail, quoted (behind a registration wall) at the Financial Times.

I make this today's QotD here not in spite of Guido having already featured it as his quote of today (and maybe also of the next few days) but because of this. Baker's soundbite is getting around. Good.

Lots of Americans who read Samizdata but not Guido, and who are also confronting idiot plans to waste their money on high speed rail foolishnesses, will now also read this soundbite. Good again.

Meanwhile, as the FT's headline proclaims, "economists insist" that this piece of Keynesian pump priming that won't should go ahead, damn the expense. Well they would, wouldn't they?

(0)

Newcastle did not beat Manchester United today, because the long term trend is for Manchester United to beat Newcastle.

- Bishop Hill's quote of the day today. He found it here. This is the game being referred to.

(10)

"At the deepest levels within our governing structures, we are committed to living beyond our means on a scale no civilization has ever done. Our most enlightened citizens think it's rather vulgar and boorish to obsess about debt. The urbane, educated, Western progressive would rather "save the planet," a cause which offers the grandiose narcissism that, say, reforming Medicare lacks."

- Mark Steyn

(12)

This might be the only measurement you need to judge the Afghanistan War. Vendors in Kabul are doing a brisk trade in Taliban ringtones. Because Afghans report that the Taliban kill travelers at clandestine checkpoints if they don’t hear one of their messages on someone’s phone.

- The opening sentences of a Wired piece by Spencer Ackerman entitled Either Your Phone Plays Taliban Ringtones, or You Die

(6)

I let Guy Herbert buy me a drink. Nobody should ever let Guy Herbert buy them a drink. I should always buy him a drink.

- Rob Fisher, to me, a year or so back, shortly after the plans for the ID card were abandoned. The fight continues, but battles have at times been won.

Also: Merry Christmas, everyone.

(10)

I get the feeling that crime fiction is where ideas go to die.

- Brian Micklethwait

(5)

Nothing is sustainable.

- Willis Eschenbach

(6)

"I am not one of those who have ever flattered the people, or striven to win favour by telling them that from the Crown or from Parliament that could be got which could not be got from themselves, by themselves. I would impress upon you this. What the State gives to you, the State takes from you first; it further charges you with the cost of collection, and with the cost of distribution. Better by far that you should save for yourselves and spend for yourselves, than put into the purse of the State your earnings of which only part can at best come back."

- Charles Bradlaugh, 19th Century British parliamentarian and campaigner on issues such as rights of non-believers, contraception, the case against the monarchy, and as this quotation shows, an opponent of socialism. The quote is taken from a review of a book about Bradlaugh by Bryan Niblett, who is known to some of us at Samizdata. Bryan is an Objectivist (as in an admirer of the philosophy of Ayn Rand) and has worked for many years as a private arbitrator concerning areas such as intellectual property. A very good and smart man all round, in fact.

(6)

Usually in politics, we say one guy is great and the other guy is bad and the they’ll say their guy is great and our guy is bad. But can’t we compromise and agree they’re all awful? Treating all politicians with contempt is the first steps towards a smaller government, because when you hate and distrust them all, you realize how imperative it is to give them as little power as possible.

- Frank J

(9)

Why don't [union leaders] be selective and call out only those members who can cause damage to the government? There are places in the public sector that could go on strike for years and it would make little difference."

- Letter in the New Statesman, 12 December 2011

Assuming the unions were to agree with that—which I suspect they dare not, and is indeed one strategic reason why one-day strikes are preferred—in what places in the public sector would staff striking for a significant period damage the government more than the unions? Maybe there are some. But it is hard to think of any.

(11)

Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace

- Vaclav Havel, tireless fighter against communism and sundry other human absurdities, has died. Ave atque vale.

(37)

Immigrants are incoming assets … in a global economy, their labour is vital both to tackle severe skills shortages and to fill long-term vacancies. Immigrants are not taking jobs that British workers could fill, but jobs which British workers are unable or unwilling to do … the idea that immigration is an intolerable burden on the taxpayer and the welfare state is baloney. Immigrants give far more than they take. It is estimated that they make a net contribution to the economy of £2.5bn …

- House of Commons Speaker John Bercow in an article in the Independent in 2005, quoted by Henry Oliver today in Adam Smith Institute's Pin Factory Blog.

(7)

“Every day, the New York Times carries a motto in a box on its front page. 'All the News That's Fit to Print,' it says. It's been saying it for decades, day in and day out. I imagine most readers of the canonical sheet have long ceased to notice this bannered and flaunted symbol of its mental furniture. I myself check every day to make sure that the bright, smug, pompous, idiotic claim is still there. Then I check to make sure that it still irritates me. If I can still exclaim, under my breath, why do they insult me and what do they take me for and what the hell is it supposed to mean unless it's as obviously complacent and conceited and censorious as it seems to be, then at least I know I still have a pulse. You may wish to choose a more rigorous mental workout but I credit this daily infusion of annoyance with extending my lifespan.”

Unfortunately, not even the Gray Lady was able to extend the lifespan of this essayist and controversialist beyond his age of 62. Farewell, Hitch.

(1)

"All corporate taxes fall on households in the end. Companies might be convenient places to get cash from but they are not the people actually carrying the economic burden. It is some combination of shareholders, workers and consumers that are carrying the burden: those getting the social services which they are unable to fund."

- Tim Worstall, dealing with yet another piece of nonsense from that over-blown socialist buffoon, Richard Murphy. I have to admire Tim's stamina in how he relentlessly mocks and refutes the rubbish from Murphy. But someone has to do it.

(10)

So all the UK is isolated from is an impending disaster: the eurozone will fragment with countries leaving and debt defaults. It is like being as isolated as a man who failed to get onto the Titanic before it sailed.

- Terry Smith

(17)

By the end, we may see profligate politicians hanging from lampposts. But there’ll be a lot of bad stuff, too.

- Instapundit

LATER:

But all joking aside, if the current profligacy continues, and America winds up in a Greece-style (or worse) collapse, politicians may not wind up hanging from lampposts (we don’t really do that here), but they will at the very least likely face the kind of investigations, prosecutions, and social opprobrium normally reserved for child molesters and Bernie Madoff types. I don’t think they fully appreciate that. If they did, they’d be acting differently.

(4)

I cannot avoid coming to this conclusion - that there are too many great men in the world; there are too many legislators, organizers, institutors of society, conductors of the people, fathers of nations, etc., etc. Too many persons place themselves above mankind, to rule and patronize it; too many persons make a trade of looking after it. It will be answered - “You yourself are occupied upon it all this time.” Very true. But it must be admitted that it is in another sense entirely that I am speaking; and if I join the reformers it is solely for the purpose of inducing them to relax their hold.

- from The Law by Frédéric Bastiat (on the penultimate page (54) of this pdf edition)

Ah yes. To fight politics, you have to do politics. And before you know it, you are what you were earlier warning the world against.

(3)

Listening to Pergolesi's Stabat Mater is like drinking champagne with God.

- HC Robbins Landon

Quoted on BBC Radio 3 today, by music scholar Lionel Sawkins, in a programme about Le Concert Spirituel, which seems to have been an eighteenth century French version of the Proms. Pergolesi's Stabat Mater was the single most popular piece played at these concerts.

(43)

Unless, of course, you are saying that people can freely come to these islands providing they are not ill, don't ever require homes or need education then it is fine because these services are not benefits.

- Michael Jennings, spelling out exactly what folks in these here parts most certainly do think.

(22)

"Sir Jasper Finch-Farrowmere?" said Wilfred.

"ffinch-ffarrowmere," corrected the visitor, his sensitive ear detecting the capitals.

- from the short story Meet Mr. Mulliner by P. G. Wodehouse, quoted by Stephen Fry, in an essay by him about Wodehouse published by the Independent in 2000.

(16)

Paul Krugman:

"Although Europe’s leaders continue to insist that the problem is too much spending in debtor nations, the real problem is too little spending in Europe as a whole."

Let us fisk this:

"The story so far: In the years leading up to the 2008 crisis, Europe, like America, had a runaway banking system and a rapid buildup of debt. In Europe’s case, however, much of the lending was across borders, as funds from Germany flowed into southern Europe. This lending was perceived as low risk. Hey, the recipients were all on the euro, so what could go wrong?"

Nice piece of snark, which I do not demur from.

"For the most part, by the way, this lending went to the private sector, not to governments. Only Greece ran large budget deficits during the good years; Spain actually had a surplus on the eve of the crisis."

That may be true. I have not checked. However, the fact that Spain's public finances went down the toilet so fast does not quite suggest that the Spanish public sector was a model of mean-minded prudence.

"Then the bubble burst. Private spending in the debtor nations fell sharply. And the question European leaders should have been asking was how to keep those spending cuts from causing a Europe-wide downturn."

No, they should have been facing up to the fact that a vast number of mal-investments were caused by a decade of under-priced credit, and that there was no way that such a build-up of bad investments can be unwound painlessly. Seeking to hold off the pain by increasing public spending (and hence scaring the hell out of the global bond market) is hardly likely to achieve the desired effect.

"During the years of easy money, wages and prices in southern Europe rose substantially faster than in northern Europe. This divergence now needs to be reversed, either through falling prices in the south or through rising prices in the north. And it matters which: If southern Europe is forced to deflate its way to competitiveness, it will both pay a heavy price in employment and worsen its debt problems. The chances of success would be much greater if the gap were closed via rising prices in the north."

That may be true in crudely political terms; after having enjoyed the fat years, those who have done so are not likely to enjoy a lean period. However...

"But to close the gap through rising prices in the north, policy makers would have to accept temporarily higher inflation for the euro area as a whole. And they’ve made it clear that they won’t. Last April, in fact, the European Central Bank began raising interest rates, even though it was obvious to most observers that underlying inflation was, if anything, too low."

Well, it seems a bit glib to assume, as Keynesians like Professor Krugman do, that the inflation will prove to be temporary... Riiiight... One key problem for the eurozone, as he ought to know, is that labour markets in much of the region are so heavily regulated that getting a meaningful adjustment in wages and prices is hard, and yet this has to happen if countries such as Greece and Germany are to co-exist under the same currency area without strife. The same issue, of course, would apply if the whole region were to adopt, say, an inelastic system of real money instead of fiat money issued by a central bank or banks.

Another point for Professor Krugman to remember is that in some member nations, such as France, there has been double-digit percent unemployment for the young long before anyone had heard about sub-prime or credit crunches. And Europe's record for wealth and job creation, compared to that of the US prior to the crunch, has been and remains lamentable.

(18)

The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment claimed that ‘there is strong evidence’ of sea level rising over the last few decades. It goes as far as to claim: ‘Satellite observations available since the early 1990s provide more accurate sea level data with nearly global coverage. This decade-long satellite altimetry data set shows that since 1993, sea level has been rising at a rate of around 3mm yr–1, significantly higher than the average during the previous half century. Coastal tide gauge measurements confirm this observation, and indicate that similar rates have occurred in some earlier decades.’

We must learn to take the environmentalists’ predictions with a huge pinch of salt. In 2005, the United Nations Environment Programme predicted that climate change would create 50 million climate refugees by 2010. That was last year: where are those refugees? And where are those sea level rises? The true facts are found by observing and measuring nature itself, not in the IPCC’s computer-generated projections. There are many urgent natural problems to consider on Planet Earth — tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions not least among them. But the threat of rising sea levels is an artificial crisis.

- Sea level expert Nils-Axel Mörner rips into the climate catastrophists.

See also this piece, which drives a dagger into the heart of the climate catastrophe fraud.

(4)

"“Green” will never be quite the same after Obama. When Solyndra and its affiliated scandals are at last fully brought into the light of day, we will see the logical reification of Climategate I & II, Al Gore’s hucksterism, and Van Jones’s lunacy. How ironic that the more Obama tried to stop drilling in the West, offshore, and in Alaska, as well as stopping the Canadian pipeline, the more the American private sector kept finding oil and gas despite rather than because of the U.S. government. How further ironic that the one area that Obama felt was unnecessary for, or indeed antithetical to, America’s economic recovery — vast new gas and oil finds — will soon turn out to be America’s greatest boon in the last 20 years. While Obama and Energy Secretary Chu still insist on subsidizing money-losing wind and solar concerns, we are in the midst of a revolution that, within 20 years, will reduce or even end the trade deficit, help pay off the national debt, create millions of new jobs, and turn the Western Hemisphere into the new Persian Gulf. The American petroleum revolution can be delayed by Obama, but it cannot be stopped."

- Victor Davis Hanson.

(3)

In nine tenths of the written treaties between the Kings of Portugal and the various reigning Princes of Hindustan, the matter of pepper came up in the first clause.

- Admiral Ballard

I have been reading The Last Crusaders by Barnaby Rogerson. Like many books it has apposite quotations at the start of each chapter, of which the above quotation was by some distance my favourite one. The Ballard quoted is presumably the Ballard who wrote this book, who was indeed an admiral as well as a historian.

(21)

The concept of property is fundamental to our society, probably to any workable society. Operationally, it is understood by every child above the age of three. Intellectually, it is understood by almost no one.

But property rights are not the rights of property; they are the rights of humans with regard to property.

- from The Machinery of Freedom (1973) by David Friedman, Part 1, "In defense of property".

(23)

We've already killed all the dumb terrorists, so all that's left are the smart ones.

- I heard an American voice saying that, in connection with the ongoing war in Afghanistan, while I was transferring a recording I had made of a show called The World's Deadliest Arms Race (shown in the UK about a month ago on Channel 4 TV) from my TV hard disc onto a DVD.

One of the best things about recording TV shows, as opposed to merely watching them, is being able to wind back and find out exactly who said something of particular interest, and exactly what it consisted of. The above words, I quickly learned, were spoken by a big, tough guy in a black T-shirt by the name of Marine Staff Sergeant Jack Pierce. They come right near the end of the show, which lasts just over forty five minutes.

Ssgt. Pierce was reflecting on how he and the rest of the crew of the vehicle they were all in were subjected to attack with an I(mprovised) E(xplosive) D(evice). Six of the crew were badly wounded, including Ssgt. Pierce who is now paralysed from the chest downwards. The other two died instantly.

(9)

Nice comment at the Bishop's, on this, about "Climategate 2", from "simon" (4:35pm):

I so hate it when my vicar quotes from the Bible. I can't take such quotes seriously as they are out of context.

Perhaps the institution of the Samizdata quote of the day should be abolished. Time and time again, we here quote quotes, out of context.

Not all of the snippets that are now doing the rounds of the anti-CAGW blogosphere strike me as being as damning as some of them are. But, if anyone chooses to wonder about the degree of wickedness revealed by any particular snippet, it is the work of a moment for that person to find the context, this being one of the features of the internet. Provided, in presenting your preferred snippet, you supply the means of inspecting its context, then you have at least supplied the means by which your interpretation of the snippet may be challenged. And some of the snippets are very damning indeed.

If you are caught saying you are guilty only half as many times as the prosecution lawyer says you have been caught, that still makes you guilty.

Earlier in the thread, Viv Evans (4:02pm) says:

This 'out-of-context' excuse is favoured and generally used by shifty politicians who try to defend their misdeeds.

Indeed. And shifty politicians is exactly what these people are.

I trust that simon and Viv Evans will forgive me for quoting them out of context.

(21)

Are Ridley Scott's falling petals, which he seems to like so much that he puts them in his films over and over again, anything more than a way to gussy up the triumph of oligarchy, corporate capital and globalisation?

- Rick Moody, in a Guardian article entitled Frank Miller and the rise of cryptofascist Hollywood

(18)

"At times, Gingrich, who's written more than 150 book reviews on Amazon.com, sounds like a guy who read way too much during a long prison stretch."

- Gene Healy. He's not a fan.

(7)

“As the Church of England keeps telling us how much it shares the aims of the St Paul’s protestors, I notice an advertisement in the Financial Times. The Church Commissioners need a chief operating officer. He will be paid a `six figure salary’, says the advertisement, to manage their `£5 billion multi-asset portfolio’. There is no mention of anything Christian, or even anything ethical. The language is all management-speak. The ideal candidate will have a `proven track record of driving continuous and consistent operational performance’. The job’s responsibilities include `to build and maintain internal controls and process and to lead a no-surprises culture’. Although it is pretty hard to reconcile a `no-surprises culture’ with the mystery of the Incarnation, one must admit that it might have come in useful in dealing these various `occupations’. As well as St Paul’s, there is no one else outside Bristol, Exeter and Sheffield Cathedrals. You have only to study the websites of the various Occupy groups across the country to see that they, too, stick to a no-surprises culture. Events include Palestine Solidarity Campaign rallies, performances by Billy Bragg, strikers’ benefit gigs, meetings of the Anti-Cuts Alliance. They are not forerunners of a Second Coming: they are the usual suspects. There is nothing unchristian about rounding them up (caringly, of course).”

Charles Moore, page 11 of Spectator, 19 November. (This is behind the magazine’s pay-wall. Be grateful to your humble Samizdata scribe for re-typing these words from the dead-tree version).

I like the point about Billy Bragg. He’s in danger of becoming a “national treasure”.

(2)

In its varying degrees, the political, legislative and social applications of environmental science studies in this 21st century should be carefully compared to that of Eugenics in the late 19th and through the mid- 20th centuries.

- Redoubtable serial commenter 'RRS'

(5)

George Orwell wrote of government power, "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever." He may still be right, but there's now a decent chance someone will be there with a cell-phone camera to post it on YouTube. And exposing abuse of power is half the battle.

- The magnificent Radley Balko, who does more for exposing abuse of power than just about anyone.

(14)

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honours, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.

- James Madison [Thanks to Sara Scarlett for reminding me]

(21)

God's light, these villains will make the word as odious as the word 'occupy;' which was an excellent good word before it was ill sorted

- Henry IV Part II, Act III Scene 4. (In past centuries "occupy", used as a transitive verb, had an additional meaning.)

(10)

I came across this note in one of the notes I get from banks and law firms. I am not sure of the source, but it was allegedly said by the mother of Karl Marx:

"I wish Karl would accumulate some capital, instead of just writing about it."

Of course, Marx spent a lot of his life living off the capital as generated by other people. A familiar pattern.

(7)

The only really safe investment is wine, at times like these. If it goes up, you make a profit; and if it goes down you can drink it.

- Harry Hutton

(13)

Most politicians don’t know any better. They certainly don’t know any economics. So the same toxic policy mix of Keynesian deficit spending and Monetarist money printing has been implemented around the world since this crisis started four years ago. Just like in any other recession of the past forty years, ever since Nixon cut the last link to gold and fulfilled every interventionist’s wildest fantasy: unlimited paper money under full control of the state! Yeah, baby, no more recessions!

Alas, no. The academically trained Keynesian economist is too committed to his or her beliefs to let the facts get in the way. Why has policy not worked? Because, wait for it, we have been too timid. We need the same policy. We just need more of it. A lot more.

- from the latest Schlichter File, posted today.

LATER: See also this recent interview with Schlichter.

(4)

To politicians, endless horror is much preferable to a horrible end.

- Samizdata commenter "Plamus", discussing the future of the Euro here.

(19)

Beijing is full of empty shopping malls and empty apartment buildings. There are at least 60 million empty housing units in China, and probably a great many more than that. The absurd construction boom that continues to go on here is many times bigger than the rest of the world combined, and the Chinese banks are many times more bankrupt than those anywhere else

- Michael Jennings (currently in Beijing)

(14)

In my youth, we libbos used to go to P.J. O'Rourke for American libbo laughs. Now that mantle - of American, deceptively profound, politically right on the money laughs - has passed on to IMAO man Frank J. Fleming, whose book, Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything is coming out quite soon now.

Good recent Frank Jism:

Things often overwhelm and underwhelm, but seldom do things just whelm.

You see? It's funny (I think), but it also gets you thinking. Where did the word "overwhelm" come from, from which the word "underwhelm" has recently been derived (because as soon as you say "underwhelm" everyone immediately understands)? "Overwhelm" means that "whelm" must once upon a time have meant something too. But what? Is it an upper class mispwonouncing of "realm"? Does "whelm" have a future, as a word? I'm not trying to be funny (although that is one of the standard methods of actually being funny). I'd really like to know.

This is good too:

I support double standards. I expect better behavior out of conservatives than I do liberals.

And this:

You know how everyone has their idea of what a fair tax plan is? Well, I have now unveiled the "Frank J. Fleming Super Double Extra Fair Tax Plan" at PJ Media and it is the fairest of them all. I mean, it’s crazy fair. You’ll recoil in horror and scream, “No! Too fair!” That’s how fair it is.

I need something to end this with, now. I know. Here's my funny yet deceptively profound and right on the money tax plan: The Top Rate of Income Tax Should Be Cut To Zero. If FJ's tax plan is too fair for you, that might be just right.

(34)

Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts.

- Richard Feynman, quoted by Matt Ridley in his Angus Millar lecture at the RSA in Edinburgh, the entire text of which you an read at Bishop Hill. Do read the whole thing. Following on from the above quote comes one of the best summaries of why climate skeptics are climate skeptics that I have ever encountered.

Does anybody know if Ridley's brilliant lecture is, or will be, available on video?

(3)

"Cradle-to-grave employment (at least outside the public sector) has been dead since at least the end of the Cold War. Undergraduate degrees in English and Film and Sociology and Philosophy (and a thousand other subjects) have had debatable workplace utility for as long as I've been alive."

- Matt Welch.

(3)

Well thank you IPCC authors for letting us know what is really behind that “very likely” assessment of attribution [of] 20th century warming. A lot of overbloated over confidence that cannot survive a few years of cooling. The light bulbs seem to be just turning on in your heads over the last two years. Think about all the wasted energy fighting the “deniers” when [you] could have been listening, trying to understand their arguments, and making progress to increase our understanding of the causes of climate variability and change.

- Judith Curry, the climate-change non-alarmists' favourite climate scientist, commenting on an article by Paul Voosen on Greenwire: "Provoked scientists try to explain lag in global warming".

(4)

The notion *anyone* can be "in charge of a major European economy" is itself comical, a statist fantasy. Indeed that is very much at the root of the problems currently playing themselves out.

- Perry de Havilland

(12)

It bears repeating that banks are not creators of wealth. They are places where you store the surplus value generated by productive enterprise. In very narrow circumstances that surplus value can be loaned out at a profit, but a financial sector is the icing, not the cake. This should be common sense, but apparently it is wisdom so rare it can only be learned in countries small and remote enough to avoid the deadly medicine of the global financial markets.

- Tim Cavanaugh

(12)

First, you unilaterally declare that there is some huge looming disaster a long ways in the future. Using a variety of methods fair and foul, you obtain the full cooperation of other scientists, governments, educational institutions, and the media the world around. With all of you, the whole chorus, baying for skeptic’s blood in full voice, you spend a quarter century trying to convince the people of the oncoming Thermageddon.

That’s the problem? After 25 years of unbridled alarm from scientists and everyone else from Presidents to my kid’s teachers, the problem is that scientists are not alarmist enough, they’re too reticent to state their true opinion? Really? That’s the reason the public doesn’t believe you? Is that your final answer?

- Willis Eschenbach takes a sledgehammer to the nut that is James Hansen, a nut who, alas, continues to be employed in a prominent and influential position by NASA.

The word Thermageddon has been around for quite a while, but it's new to me. I like it.

(12)

[G]reen thinking represents a challenge to the status quo? That's a laughable idea. From schools and universities to every corner of the Western political sphere, the climate-change outlook is the status quo. It's the new conservatism, its aim being to conserve nature at the expense of further developing and transforming society.

- Brendan O'Neill

(12)

This isn't so much a political movement as a form of historical reenactment. That's why the OWS protesters are so vague about what they want - because what they want is to be camping out at a mass 1968-style protest. There's little difference between them and Civil War reenactors, except that the Civil War guys understand that it's not real and the outcome of their mock battles won't have any effect. The 1968 reenactors down on Wall Street have the quaint belief that what they're doing is real.

- "Trimegistus" comments here. Like I said a week ago, farce repeating itself as farce.

(18)

The conventional word that it employed to describe tyranny is 'systematic'. The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not its regularity but the unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax, must never be quite sure they have followed the rules correctly or not. Thus, the ruled can always be found to be in the wrong.

- Hitch-22: A memoir. By Christopher Hitchens, page 51.

This is probably the best autobiography I have ever read. In the passage above, he's referring to his life in an English public (ie, private) school.

(13)

One of the worst aspects of living in these apocalyptic times is that whenever you look around the world, wondering where you might escape to, you begin to realise that everywhere else is just as bad if not worse.

- James Delingpole

(5)

"It’s a sincere question: What have been the truly innovative, groundbreaking or even unconventional big public policy ideas to come out of this administration? Are there any? Because from where I sit, it simply looks like Obama takes existing, conventional, liberal ideas – some of them very, very old – off the liberal pantry shelf and hawks them like it’s new inventory. Where’s the evidence that Obama’s “mastery” over public policy has translated itself into creative approaches? Not in the stimulus from what I can tell. Maybe there’s something impressive to tout in ObamaCare, but Obama didn’t actually have much to do with the crafting of ObamaCare – a fact Wilson acknowledges. Was his genius to be found in shovelling cash into Solyndra and other embarrassing white elephants? Was he the guiding intellect behind a green jobs program that has produced dozens of jobs in places where it was supposed to create thousands?

And if he’s such a genius about public policy, why did it take him so long to discover that there’s no such thing as “shovel ready jobs”? You don’t have to be a Jedi Master of public policy to have known that."

- Jonah Goldberg, over at the National Review's Corner blog. I think the same question might be put to pretty much any of the major political figures of our time.

(6)

The principal argument I used to put which the pro Euro Labour, Liberal Democrat, CBI and TUC forces found difficult to counter was the simple proposition that joining the Euro was like taking out a joint bank account with the neighbours. You were likely to ruin a good friendship with them, when you fell to arguing over the size and use of the overdraft. This unfortunately sums up the Euro crisis. Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal want to use the common overdraft or borrowing ability to excess. The Germans do not want to help pay the interest and sustain the joint credit rating, but they are being drawn more and more into doing just that.

- John Redwood.

I like the joint bank account analogy.

(8)

As the scientific forester may dream of a perfectly legible forest planted with same-aged, same-species, uniform trees growing in straight lines in a rectangular flat space cleared of all underbrush and poachers, so the exacting state official may aspire to a perfectly legible population with registered, unique names and addresses keyed to grid settlements; who pursue single, identifiable occupations; and all of whose transactions are documented according to the designated formula and in official language. This caricature of society as a military parade-ground is overdrawn, but the grain of truth that it embodies may help us understand the grandiose plans [for a planned society] we will examine later. The aspiration to such uniformity and order alerts us to the fact that modern statecraft is largely a project of internal colonization, often glossed, as it is in imperial rhetoric, as a "civilizing mission." The builders of the modern nation-state do not merely describe, observe, and map; they strive to shape a people and a landscape that will fit their technique of observation.
[...]
The more static, standardized, and uniform a population or social space is, the more legible it is, and the more amenable it is to the techniques of state officials. I am suggesting that many state activities aim at transforming the population space and nature under their jurisdiction into the closed systems that offer no surprises and that can best be observed and controlled.

- James C Scott, 'Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed' (1998)

(96)

Community and collectivism are opposites.

- Eric S. Raymond (via David Thompson)

(5)

Europe on the Brink, a Policy Brief published by the Petersen Institute for International Economics, makes for grim reading. My favourite quote from it is this subheading:

This potential break-up of the euro area is exactly what happened in the ruble zone when the Soviet Union broke apart.

"Potential"? Also, I think, for "euro area" read state-backed but not gold-backed currencies everywhere.

But the USSR comparison is spot on. When the USSR disintegrated, this was rightly hailed as a triumph for capitalism, but not rightly hailed as the triumph of capitalism. There were other walls yet to fall, other statist follies yet to be destroyed. The commanding heights of the economy used to be thought of as big companies that did physical stuff to physical stuff. 1991 was the date when the idea that governments should micro-manage such enterprises got its comeuppance, and the torrent of high quality stuff that has gushed forth ever since continues, as yet, unabated. But the real commanding heights, the loftiest and most commanding of all, the politically (mis-)managed currencies of the world, are only now collapsing.

Think of our current travails as the unfinished business of the twentieth century.

(4)

David Cameron went to his first EU summit last year and agreed to let the European Union take charge of the financial regulation of the City. As far as poor decision-making goes, Gordon Brown's gold sale was bad enough. History will remember Cameron's surrender of the City as worse.

- Alex Singleton

(20)

The UK Labour party's conference is underway in Liverpool, and party bigwigs are presenting their proposals for reinvigorating Labour after its crushing defeat in the last election. The stupidest of these proposals to date will be presented today, when Ivan Lewis, the shadow culture secretary, will propose a licensing scheme for journalists through a professional body that will have the power to forbid people who breach its code of conduct from doing journalism in the future.

For a party eager to shed its reputation as sinister, spying authoritarians, Labour's really got its head up its arse.

- Cory Doctorow

This is so mad it is being noticed everywhere, not just in Britain. Instapundit says they should have a read of Areopagitica. Well, we can hope. Not that they will read Areopagitica, merely that they might not like making themselves look like sinister, spying authoritarians, all over the world.

LATER: Lewis's Loony Licensing Plan Disowned By Miliband. The derision was not confined to the internet. The Labour Conference was derisive too. Good on them. Someone tell Instapundit.

(11)

The fallacy at the heart of this crisis is that every financial problem has a political solution.

- Jeff Randall He's talking about the euro's problems, but the same fallacy is at work nearly everywhere.

(37)

The Tea Party, perhaps more than any other contemporary movement, brings out the 'Yeah, but what they're really saying…' tendency. The 'tea' stands for 'Taxed Enough Already' but, if you relied on the BBC and the Guardian for your information, you might not know it. Many Lefties pretend – or perhaps have genuinely convinced themselves – that the Tea Party is clandestinely protesting against immigration or abortion or the fact of having a mixed race president; anything, in fact, other than what it actually says it's against, viz big government. The existence of a popular and spontaneous anti-tax movement has unsettled the Establishment. They'd much rather deal with a stupid and authoritarian Right than with a libertarian one. Hence the almost desperate insistence that the Tea Partiers have some secret agenda.

- Daniel Hannan, writing about the extraordinary abuse heaped on the Tea Party crowd. Well, they want to cut taxes and push back the State. I guess they must be psychotic or something.

(7)

Corporatism in finance has brought ruin onto the world. Letting banks fail is messy, disruptive and ugly (though not as much as people think). But bailing them out creates moral hazard - it gives a blank cheque to reckless banks. Unless bad banks are allowed to fail, good ones cannot take their place. Preventing failure is good for established banks, but bad for everybody else.

Somebody needs to speak up for the freedoms of the many against the protections of the few. Corporatism - not capitalism - was at the root of the last crisis and it will be at the root of the next one. Britain needs to reject protections for businesses. It needs a free market revolution.

- Sam Bowman

(12)

"A pragmatist doesn't keep pressing the same garage door button when the garage door doesn't open. He gets out of the car and tries to identify what's wrong."

- Michael Barone. The veteran chronicler of US politics is not given to harsh language, but he's certainly not pulling his punches today.

(10)

But the 9/11 deniers have two mighty weapons. One is technological. In the age of the internet, if you don’t want to read evidence that contradicts your fantasies, then you don’t need to. Just visit one of hundreds of websites that will supply you with freshly minted “evidence” to replace any bits of your theory that have fallen apart on you.

The other weapon is cultural. Thanks, in part, to multiculturalism, facts have been reduced to accessories in the West’s intellectual wardrobe. The postmodern message is that your version of reality is part of you; don’t let inconvenient truths damage your customised worldview and your self-esteem

- Damian Thompson. Often when I quote Thompson it is to fisk him but this one hits the nail squarely on the head.

(22)

"If feminism ever succeeds in making men and women full-fledged equals (for what else might?), we will be able to stop talking about whether women genuinely belong to the literary canon. Maybe there will even come a time when we can speak of Jane Austen without thinking of her as a female. Then comments like Naipaul’s will be universally mocked as the sexist “tosh” they so obviously are. Whenever this comes about, Jane Austen will still be a great author."

- Audrey Bilger.

She is having a go at VS Naipaul, and even though I dislike aspects of feminism, I think her argument deserves respect. An interesting piece.

(6)

"I wish Warren Buffett would emulate his father, Howard Buffett, the late Congressman from Nebraska. Howard Buffett decried the move to the welfare state. He wanted to end it. Also, he wanted the U.S. to get out of the Korean war and move to a non-interventionist foreign policy. Indeed, he was the campaign manager for Senator Robert A. Taft when Taft ran against Eisenhower for the 1952 Republican presidential nomination. I have a proposal for Warren that could cut tax rates for those whom he claims to care about and, at the same time, save having to raise tax rates on him and other rich people: get out of all the wars, close all the foreign bases, and save about $500 billion a year. His father would have liked that."

- David Henderson.

(5)

I have been away for almost 10 days in the lovely Aeolian Islands off the north coast of Sicily, hence my silence. It is a mental health break to be away from emails, internet, TV and the rest. Nothing but good conversation and the company of lots of pulp thrillers, chatty Italian waiters and friendly locals. But I return to work and home with a bump. And of course, we are close to the 10th anniversary of that day of horror in lower Manhattan and Washington DC:

"The proper task of the "public intellectual" might be conceived as the responsibility to introduce complexity into the argument: the reminder that things are very infrequently as simple as they can be made to seem. But what I learned in a highly indelible manner from the events and arguments of September 2001 was this: Never, ever ignore the obvious either. To the government and most of the people of the United States, it seemed that the country on 9/11 had been attacked in a particularly odious way (air piracy used to maximize civilian casualties) by a particularly odious group (a secretive and homicidal gang: part multinational corporation, part crime family) that was sworn to a medieval cult of death, a racist hatred of Jews, a religious frenzy against Hindus, Christians, Shia Muslims, and "unbelievers," and the restoration of a long-vanished and despotic empire."

Christopher Hitchens.

For what it is worth, I am not really very keen on this whole idea of there being a "public intellectual". Who gets to decide that a person holds this sort of role? Anyway, quibbles aside, it is a good piece.

Here are a couple of other paragraphs that stand out:

The battle against casuistry and bad faith has also been worth fighting. So have many other struggles to assert the obvious. Contrary to the peddlers of shallow anti-Western self-hatred, the Muslim world did not adopt Bin-Ladenism as its shield against reality. Very much to the contrary, there turned out to be many millions of Arabs who have heretically and robustly preferred life over death. In many societies, al-Qaida defeated itself as well as underwent defeat.

In these cases, then, the problems did turn out to be more complicated than any "simple" solution the theocratic fanatics could propose. But, and against the tendencies of euphemism and evasion, some stout simplicities deservedly remain. Among them: Holocaust denial is in fact a surreptitious form of Holocaust affirmation. The fatwa against Salman Rushdie was a direct and lethal challenge to free expression, not a clash between traditional faith and "free speech fundamentalism." The mass murder in Bosnia-Herzegovina was not the random product of "ancient hatreds" but a deliberate plan to erase the Muslim population. The regimes of Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fully deserve to be called "evil." And, 10 years ago in Manhattan and Washington and Shanksville, Pa., there was a direct confrontation with the totalitarian idea, expressed in its most vicious and unvarnished form. Let this and other struggles temper and strengthen us for future battles where it will be necessary to repudiate the big lie.

(15)

Just when we [have] the strongest possible proof that Keynsianism doesn't work, someone yells for an encore

- Commenter "J Cuttance" on the Telegraph

(11)

Nothing has changed from the riots and nothing will.

This is just how it works. In a few months I bet you'll be able to call it the Tottenham Spring. We'll "reach out", we'll open some youth clubs, our policing will become even more limp-wristed, vendors of steel shutters will do well, and small shopkeepers will, bit by bit, give up to take up lives of amoral spoon-fed incontinent idleness.

- Samizdata commenter m2p

(10)

Apparently Greece has stopped the export of Tzatziki and Taramasalata... They're worried about a double dip recession...

- Bert Trubshaw, seen in the comments over on the Telegraph.

(9)

So I suppose the jet she flew in on from her home in Colorado worked on rubber bands.

- a commenter called 'SouthendViking' on the Telegraph, remarking about actress Daryl Hannah, who was arrested at a protest where she reportedly said:

Before she was arrested, Hannah told WRC-TV the protesters want to be free from the "death and destruction" that fossil fuels cause. The group is calling for clean energy instead.

Greens... they want us living as serfs in a pre-industrial society.

(24)

I think MPs should have their personal tax rate depend on how often they vote for new legislation... think of it as a 'binge legislation tax' to encourage more responsible legislative behaviour and finance the social cost of their boundless interference in every aspect of other people's lives

- Perry de Havilland

(44)

As I mentioned earlier, the TV networks are giving this wall-to-wall coverage. TJ Holmes on CNN is repeatedly calling it a "monster storm", and everyone is desperately trying not to mention that it has been downgraded to a category one hurricane, the weakest category in the Saffir-Simoson hurricane scale.

Hurricane Irene is political, as well as meteorological.

- Matthew Wells

(40)

Does Jobs deserve kudos for his acumen? Absolutely. That doesn't mean I have to approve of the grotesque beast that is the modern super-corporation. It is something that could only exist in the statist world, and it is a disturbing hybrid of free market principles and ultra-authoritarian government interference, fused together in a way that brings out the very worst of all worlds.

- Commenter 'Jaded Libertarian'

(15)

Supercars are supposed to run over Arthur Scargill and then run over him again for good measure. They are designed to melt ice caps, kill the poor, poison the water table, destroy the ozone layer, decimate indigenous wildlife, recapture the Falkland Islands and turn the entire third world into a huge uninhabitable desert, all that before they nicked all the oil in the world.

- Sage and raconteur Jeremy Clarkson. I cannot count the ways we love him.

(21)

A drug is not bad. A drug is a chemical compound. The problem comes in when people who take drugs treat them like a license to behave like an asshole.

- Frank Zappa

(42)

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.

- Alexis de Tocqueville (attributed to...)

(30)

During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Christians were not supposed to charge interest. Therefore, the most common moneylenders-to-kings were Jews. They could loan money at a profit, and were thus more likely to lend it.

I'm seeing the demonisation of banks. I wonder how long before government throws a pogrom?

- Ellen Kuhfeld

(10)

It's amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral self-righteous bullying laziness. [...]
I don't believe the majority always knows what's best for everyone. The fact that the majority thinks they have a way to get something good does not give them the right to use force on the minority that don't want to pay for it. If you have to use a gun, I don't believe you really know jack.

- Penn Jillette

(3)

"Richtie is the true Clausewitzian nightmare, an industrious idiot who never stops."

- David Moore, commenting on an item by Tim Worstall, who fisks the absurd Richard Murphy.

(30)

"The global paper standard has lasted 40 years but evidence is accumulating daily that its endgame is now fast approaching. The world economy is caught in a deepening financial crisis caused by excessive levels of debt, severe asset price bubbles and overextended banks—all imbalances that are the direct consequence of four decades of unprecedented fiat money creation, of artificially low interest rates and of "lender-of-last-resort" central banking. Monetary policy today—whether by the U.S. Federal Reserve, the ECB or the Bank of Japan—is not much more than an increasingly desperate attempt to postpone via super-low interest rates and periodic debt monetization the painful but unavoidable liquidation of these imbalances. This will not only ultimately prove futile, but will lead to a complete currency catastrophe if pursued further."

- Detlev Schlichter, writing in the Wall Street Journal. The fact that he is now gigging at the mighty WSJ is, of itself, a great thing.

Update: today is the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon's decision to kill off the link between the dollar and gold, although in reality the old gold standard had been dead for much longer.

(25)

Is anyone seriously going to try to make the case that this isn’t black culture in excelsis? Or does anyone, perhaps, want to persuade me that this is but one tiny and much-exaggerated facet of a broader black culture dominated by opera and madrigal singing and crochet and sonnet-construction and lawn bowls and Shakespeare and new translations of Ovid? If they are capable of doing so then maybe, just maybe, I might accept that there was something demeaning or reductive in Starkey’s comments on black culture. Problem is, I don’t think anyone can. (And I speak, by the way, as someone who quite likes his hop hop and who is very much into the new Kanye West/Jay Z album. But who, listening to it, can’t help noticing that it’s rather more a celebration of gats, hos, casual sex and easy money, than it is an invocation for study, hard work and social conformity.)

To pillory a man for pointing out such a glaringly obvious cultural fact just because he’s white and Right-wing would have been quite wrong even before the riots. Post riots it is positively obscene.

- James Delingpole, declining to join the lynch mob baying for David Starkey's blood.

(21)

The Left needs to defend the riots; not to valourise the burning of grannies’ cars, but to make clear that we reject the whole bourgeois construction of events, that we stand in solidarity with the oppressed and that, when it comes to it, we will, without hesitation, join the “rioters” to overthrow the legitimised exploitation, state-sanctioned violence and sham “democracy” that oppress us all.

- Ian Grigg-Spall

(3)

Notice how the loudest complaints about “broken politics” come from those who lost the debate. It’s understandable for sore losers to rage against the machine. But there’s no need for the rest of us to parrot their petulance.

- Charles Krauthammer.

(76)

"The public’s mood has changed irrevocably; on crime and punishment, social attitudes will have hardened permanently as a result of the past week’s events. Strong speeches from the prime minister are a step in the right direction, as is the much more effective policing of the past 48 hours, but the public wants real, permanent change, not just temporary, emergency measures. A YouGov poll found that 85 per cent of the public believe that most of those taking part in the riots will go unpunished – they have lost faith in the system. This is understandable: it also reflects the perception of the thugs themselves. Criminal activity is far more rational than people believe, especially in wealthy societies such as ours: there is a lot of empirical and statistical work that shows that criminals implicitly weigh up the costs and benefits of crime. A high probability and cost of detection reduces crime, all other things equal; a low likelihood of detection, a low likely cost (such as a negligible prison sentence or a caution, as has too often been the case in the past) and a larger payoff (flat screen TVs or expensive trainers) raises it. Many of those storming shops made that very calculation this week, albeit implicitly and in some cases incorrectly."

Allister Heath, editor of CityAM. Read it all.

The political party that most intelligently grasps this change of mood, and responds to it by a re-assertion of the right of individuals to defend themselves and their property, and which unravels the disaster wrought by welfarism, supine policing and a hopelessly over-regulated labour market, should win the next election. The question, as ever, is which party has the nous and courage to do this. So far, the signs have not been very encouraging.

(3)

There will be a temptation to beat ourselves up as a society for not doing enough to address problems faced by these groups, especially the inadequate education and consequent lack of qualifications that makes it hard for them to get jobs, which largely go to immigrant workers from eastern Europe. That should be resisted. Billions of pounds have been spent trying to improve schools and regenerate run-down areas. The suggestion from some Left-wing politicians, such as Ken Livingstone, that the riots were due to the impact of Government spending cuts is grotesque. If anything, the biggest problem has been the creation of a sense of entitlement sustained by an overly generous (and no longer affordable) welfare system, which expects nothing in return for the benefits dispensed.

- Philip Johnston, journalist.

Read the whole article.

(10)

This is not a political rebellion; it is a mollycoddled mob, a riotous expression of carelessness for one’s own community. And as a left-winger, I refuse to celebrate nihilistic behaviour that has a profoundly negative impact on working people’s lives. Far from being an instance of working-class action, the welfare-state mob has more in common with what Marx described as the lumpenproletariat. Indeed, it is worth recalling Marx’s colourful description in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon of how that French ruler cynically built his power base amongst parts of the bourgeoisie and sections of the lumpenproletariat, so that ‘ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie rubbed shoulders with vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, swindlers, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, brothel-keepers, organ-grinders, ragpickers, knife-grinders, tinkers, beggars… and from this kindred element Boneparte formed the core of his [constituency], where all its members felt the need to benefit themselves at the expense of the labouring nation.’ In very different circumstances, we have something similar today – where the decadent commentariat’s siding with lumpen rioters represents a weird coming together of sections of the bourgeoisie with sections of the underworked and the over-flattered, as the rest of us, ‘the labouring nation’, look on with disdain.

- Brendan O'Neill.

You don't have to buy some of the slightly misty-eyed stuff about working class "communities" to see that he has a strong point. As I often like to point out, an open liberal society requires a modicum of basic respect for the lives and property of others, a certain amount of fertile soil for particular virtues to take root in and flourish.

(12)

Obama declares US is still a AAA nation, in his regard. Like when i would try & convince my parents that my C+ in math was pretty much a B-

- Mark Ronson (via Twitter)

(10)

“In the absence of a gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good and thereafter decline to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as claims on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to be able to protect themselves.

This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.”

"The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default"

- Alan Greenspan, on NBC's Meet the Press, 7 August 2011

(Hat tip for the earlier quote to commenter "El Tut" in the comments to the later one.)

(9)

I especially regret not having been called upon to answer Duncan Weldon's claim that Hayekian's are like dentists who have nothing to offer someone who is suffering from a rotten tooth. I might then have been tempted to point out, first of all, that it was pretty cheeky for a British proponent of greater government intervention to be bringing up dentistry.

- Professor George Selgin, discussing his preparation for the LSE Keynes versus Hayek debate, which is being broadcast on BBC Radio Four in half an hour's time.

Update: The BBC has now put the debate on the internet, which can be listened to here. I am not sure if it can be listened to from outside the UK, as the BBC insist on their annoying iplayer crap rather than just posting an mp3.

(3)

When travel writers start going on about how "vulgar" and "overdeveloped" Cuba is becoming, I'll book my flights. So long as it is the favoured destination for the sort of people who wear silly T-shirts with pictures of mass murderers on them, I'll be off to somewhere else instead.

- Johnathan Pearce

(14)

American government spending will be higher in 2011 than it was in 2010.

The deal is one great big shining lie.

- Paul Marks

(11)

“Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. Unlike the countries of the European continent, the state did not require its citizens to perform military service. An Englishman could enlist, if he chose, in the regular army, the navy, or the territorials. He could also ignore, if he chose, the demands of national defence. Substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service. Otherwise, only those helped the state who wished to do so. The Englishman paid taxes on a modest scale: nearly £200 million in 1913-14, or rather less than 8 per cent. of the national income. The state intervened to prevent the citizen from eating adulterated food or contracting certain infectious diseases. It imposed safety rules in factories, and prevented women, and adult males in some industries, from working excessive hours. The state saw to it that children received education up to the age of 13. Since 1 January 1909, it provided a meagre pension for the needy over the age of 70. Since 1911, it helped to insure certain classes of workers against sickness and unemployment. This tendency towards more state action was increasing. Expenditure on the social services had roughly doubled since the Liberals took office in 1905. Still, broadly speaking, the state acted only to help those who could not help themselves. It left the adult citizen alone.”

- AJP Taylor, historian. The funny thing is, that AJP Taylor was a lifelong socialist and therefore, supported policies and ideas that led, directly and indirectly, to the destruction of some of the liberties he wrote about in this much-cited passage, on page one, from his classic, English History, 1914-1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970).. Like many of his generation, he was naive about the Soviet Union, to put it kindly, although he did break with communism while remaining a lifelong member of the Labour Party. But as he would respond, much of the damage to British freedoms mentioned in this passage had been done by the calamity of the First World War and its aftermath. And piecemeal changes - starting in the late 19th Century and arguably hastened by the arrival of the mass franchise, made these liberties vulnerable. But are we being starry-eyed about Victorian-era liberties? Is he describing a myth or a reality? There's a question to stir up the commenters.

I see that Ed Driscoll of Pajamas Media liked this quote too. I imagine it resonates with American readers quite as much as with a Brit.

(22)

Ideas matter, and especially to intellectuals like President Obama. He is not a rigid ideologue and is capable of flexible maneuvering. But his interpretation of history, his attitude toward sovereignty, and his confidence in multilateral institutions have shaped his views of American power and of American leadership in ways that distinguish him from previous presidents. On Libya, his deference to the UN Security Council and refusal to serve as coalition leader show that he cares more about restraining America than about accomplishing any particular result in Libya. He views Libya and the whole Arab Spring as relatively small distractions from his broader strategy for breaking with the history of U.S. foreign policy as it developed in the last century. The critics who accuse Obama of being adrift in foreign policy are mistaken. He has clear ideas of where he wants to go. The problem for him is that, if his strategy is set forth plainly, most Americans will not want to follow him.

- The Obama Doctrine Defined by Douglas J. Feith and Seth Cropsey

(36)

Better (a thousand times better) an athiest who believes in objective truth than a “religious” person who does not.

- our very own Paul Marks

(9)

At this point it might be useful to clarify precisely what the dispute concerns. The question is not whether the federal government should grow. As Reason's Nick Gillespie pointed out a few days ago, nearly nobody in Washington has actually proposed shrinking the leviathan. To the contrary, the dispute is whether to raise federal spending from the current $3.8 trillion to $4.7 trillion over the next decade (the Paul Ryan plan) - or to $5.7 trillion (the Obama plan). Bear in mind that those increases would come on top of one of the fastest expansions of federal spending in U.S. history. When President Obama took office, the budget stood at $2.9 trillion. Two. Point. Nine.

- A. Barton Hinkle

So the USA is screwed... and does this remind you of something?

(7)

“I close this sermon with these words: Avoid anger, recrimination, and personal attack. Those with whom you are angry are probably (taken by and large) at least as filled with or as empty of virtue as you. Moreover, they are the very ones you might wish later to welcome as your allies. Avoid panic and despair; be of good cheer. If you’re working in freedom’s vineyard to the best of your ability, the rest is in the hands of a higher authority anyway. If you can see no humor in what’s going on (and even at times in your own behavior) you’ll soon lose that sense of balance so important to effective and reasoned thought and action. Finally, take comfort in the thought that the cause of freedom can never be lost, precisely because it can never be won. Given man’s nature, freedom will always be in jeopardy and the only question that need concern each of us is if and how well we took our stand in its defence during that short period of time when we were potentially a part of that struggle.”

- Can Capitalism Survive? Benjamin A. Rogge, page 300. Originally published in 1979 and republished by that splendid organisation, Liberty Fund.

(35)

"White extremists are rightly shunned by mainstream politicians. Muslim extremists are courted by the likes of Ken Livingstone. White fundamentalism and Muslim fundamentalism need each other. But white fundamentalism, unlike its Muslim counterpart, does not have a presence in legitimate institutions. The white Right should not be ignored by the security authorities – but it would be dangerous to divert our attention from the real threat."

Andrew Gilligan, journalist, reflecting on the wider implications of the horror in Norway. I would add that security authorities should also not forget such threats as from remnants of the IRA in Northern Ireland, Deep Greens, and parts of the Far Left. There is, alas, plenty of fanaticism out there.

I have a few Norwegian friends and they are, thank god, safe, but in a small country, almost everyone in that fine nation has been touched by this act of mass murder. By the way, do any Samizdata commenters know about what the laws are about firearms in that country? I am appalled at how easy it was for this man to kill so many without challenge for so long. But then this bastard had clearly planned out his attacks, knowing that it would take time for the police to get to the island.

(5)

Given enough time, the primary function of any bureaucracy becomes the employment of its employees.

- Daniel Hannan ruminates on the gap between what people think that NGOs do, and what NGOs do.

(3)

A reminder, the problem isn’t the debt ceiling - it’s the debt, ...

- Rand Simberg

(10)

“The early aircraft business resembled that of the shade-tree mechanics who, in building hot rods, gave rise, then as now, to true advances in automobile design. See also the chopper shops of California and their influence on the world of motorcycling. A list of these shade-tree mechanics includes the Wrights, Cyris McCormick, Henry Ford, Tesla, Tom Edison, Meg Whitman, Bill Gates, Burt Rutan, and Steve Jobs. How would they and American industry have fared had government gotten its hands upon them at the outset – if it had taxed away the capital necessary to provide a market for their wares; if it had taxed away the wealth, which, existing as gambling money, had taken a chance on these various visionaries? One need not wonder, but merely look around at the various businesses that government has aided. And now it has taken over health care.”

- David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge, page 79.

(2)

I’m so insulted when people say that lawmaking is like sausage making.

- Stanley A. Feder, President of Simply Sausage, quoted by the New York Times, requoted here. And now here.

(8)

"It is worth asking in both the British and American contexts why people who regard themselves as believers in free speech and liberal democracy can be so openly eager to close off – silence, kill, extinguish – different political views from their own. This is the question that is at the heart of the matter and which will remain long after every News International executive who may possibly be incriminated in the current scandal has been purged. There is scarcely any outfit on the Right – be it political party, or media outlet – which demands the outright abolition of a Left-wing voice, as opposed to simply recommending restraint on its dominance (as I am with the BBC). That is because those of us on the Right are inclined to believe that our antagonists on the Left are simply wrong-headed – sometimes well-intentioned, sometimes malevolent but basically just mistaken. Whereas the Left believes that we are evil incarnate. Their demonic view of people who express even mildly Right-of-centre opinions (that lower taxes or less state control might be desirable, for example) would be risible if it were not so pernicious."

- Janet Daley.

Someone I know quite well said she hoped the problems at Murdoch's media empire will lead to Fox News being shut down. Not changed in ownership, you understand, but closed. This person is, you will not be surprised to learn, very "liberal".

(1)

“Brecht, an East German, was allowed by the Communists to keep his wealth and live at ease in Switzerland – a show dog of Communism. His accomplishments, however, must be seen not as an indictment, but as a ratification of the power of free enterprise. As must the seemingly ineradicable vogue for the notion of Government Control. The free market in ideas keeps this folly as current as any entertainment reviled by the Left as “mindless”. But the fiction of top-down Government Control, of a Command Economy, is, at essence, like a Reality Show, which is to say, a fraud. The Good Causes of the Left may generally be compared to NASCAR; they offer the diversion of watching things go excitingly around in a circle, getting nowhere.”

David Mamet, page 3 of his book, The Secret Knowledge. I love his line about NASCAR. The whole book is stuffed with one-liners such as that.

Here is what I wrote a little while ago about Mamet.

(9)

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

- Ronald Reagan

(2)

Step by step, the world is edging towards a revived Gold Standard …

- Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. My thanks to Detlev Schlichter for alerting me to this piece. Schlichter's forthcoming book would appear to have been timed to perfection. I am reading an advance pdf of it now. If you want a copy I recommend you advance-order it now, or you just might have a rather long wait.

(16)

"Revulsion, however justified, is a dangerous counsellor."

- Bruce Anderson, on the continuing saga of Rupert Murdoch. A good article overall, somewhat spoiled by a daft remark about Australia.

(6)

I did some coke, and slept with a whore. But that's what a superinjunction is for!

- Robbie Williams, at last week's Take That show at Wembley, mocks the legalised suppression of free speech. Quoted by Fraser Nelson in his obituary for the News of the World, in the News of the World.

(3)

Bohemia has been banned.

- David Hockney denounces the smoking ban.

(0)

"Politics is a lagging indicator of American society".

- Nick Gillespie, of Reason magazine, talking about his new book, co-authored with Matt Welch, at CATO. An interesting presentation, if you can spare the 40-odd minutes to watch the talk and Q&A.

(9)

Rupert Murdoch is 80 years old and his empire makes no sense other than as a reflection of his personality. Murdoch is very good at running television stations but his new media investments have been hopeless. His adult children are not very bright, are widely perceived as such by investors and won't ever be allowed to run the company or to continue to use the weird share structure that Murdoch is allowed to use to control the company without actually owning a majority of the equity. News won't survive six months when Murdoch is no longer running it. Seriously, at this point in his life Rupert Murdoch is about as scary as a strawberry blancmange.

- Michael Jennings, in response to an online petition asking him to oppose News Corporation's complete takeover of BSkyB.

(27)

Because he’s a Democrat.

- Overheard by Damian Thompson at the unveiling of the Ronald Reagan statue in London this morning. Someone was explaining why David Cameron gave the event a miss.

(10)

My problem is that I find everything increasingly interesting.

- William Gibson

(14)

It is difficult to know how seriously to take China's red revival. Like the idea of a Cultural Revolution-themed restaurant – could the world imagine an Auschwitz Café? – to Western eyes the campaigns are almost beyond parody.

- Peter Foster discussing the nauseating celebrations of the communist party in China

(5)

“Now who is the Forgotten Man? He is the simple, honest laborer, willing to earn his living by productive work. We pass him by because he is independent, self-supporting, and asks no favors. He does not appeal to the emotions or excite the sentiments. He only wants to make a contract and fulfil it, with respect to both sides and favor on neither side. He must get his living out of the capital of the country. The larger the capital is, the better living he can get. Every particle of capital which is wasted on the vicious, the idle, and the shiftless is so much taken from the capital available to reward the independent and productive laborer. But we stand with our backs to the independent and productive laborer all the time. We do not remember him because he makes no clamor; but appeal to you whether he is not the man who ought to be remembered first of all, and whether, on any sound social theory, we ought not to protect him against the burdens of the good-for-nothing.”

- The Forgotten Man, page 209 from On Liberty, Society and Politics. The Essential Writings of William Graham Sumner, Edited by Robert C. Bannister.

His idea that a large swathe of people who asked for no favours – nor received many – has its echoes, however imperfect, in such expressions as Richard Nixon’s “Great Silent Majority” or, in the UK perspective, “Middle England”, or perhaps, “the coping classes”. Sumner is a useful reminder that the great classical liberal thinkers of the 19th Century and before acutely understood the issues of class and the difference between the self-reliant and others, but without the tedious animosity and simple-mindedness of the Marxians or the patronising dreams of High Tories a la Disraeli or, god help us, David Cameron or the late Harold Macmillan.

I strongly recommend this book, although these reprints of old classics by Liberty Fund are not exactly cheap.

(19)

And even if the Greek populace remained blissfully oblivious when all that debt was being piled up, they certainly are aware of it now. But judging from the riots in the streets their only thought still is that they want the party to continue, at someone else's expense. They deserve what they get.

- Commenter 'Laird'

(15)

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favour of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office

- H. L. Mencken

(16)

The thing is, when you were ten years old, wouldn't you have loved to have gone down a mine or up a chimney?

- Patrick Crozier has dropped by (to help me buy gold on the internet), and we were talking about how education is probably the most vulnerable of all the big ongoing government spending sprees, in the face of the forthcoming financial meltdown.

(20)

We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle

- Winston Churchill

(40)

“The fundamental story about consumer taste, in modern times, is not one of dumbing down or of producers seeking to satisfy a homogenous least common denominator at the expense of quality. Rather, the basic trend is of increasing variety and diversity, at all levels of quality, high and low.”

- Tyler Cowen, Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing The World’s Cultures. Page 127. First published in 2002.

(15)

NHS North Central London operates under strict data protection guidance and is taking the matter extremely seriously. We have started an investigation into the issues raised by the loss. We are liaising with the office of the Information Commissioner.

- A spokesman from NHS North Central London, responding ineffectually to questions from The Register about having recently lost a laptop containing 8.6 million health records. The laptop was "password protected", apparently, so everything is okay.

(33)

Too many of our internet dreams depend on the internet being far less vulnerable to governments than it actually is.

- August, commenting on a posting at my place about Bitcoin.

I suggest comments about what August says about the internet: here. Bitcoin comments: there.

(14)

I tend to have a "half empty" view of the world - but even I do not believe that the British population contains no pro freedom people. Indeed I believe that there are millions of pro freedom people in Britain - and basically the British book trade was telling us all to bugger off, that we were not welcome in the book shops.

Well we got the message - it is not all "the internet" that is the reason for the decline of the British book trade, basically they were telling non-socialists that our custom was not wanted.

- Paul Marks

(23)

Violence must be replied to with violence. The only time I would suggest turning the other cheek is when firing off the left shoulder with a rifle after taking cover in a doorway.

- Perry de Havilland commenting here

(11)

"Vote Labour and we'll turn debt into investment"

Written by a wag on the Guido Fawkes blog in the comments on an excellent item about inflation. The great thing about that quote is that I can actually imagine some prat such as Ed Milliband, leader of the Labour Party, saying such a thing. And of course this is pretty much what Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist, probably thinks also.

Meanwhile, Niall Ferguson, the historian, weighs in on the issue of debt.

(14)

Meanwhile, over at the global superpower, the public is slowly waking up to the fact that this government, too, is going bust, thanks to out-of-control entitlement programs, expensive bailouts, and the suicidal policy of everlasting peace through everlasting war. For the past six months, all of the United States government’s issuance of new debt has been bought by its compliant central bank and paid for by the printing press. As the politicians of this empire in decline are fiddling on the aptly named Capitol about a few billion in savings here and a few billion there, trillions are getting burned by the unstoppable state machinery. And over in Albion, the hotly debated “savage” cuts in public spending still seem the figment of tabloid imagination as they have so far not prevented the country from accumulating another £145 billion in debt over the past 12 months.

- Detlev Schlichter

(8)

“The serf first obtained chattels and then land in property; on them he won his first power, and that meant his first liberty – meaning thereby his personal liberty. His title to these things, that is, his right to appropriate them to his own exclusive use and enjoyment, and to be sustained by the power of the state in so doing, was his first step in civil liberty. It was by this movement that he ceased to be a serf. This movement has produced the great middle class of modern times; and the elements in it have been property, science and liberty. The first and chief of these, however, is property; there is no liberty without property, because there is nothing else without property on this earth.”

- The Essential Essays of William Graham Sumner, “On Liberty, Society and Politics”, (Edited by Robert C. Bannister), page 247.

(8)

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.

- Lord Acton

(33)

A moderate Muslim has not understood Islam.

- Sam Solomon, twenty five minutes into a remarkable video interview of him by Ezra Levant.

Solomon, who was raised a Muslim but is now a Christian, explains, in particular, just what is so explosive about the threat to Islam of Christianity. Built into Islam, says Solomon, is a huge bundle of falsehood about what Christianity actually says. Simply learning about Christianity by reading the Bible, whether you accept in or not, will automatically undermine your Muslim faith.

(7)

The Internet threatens their power and perks. That’s far more important than problems that merely threaten the world’s wellbeing.

- Instapundit comments on a piece called As world burns, G8 leaders fiddle ... with the Internet. Seriously?

Indeed. Ignore the messages. Silence the messenger.

Besides which, it's asking a lot to expect the people who caused the problems, and whose first attempts to solve the problems multiplied the problems, to solve the problems.

(4)

“Robbers perform surgery on God inside this domain (or stately home).”

- Antoine Clarke's translation (see the comments) of the French bit of a multilingual sign warning against thieves, that I recently photoed in the Brick Lane part of London.

Usually we like to joke about how the foreigners get English wrong. So, it's good to notice when we get one of their languages wrong.

(96)

"You heard it here first - we were not born in the Garden of Eden."

- Tara Smith, talking at the Adam Smith Institute last week, with reference to the idea that we get to inherit something called Original Sin.

(9)

The main problem with having discussions about economics and financial markets is this: People look at these complex phenomena through entirely different prisms; they use vastly dissimilar – even contrasting – narratives as to what has happened, what is going on now, and what is therefore likely to happen in the future. Citing any so-called “facts” – statistical data, or the actions and statements of policymakers – in support of a specific interpretation and forecast is often a futile exercise: The same data point will be interpreted very differently if some other intellectual framework is being applied to it.

- The opening paragraph of Detlev Schlichter's latest commentary on the state of the world, entitled Beyond Repair - This will not have a happy ending.

(26)

"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."

- Tacitus

(16)

"The man must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and in any event, there is still some chance that the whole sordid affair turns out to have been a political set-up, in which case he might even emerge from this bizarre scandal with credit and sympathy. Yet it is about time Europe's ownership of the International Monetary Fund, and particularly France's apparently divine right to the top job, was brought to a close. If Mr Strauss-Kahn's nemesis in a New York hotel room loosens Europe's grip, then that may be no bad thing. Whatever the truth of otherwise of the allegations, Mr Strauss-Kahn's spectacular fall from grace is widely seen as a near catastrophe both for the IMF and the delicate negotiations around further rescue packages for the stricken eurozone periphery. This it is definitively not. To the contrary, it might even bring about a rethink of the currently doomed strategy of throwing good money after bad."

- Jeremy Warner

(3)

When a man is tired of ITV4 he is tired of life.

- Patrick Crozier.

(2)

I eagerly await Amnesty’s Human Rights Action Centre being turned over to the BNP for a debate on how changing demographics in England are depleting national pride

- Michael Weiss

Superb.

(23)

"Anybody visiting the Middle East in the last decade has had the experience: meeting the hoarse and aggressive person who first denies that Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center and then proceeds to describe the attack as a justified vengeance for decades of American imperialism."

- Christopher Hitchens on Noam Chomsky.

(18)

"At the moment, I am very pessimistic about the prospects for the United States solving its fiscal problems without a crisis. Given that we have divided government, a reasonable long-term budget will require a compromise. But the two sides seem to live in alternate universes. The Republicans' alternate universe is based on the belief that government spending ought not to exceed its historical average of about 20 percent of GDP. You can't get future spending down to that level, however, without really major cuts in future spending on Social Security and Medicare. Much as I would like to see those programs phased out completely, neither I or nor anybody else can claim to have won an election on that platform. The Democrats' alternate universe is based on (a) the belief that the rich are not paying their share of taxes and (b) with Obamacare passed, the rise in health care spending as a share of GDP is as good as arrested. So they see no need to change the status quo on entitlements."

- Arnold Kling.

I think a crisis is coming. And maybe, in a spirit of schadenfreude, we can finally prove the truth of Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine", but not in a way she approves of.

(15)

Some people are just neurotically sceptical. But even they won't deny what is before their eyes. Is there anyone who seriously questions the fact that Saddam Hussein is dead? That's the way to do things these days. Don't launch a bloody, decade defining series of wars and then refuse to release photos of a dead body, or better still display the actual body, because you're worried it'll upset people. Shoot the ****** in the head on camera then release it on youtube.

- Commenter ub313 on Ed West's Daily Telegraph site blog

(20)

It is only those who hope to transform human beings who end up by burning them, like the waste product of a failed experiment.

- Christopher Hitchens, as seen in this excellent article about the great man, written by Martin Amis

(19)

It's kind of jumbled, but putting together what the Democrats are saying now and what actually happened in the past, I gather that their economic "plan" is to somehow organize another bubble so that some people will make a lot of money and then tax the hell out of these people, which will then eliminate the deficit and also pay for all their programs, present and future.

- commenter "Hagar" here

(8)

Gordon Brown as the next head of the IMF? What a splendid idea – at least as long as Charlie Sheen is not available.

- Detlev Schlichter

(7)

"If any place should be concerned with a robot takeover, it is the red-light district."

- PW Singer, Wired For War, page 419.

(19)

“My vision is of a new form of Dynamic Equilibrium economics (DEe) which will, while being steady in scale, still be thoroughly dynamic and require business to be as enterprising, creative and innovative as ever. As growth at a macro-scale is dethroned, so too will the focus of business innovation shift to a Flourishing Enterprise model of business in which companies and markets focus on objectives based on maximising societal flourishing and units of wellbeing delivered per unit planet input.”

- Jules Peck, a trustee of the New Economics Foundation and a fellow of ResPublica

(25)

"If the Victorians turned up off our shores and threatened me with a gold standard, 7% taxes, property rights, free trade, the right to bear arms, the restitution of double jeopardy, free association, and the right to remain silent, while at the same time guaranteeing the repeal of civil forfeiture and detention without trial, etc., etc., etc., I would welcome them with open arms."

- Samizdata commenter, John W responding to a point about the supposed evils wrought by the UK on other parts of the world.

(5)

"(The legislation) does not apply by reason of a relevant step taken by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) in relation to a member of the House of Commons".

- Section 554E (8) of the most recent Finance Bill, aimed at minimising tax avoidance. Taxes are for the little people, of course.

(8)

Every day is Earth Day in North Korea

- Samizdata commenter 'newrouter'

(5)

"Liberal democracy is not about "paying a fair share" based on the exigencies of the moment and the vagaries of public opinion. If it were, Parliament would be little more than a trading floor where the freedoms of minorities were bartered away for temporary fixes and periodic bond repayments. True liberal democracy was and still should be about protecting and preserving freedom, equality in liberty and equality before the law – even when it is not, financially or politically, in our best interests to do so."

PJ Byrne, over at the Adam Smith Institute blog. Alas, "true liberal democracy" is hard to achieve, given the strong urge by politicians to persuade one group of electors to rob another group, or indeed, even to rob themselves.

(9)

"More and more, this society feels like a tacit civil war between the state, with its armies of employees, and the few of us still left who are not involved with it in some way, whether in making up the rules or implementing them. No shots are fired, but it is a conflict nonetheless."

- Fabian Tassano

(23)

“When Hollywood shows you an earthquake, an eruption, or a towering inferno, you see mass panic, stampeding crowds, maybe a looting spree. When sociologists study real-life disasters, they see calm, resourceful people evacuating buildings, rescuing strangers, and cooperating nonviolently.”

- Jesse Walker, on how Japanese people are responding to the terrible events to have hit that country over the past week. (H/T, Instapundit).

(18)

People who see virtue in doing without electricity should shut off their fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all other appliances for a month, not an hour.

- Ross McKitrick abhors Earth Hour.

(8)

Here:

Via here.

(13)

I have worked in government for 28 years as an economist, and for the last 20 years I have worked on environmental programs. In that time I have not seen a shred of evidence to justify global warming, let alone man made global warming and I have not seen a shred of evidence that there is going to be a green economic boom. The only evidence I have seen is that there is a green economic bust, that money invested in green technologies is usually wasted and simply consumes investment that could be better used elsewhere. I think that anybody in government or industry who can not understand this is either dishonest, stupid, or both. That applies to Cameron - I think he is both.

- A comment on a Christopher Booker article. Bishop Hill already has this as his quote of the day, but I think it really deserves to get around.

It is often assumed by opponents of big government that all those on the government payroll are automatic believers in big government, because it suits them to be. But it just doesn't follow. They may start out believing in big government, but what they then learn when part of big government may cause them to have second thoughts.

LATER: Yes, I have demoted this posting, as it were, basically by pretending that this went up an hour sooner than it really did. This is because I have been updating the posting that is now next, and because I consider that posting, although no more important than this one, to be be more urgent.

(81)

Gold is not going up at all, paper money is going down.

- Detlev Schlichter

(20)

What I've described is essentially a top-down process, yes, that has gone bottom-up, as I've described so far, across official levels at Departments very widely. Now we have to make sure that nothing has fallen between the cracks in the stakeholder engagement process, but I think this issue of top-level Government buy-in to it is very important. I see it as a feature of the way that the new Government goes about its business. The approach of Cabinet Committees, with Ministers taking them very seriously, officials being energised by the fact that Committees will come back, rather than the Committee process being in any sense a formality, is something that in a lot of processes, not just relevant to the NRP, is galvanising much better across Government co-ordination in a very productive way. I think this applies to the NRP, as to lots of other things.

- Lord Sassoon, Commercial Secretary to the Treasury, makes everything clear. Helen Szamuely found it here.

(17)

The greatest passions, however, require privacy, and the good society would not deserve to be so-called if it lacked ample opportunities for seclusion and solitude. In work and in love, creativity requires time alone, to think and plan. Great, passionate works of art are not usually brought into existence by committee. The deepest friendships and loves also need time away from prying eyes to blossom; time to share intimacies not shared with others; time to build a special microcosm of private meaning within the wider, public world. A society devoid of privacy would be a society with no room for great passion, and hence not a place I would want to live. Warrantless wiretaps and extensive networks of closed-circuit television cameras have contributed to the United States and England being ranked alongside other “endemic surveillance societies” like Russia and China, according to Privacy International. But those who say, in defense of such invasive government actions, that people who have done nothing wrong have nothing to hide, reveal a profound misunderstanding of the importance of privacy. Privacy matters not because of the bad that it hides, but because of the good and the great that it nurtures.

- Bradley Doucet

(22)

"I just caught the last couple of minutes of a cable-TV documentary about Playboy magazine, which featured a clip of Hugh Hefner opining about the huge cultural impact the magazine has had in its 50-plus years of existence. And it struck me as an illustration that, even in the realm of culture and ideas, it’s the supply side that makes the greatest difference. Two young men in the mid-1950s had vastly different ideas of what the American audience really wanted and needed, and ventured forth to create magazines that reflected these views. Hugh Hefner, convinced that America was too sexually conservative and really needed to let its hair down, founded Playboy in 1953. Bill Buckley, convinced that America was too politically liberal and needed to restore its older, small-r republican virtues that had been eroded in the Progressive and New Deal eras, founded National Review in 1955. Now, think about how these ventures must have appeared at the time. Playboy was an outrage to conventional pieties about sexuality. National Review was an outrage to conventional pieties about politics. How much money would you have bet, at the time, that either one would survive for very long? “A dirty magazine? Won’t people be embarrassed to buy it?” “A magazine that’s to the right of Eisenhower and Nixon? Are there that many real fringies out there?” But the supply side takes a chance. And, quite amazingly, both ventures succeeded beyond imagining. Playboy bore fruit in the Sexual Revolution, which may already have reached its high point but shows little sign of receding. And from National Review emerged Reaganism, and conservatism as the broadly dominant system of political thought in recent years."

It is an interesting piece of commentary. Is it really true, though, that conservatism (however defined) is the "broadly dominant system of political thought in recent years"? I suppose it might be to the extent that the rise of Obama is in fact an aberration rather than anything else. But even if that is true, then it would be nice to see this reflected, long term, in the relative decline, not rise, of state power and spending.

Anyway, Hefner and Buckley were indeed very influential figures, no doubt about it. I have always had a lot of time for Hefner - he upsets the sort of people who need to be upset.

Update: Hefner has taken his business private.

(41)

"For as long as I can remember, I have been shouting at my TV screen. Possibly the first occasion would have been circa 1971, in sheer irritation at the infuriating, self-defeatingly named kiddie programme Why Don’t You Just Switch Off Your Television Set And Go Out And Do Something Less Boring Instead? Perhaps it was even earlier than that. Though I liked Teddy, I used to find Andy Pandy incredibly wet. Bill and Ben were incomprehensible. The Clangers whistled too much. ZsaZsa the Cat and Kiki the Frog were quite maddening in the way they ganged up on Hector the Dog. As for Florence in the Magic Roundabout, what a goodie-goodie!"

- James Delingpole

I would say that one of the great benefits of blogging has been that where before a person would get dangerously high blood pressure watching or hearing some drivel on the TV or radio, now they can work off this rage by blogging about it.

Apologies to non-UK readers who may not get the children's TV references in the quote. That is why Wikipedia was invented!

(19)

Socialists love analogies to Sweden. But they are always unconvincing because they are based on some fantasy Sweden, rather than on an actual Nordic country bordered by Norway and Finland. In the Sweden of lore, every single woman is also 18 years old, blonde, busty, lonely, naked and waiting for you in the sauna.

- Claire Berlinski, Why Thatcher Matters. Page 154.

One of the highlights of the book are the interviews she carries out with Neil Kinnock, former leader of the Labour Party. He comes across as the buffoon he is with a layering of rather pompous Welsh charm. And for those who might have forgotten the mid-80s, there is a vivid pen portrait of Arthur Scargill, leader of the National Union of Mineworkers. He was not just a Marxist, he was an avowed admirer of Stalin.

(28)

"There must be a way for Tony Blair to make money out of all this".

Commenter on an article about the situation in Libya and other parts of N.Africa and Middle East. Well, our Tone has done jolly well so far.

(26)

A census - as any social scientist knows - is absolutely essential to modern government. We cannot plan social policy if we don't know how many people there are, where they are, what they do, how long they live, etc. A non-judgmental collation of information - which is what a census is - is the bedrock of civilised society. Democracy and accountable government depend completely this kind of knowledge. If we lose it, government will be run by gossip, innuendo and Daily Mail after-dinner 'common sense' (as if it isn't already, but hey)

- Guardian commentator tark

(34)

It will not do to chastise Obama’s budget proposal as a simple “refusal to lead,” a “punt,” or a “cynical political maneuver.” Obama isn’t failing to lead. He is very cleverly leading us toward an irreversible expansion of the welfare state. If Obama is reelected and in control when the entitlement crisis finally does hit, he will manage the country toward Euro-style taxes and Euro-style socialism. After all, in the midst of its current fiscal crisis, Obama is pushing Europe to expand spending, not contract it.

Perhaps I’m wrong and “the president’s abdication of leadership” sound bite will be enough to defeat “the GOP’s heartless cuts.” Even so, as an alternative, I suggest: “Obama’s radical plans are leading us off a cliff.”

- Stanley Kurtz

(25)

"To all those under 30 who worked so hard to get this man elected, know this: he just screwed you over. He thinks you're fools. Either the US will go into default because of Obama's cowardice, or you will be paying far far more for far far less because this president has no courage when it counts. He let you down. On the critical issue of America's fiscal crisis, he represents no hope and no change. Just the same old Washington politics he once promised to end."

- Andrew Sullivan.

Hell hath no fury. Of course, if "excitable Andrew" had been paying a bit more attention to Obama's past, Senatorial voting record, choice of friends and so on over the past three to four years, as our own Paul Marks has been remorselessly doing, then Sullivan would not have been shocked by Obama's position on the deficit, or indeed, anything else. But it was so much easier to obsess about Sarah Palin or "Christianists", wasn't it?

(14)

I need to say this – you shouldn't trust any government, actually including this one. You should not trust government – full stop. The natural inclination of government is to hoard power and information; to accrue power to itself in the name of the public good.

- Nick Clegg, interviewed by Henry Porter It is quite remarkable for a serving British minister to say this on the record. Public protestation of belief in the benignity and good intentions of the state is the normal standard.

(121)

I am, therefore I'll think

- John Galt

(13)

... Kenneth Clarke invariably supports anything with "european" in front of it. If they re-named ebola virus "european virus", I expect he'd declare himself in favour of that, too.

- Owen Morgan commenting on James Kirkup's Daily Telegraph blog

(3)

“Oakeshott was an enchanting elfin figure, rather slight with a rather light but seductive voice. Men sometimes found him a little creepy, women never. He was married three times and was said to have various girlfriends scattered in boltholes in London and around the country. He was sceptical in his views, and not at all religious, thus conforming to my general theory that, as soon as British philosophers stopped believing in God, they started believing in sex. There is no more startling contrast between the celibacy, and indeed chastity, of Pascal and Locke and the insatiable appetites of Bertrand Russell and AJ Ayer and PH Nowell-Smith, the author of Ethics, who was said to have regarded it as a positive duty to sleep with other men’s wives.”

Ferdinand Mount, Cold Cream, page 273. Quirky, self-effacing and brilliant about its portrayal of Mount's life as a journalist and Downing Street policy wonk and conservative intellectual, this is one of the finest autobiographies I have read in years. Among the details that startled me was Mount's battle with a terrible asthma problem; I also loved his portrayal of his father and vignettes featuring the likes of Malcolm Muggeridge and Siegfried Sassoon.

I can also recommend Mount's recent book about how we are becoming rather like the ancient Romans.

(9)

A charity that relies in the main part on taxes is no more a charity than a prostitute is your girlfriend.

- Guido Fawkes ruminates on how David Cameron's idea of the Big Society differs from Big Government. Strongly recommended to all those who, like me, have to force themselves to listen to anything said by David Cameron, but who like to read Guido.

Doing this got me wondering how Fake Charities has been doing lately. Answer: it's buzzing along very well, and is also strongly recommended.

(0)

A literary work, whether it be fiction or non-fiction, a brief essay or a lengthy treatise, should be composed with constant attention to the underlying theme of the work, summarised if possible in one sentence. I have borne this precept in mind. The message that integrates the text of this biography is that one man, relying on reason, and daring to stand alone, can make a difference in the world.

- The last paragraph of the preface of Dare To Stand Alone, Bryan Niblett's biography of nineteenth century atheist, republican, birth control advocate and radical individualist, Charles Bradlaugh. Niblett spoke eloquently about Bradlaugh last night in London, at the most recent of Christian Michel's 6/20 evenings.

(34)

It's hard to escape the conclusion that Emma Jay grossly misled Delingpole as to the nature of the programme.

Emma Jay's looks to be gone, as does that of Rupert Murray, the guy who dissembled his way into Monckton's confidence. I wonder what these question marks over their trustworthiness will do for their career prospects.

- Bishop Hill, in a posting entitled Integrity in the internet age reflects on the lack of integrity that was involved in the making of two recent BBC attempts to drive a stake into the climate sceptics. The thing about Bishop Hill is that he does not make such judgements lightly. He does not indulge in thoughtless abuse, and constantly posts little homilies discouraging it among his commenters. If he says you lack integrity, the chances are, overwhelmingly, that you do.

Presumably, many will want to defend these deceptions as being beneficial in the same way as has been claimed on behalf of whoever it was who revealed all those Climategate emails. But the fact remains that if you are dealing with either of the two above mentioned people, you should not trust them to tell you the truth about what sort of progamme they are really making. Their cover is now, as Bishop Hill says, blown.

(15)

"OK, for years, people who claim to be my intellectual betters on foreign policy (and pretty much everything else), and particularly about the Middle East, have been telling me that the root cause of the problems in the Middle East is the “occupation” of disputed territories in the West Bank and Gaza, and that we won’t be able to make any progress without solving that issue. It is what motivates Arab anger, and animates their protests. Well, surely if this is the case, with all of the apparent anger and ongoing revolt in Cairo, we should be seeing many reports on the ground of protesters with angry signs against the Zionist entity, right? Or have I just missed them somehow?"

- Rand Simberg.

(31)

And that is called paying the Dane-geld; but we've proved it again and again, that if once you have paid him the Dane-geld you never get rid of the Dane.

- Rudyard Kipling

(32)

The government can take away my freedom, but if they take away my internet porn, they're going down

- @arabist

(60)

Mainly, I prefer to use Python

- Rob Fisher

(5)

"The moon shot has long been a favorite trope of politicians plugging for new government programs, right up there with the Marshall Plan. It was a wondrous achievement, but it presented a relatively discrete engineering problem. If only reforming education, a complex task involving the crooked timber of humanity here on earth, were as straightforward."

- Rich Lowry, giving his less than joyous take on the State of the Union address by The One.

(6)

How about adding some math lessons to plot statistically the chance of an Arab suicide bomber and a gay socialist vegetarian pacifist wearing a Che Guevara tee shirt and no sense of irony all ending up on the same bus in London?

State education is beyond parody.

- Perry de Havilland commenting here

(50)

"In the bubbled, hypocritical mind of some in Hollywood, the only reason Gervais crossed a line is because he went after them. Had he been as relentless in ripping apart Sarah Palin, her young children, Jesus Christ, or George W. Bush, today the comedian would be celebrated as “edgy” and “courageous” — because only in Hollywood is throwing red meat to a hard-left crowd considered “edgy” and “courageous.” But Gervais didn’t do that. Instead, he trained his satirical fire on Hollywood Power and today there’s serious talk about whether or not the comedian will be brought back to the Golden Globes next year as host."

John Nolte, at the Big Hollywood blog.

I think he has a strong point in his praise of Ricky Gervais's performance, but I have a slight reservation. Imagine if Gervais had said such insulting things about showbiz people that Mr Nolte holds dear, or causes he supports. I doubt we would get such applause. And I also note that in the Daily Mail newspaper yesterday (I quote from reading the print edition), the writer, Quentin Letts, raves on about Gervais's rudeness as if it was a barnstorming example of high wit. No it wasn't. I cannot imagine your average Daily Mail reader enjoying say, an attack by an American comedian on the Royal family, for example.

The sad truth is that yes, Hollywood is full of self-regarding jerks who deserve all they get. But that does not make gratuitous rudeness somehow clever, as far as I can see, and I don't see how we are going to get better movies as a result. And this does all rather cement the idea in American's minds that many Brits are little more than hooligans. (I'd like to know what Stateside commenters think of how this all comes across.)

Talking of good movies, has anyone yet seen The King's Speech?

(15)

"So 2011 is the year of the “beneficial crisis”, when the EU will try to exploit short-term economic hardship in order to eliminate the powers of national governments and to create a new pan-European political structure. If it succeeds, it may go on to become a great world power. If it fails, it will start to revert to a collection of nation states."

- Peter Oborne

He makes a persuasive argument that as far as the architects of the EU superstate were concerned, the sort of crises we are living through - such as the Irish/Greek debt problems - are not problems for the eurozone, they are actually very useful stepping stones towards creating their own new version of the Holy Roman Empire, except that unlike the HRE, the new state will be one run on corporatist, heavily regulated, lines.

(29)

I know, my friends, that you are concerned about corporate power. So am I. So are many of my free-market economist colleagues. We simply believe, and we think history is on our side, that the best check against corporate power is the competitve marketplace and the power of the consumer dollar (framed, of course, by legal prohibitions on force and fraud). Competition plays mean, nasty corporations off against each other in a contest to serve us. Yes, they still have power, but its negative effects are lessened. It is when corporations can use the state to rig the rules in their favor that the negative effects of their power become magnified, precisely because it has the force of the state behind it. The current mess shows this as well as anything ever has, once you realize just what a large role the state played. If you really want to reduce the power of corporations, don't give them access to the state by expanding the state's regulatory powers. That's precisely what they want, as the current battle over the $700 billion booty amply demonstrates.

I know you are tempted to think that the problems with these regulations are the fault of the individuals doing the regulating. If only, you think, Obama can win and we can clean out the corrupt Republicans and put ethical, well-meaning folks in place. Think again. For one thing, almost every government intervention at the root of this crisis took place with a Democratic president or a Democratic-controlled Congress in place. Even when the Republicans controlled Congress, President Clinton worked around it to change the rules to allow Fannie and Freddie into the higher-risk loan market. My point here is not to pin the blame for the current crisis on the Democrats. That blame goes around equally. My point is that hoping that having the "right people" in power will avoid these problems is both naive and historically blind. As much as corporate interests were relevant, they were aided and abetted, if unintentionally, by well-meaning attempts by basically good people to do good things.The problem is that there were a large number of undesirable unintended consequences, most of which were predictable and predicted. It doesn't matter which party is captaining the ship: regulations come with unintended consequences and will always tend to be captured by the private interests with the most at stake. And history is full of cases where those with a moral or ideological agenda find themselves in political fellowship with those whose material interests are on the line, even if the two groups are usually on opposite sides.

- Professor Steven G. Horwitz, writing in late September 2008, in a piece entitled An Open Letter to my Friends on the Left. This evening, Horwitz will be giving a talk at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, entitled An Austrian Perspective on the Great Recession 2008-2009.

(42)

“It might be more appropriate if the Sveriges Riksbank would end the Economics Nobel Prize as a failure: strictly, it isn’t a true Nobel at all; it was not part of Alfred Nobel’s legacy, but a much later add-on to pander to the economics profession’s vain pretensions of scientific respectability. If we judge a science by the hallmark of predictability, then the predictions of economists are no better than those of ancient Roman augurs or modern taxi drivers; alternatively, we can judge by its contribution to “scientific” knowledge, in which case the contribution that modern financial economics has made makes us wonder if the agricultural alchemist Lysenko shouldn’t have got a Nobel himself; or we can judge it by contribution to the welfare of society at large, in which case the undermining of the capitalist system, the repeated disasters of the past 20 years, the immiseration of millions of innocent workers and savers, and the trillion dollar losses of recent years surely speak for themselves.”

- Alchemists of Loss - How Modern Finance and Government Intervention Crashed the Financial System, by Kevin Dowd and Martin Hutchison. First published in 2010. Page 86.

Now having read it, I cannot recommend this book too strongly. Some of the discussion about modern financial theory - and its baleful consequences – is quite complex, but the authors write with a verve and eye for drama that makes this a very readable book. In my view, it is the best study of what has happened, and more importantly, spells out in practical, thoughtful ways as to what should be done.

(9)

If we ever get to the day when the best we can do in the way of eccentrics is men who wear silly hats, then heaven help us.

- Simon Heffer, on the late David Hart

(39)

What depraved individual wants to make it easier for the government to do stuff? The government doing stuff is expensive and hurts freedom, so we should all be trying to make sure it barely ever does anything. Still, there are people out there that hate humanity and want the government constantly doing stuff and spending our money while pushing us around. They must be foiled.

- from a posting by Frank J concerning a proposal to make government faster, entitled Making Government Slower. His suggestions follow.

(13)

"What it really shows is the extent to which the politics of global warming is driven by an already existing culture of fear. It doesn’t matter what The Science (as greens always refer to it) does or doesn’t reveal: campaigners will still let their imaginations run riot, biblically fantasising about droughts and plagues, because theirs is a fundamentally moralistic outlook rather than a scientific one. It is their disdain for mankind’s planet-altering arrogance that fuels their global-warming fantasies - and they simply seek out The Science that best seems to back up their perverted thoughts. Those predictions of a snowless future, of a parched Earth, are better understood as elite moral porn rather than sedate risk analysis."

- Brendan O'Neill.

I love that final sentence. You do not have to buy into this guy's Marxian point of view to enjoy his class analysis of what drives part of the Green agenda. I think he has a good point.

(11)

I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.

- wise words from Milton Friedman much quoted of late, e.g. here.

(7)

Where Tony Blair had no reverse gear, and Lady T was not for turning, Mr Cameron has a full gearbox and power steering that allow him to execute swerves and three point turns.

- Benedict Brogan

... yet again I find myself pondering adding a "No shit Sherlock" category... maybe more decorously listed as "I told you so" or some such.

(30)

George Osborne was recently in New York, soaking up plaudits for boldly leading Britain into fiscal austerity at a time when, apparently in contrast, America's feckless political elite has allowed the national debt to balloon. The problem is that UK austerity, so far at least, is a myth.

November's national accounts, released last week, were shocking. Government spending last month was sharply up on the same month in 2009 – yes, up! British state borrowing is still escalating, with the national debt rising very quickly.

- Liam Halligan.

However I do rather roll my eyes at the word 'shocking' as it has been screamingly obvious what was happening for quite some time. Sometimes I think Samizdata needs a category called 'No shit, Sherlock'. How anyone could have thought Cameron's dismal followers were ever serious about actually cutting back the state is hard to fathom.

(10)

Second, you seem to think that we might censor a student's thesis, which is lawful and already in the public domain, simply because a powerful interest finds it inconvenient. This shows a deep misconception of what universities are and how we work. Cambridge is the University of Erasmus, of Newton, and of Darwin; censoring writings that offend the powerful is offensive to our deepest values. Thus even though the decision to put the thesis online was Omar's, we have no choice but to back him. That would hold even if we did not agree with the material! Accordingly I have authorised the thesis to be issued as a Computer Laboratory Technical Report. This will make it easier for people to find and to cite, and will ensure that its presence on our web site is permanent...

- Ross Anderson, of the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory, defending academic freedom. This makes me proud.

(7)

I'm against the rise in student fees... 'cos it ain't fuckin' high enough

- Thaddeus Tremayne

(17)

German politicians view the monetisation of sovereign debt as the road to Weimar. They expect the ECB to be the heir to the Bundesbank and not the Reichsbank

- Willem Buiter, Citigroup chief economist

(25)

There seem to me to be very few facts, at least ascertainable facts, in politics.

- Robert Peel

(61)

"It is a slow day in a damp little Irish town. The rain is beating down and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit. On this particular day a rich German tourist is driving through the town, stops at the local hotel and lays a €100 note on the desk, telling the hotel owner he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night. The owner gives him some keys and, as soon as the visitor has walked upstairs, the hotelier grabs the €100 note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher. The butcher takes the €100 note and runs down the street to repay his debt to the pig farmer. The pig farmer takes the €100 note and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel. The guy at the Farmers' Co-op takes the €100 note and runs to pay his drinks bill at the pub. The publican slips the money along to the local prostitute drinking at the bar, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer him "services" on credit. The hooker then rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill to the hotel owner with the €100 note. The hotel proprietor then places the €100 note back on the counter so the rich traveler will not suspect anything. At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, picks up the €100 note, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money, and leaves town. No one produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now out of debt and looking to the future with a lot more optimism. And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is how the bailout package works."

(26)

And Samuel told all the words of the LORD unto the people that asked of him a king.

That we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.

- 1 Samuel 8 verses 10-20, King James Version

(108)

"American conservatives who want to blame pet villains like the public-employee unions for the insolvency wave in the U.S. are missing the forest for the trees. Those unions are doing nothing but rational minimaxing within a system where the incentives are broken at a much deeper level. And it’s no coincidence that the same problems are becoming acute simultaneously nearly worldwide, because the underlying problem transcends all details of any individual democracy’s history or particular political arrangements. Between 1880 and 1943, beginning with Bismarck and ending with Roosevelt’s New Deal, the modern West abandoned the classical-liberal model of a minimal, night-watchman state. But the redistributionist monster that replaced it was unsustainable, and it’s now running out of other peoples’ money. We are living in the beginning of its end."

- Eric Raymond.

(7)

But I don't get the impression that Cameron and his Coalition are any more interested in personal liberty or rolling back the frontiers of state than their predecessors. The "Big Society", indeed, is a watered-down version of the sort of bogus, grand, unifying scheme employed in the Fascist Italy of the Thirties.

-James Delingpole

(16)

It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.

- Leonardo da Vinci

(45)

If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information, that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the First Amendment and the independence of the internet?

- Ron Paul

(10)

The MD-11, a derivative of the DC-10, first flew in revenue service a mere 20 years ago, making it just middle-aged by aircraft standards. However, KLM's birds are included on this list because they're the only three-engined jets currently operating in scheduled transoceanic passenger service — with the exception of an occasional Qantas A380.

This delightfully catty witticism nicely rounded off an interesting Wired presentation: Fly Away on These 10 Classic Airliners

I always thought the A380 a hideous gargoyle of a plane. And Qantas is a pretty rubbish airline these days. So have at 'em both, I say.

(H/t: Instapundit)

(12)

Culture is very important. That is why the government should never be allowed to have a role in it.

- NickM

(57)

I mean there's enormous pressures to harmonize freedom of speech legislation and transparency legislation around the world - within the EU, between China and the United States. Which way is it going to go? It's hard to see.

- Julian Assange

(80)

It is not necessary to have divine permission to know right from wrong

- Christopher Hitchens

(26)

Who the hell do you think you people are?

- Nigel Farage MEP uses the TV cameras in the European Parliament in Strasbourg to berate the Euro-elite and to create another few minutes of video that is now starting to make some waves, particularly in the USA. Which means that it is that much more likely to get noticed over here also. That "people" should probably have come after the first "you" rather than the second, but it will do. As a major British Newspaper has now noticed, the Euro-project is starting to look not just seriously corrupt and seriously nasty but also seriously vulnerable.

(67)

The concept of positive freedom, therefore, is misconceived and cannot support the notion of welfare rights. The concept ignores the distinction between natural and man-made constraints on action. It ignores the distinction between failing to offer someone a benefit and imposing an actual harm. And the pursuit of positive freedom through state action violates genuine liberty. Someone who claims a right to a good that he has not produced (or acquired by some other voluntary means) is doing one of two things: either he is claiming a right to have nature supply him with goods without effort, which is absurd; or he is claiming a right to take goods from others against their will, which is unjust.

- A Life of One's Own by David Kelley, pages 76-77. I was prompted to dig out this quote following on from my posting just below about O'Rourke's views on the difference between "gimme" rights and "get outa here" rights.

(15)

Third, there is a deeper reason for not worrying about China. China is inherently unstable. Whenever it opens its borders to the outside world, the coastal region becomes prosperous, but the vast majority of Chinese in the interior remain impoverished. This leads to tension, conflict, and instability. It also leads to economic decisions made for political reasons, resulting in inefficiency and corruption. This is not the first time that China has opened itself to foreign trade, and it will not be the last time that it becomes unstable as a result. Nor will it be the last time that a figure like Mao emerges to close the country off from the outside, equalize the wealth - or poverty - and begin the cycle anew. There are some who believe that the trends of the last thirty years will contine indefinitely. I believe the Chinese cycle will move to its next and inevitable phase in the coming decade. Far from being a challenger, China is a country the United States will be trying to bolster and hold together as a counterweight to the Russians. Current Chinese economic dynamism does not translate into long-term success.

- George Friedman of STRATFOR, getting it far righter than one of his namesakes.

(9)

In the run up to the election I was constantly told my intention to vote UKIP would do more harm than good by diluting the Conservative vote and potentially allowing Labour to remain in office.

I fear the coagulation has saved Cameron and cost the country dear.

- Commenter MarkE

(31)

"The average American has regular contact with the federal government at three points - the IRS, the post office and the TSA. Start with that fact if you are formulating a unified field theory to explain the public's current political mood."

- George Will, writing about airport security and the lovely TSA.

(8)

Europe is full of stupid bloody windmills.

- text message from Michael Jennings on an Autobahn

(7)

It didn’t used to be so hard to get the liberal message heard over the screams of reality. Journalism was once a respected profession where liberals ignored reality to portray themselves as unbiased newsmen while actually pushing people towards liberal ideas and away from thuggish reality. Reality still found ways to occasionally get people to listen to it, whether through economic conditions or war, but its message could be contained. Eventually, though, reality weaseled its way into the media, first through talk radio, then Fox News, and now the internet, where pajama-clad imbeciles with brains too simple to understand anything other than reality spout reality on numerous websites on a daily basis.

- Frank J Fleming

(28)

A disenfranchised population becomes an untrustworthy population, since it loses the habit of making its own decisions. The majority become childish in hundreds of ways, looking to the State as parent, complaining without displaying a willingness to any form of self-determination. The more liberty one has, the more indvidual responsibility is required of one to make rational, well-considered decisions in the context of one's social and personal life. Most of us are educated to think we are not capable of this when, in fact, most of us are thoroughly capable but simply lack either the circumstances or the determination to test ourselves. An authoritarian, paternalistic State encourages us in this belief, by its actions as well as by its rhetoric. By its very nature it creates a morally enfeebled, child-like population. This population in turn 'proves' its inability to control its own fate and consequently 'proves' the need for the paternalism which created it in the first place. There is no fundamental difference between Tory and Socialist paternalism.

- Michael Moorcock, The Retreat From Liberty, 1983

(13)

Why is it that the BBC, in its reporting of David Cameron’s visit to China, keeps banging on about the supposed dilemma faced by the Prime Minister over whether to raise human rights abuse, and in particular the plight of Liu Xiaobo, a prominent Chinese dissident unable to collect his Nobel peace prize because he’s serving an 11 year sentence in a Chinese jail?

There’s no dilemma here at all – except in the vague terms already referred to by Mr Cameron, this is not an issue which needs to be explored at all on a visit which is meant to be wholly about trade. Only the BBC, would, in oblivious disregard for the national interest, keep on trying to make something out of it.

- Jeremy Warner

I seem to recall some 'sensible' commentator of the day made similar remarks about those who deprecated comparable government to government relations with Nazi Germany in the 1930's over that whole tiresome 'human rights' thingie

(11)

That is, if this sentiment attributed to him does indeed reflect his thoughts:

It's his money that he has earned, he should be allowed to do whatever he wants with it.

How about considering that the same courtesy should be extended to everyone else in the world, Mr Olbermann?

(52)

This morning I recorded a BBC Radio 4 programme about the late LTC Rolt, historian of the industrial revolution, biographer of (to name but one) Brunel, and the man who put a Rocket, to coin a phrase, under British industrial archaeology and who did much to make it a popular British enthusiasm.

The programme ended by quoting these words from Ecclesiasticus (not in the Bible and not to be confused with Ecclesiastes which is in the Bible) chapter 38:

All these put their trust in their hands and each becometh wise in his own work. Without these shall not a city be inhabited, and men shall not sojourn nor walk up and down therein. They shall not be sought for in the counsel of the people, and in the assembly they shall not mount on high. But they will maintain the fabric of the world, and in the handiwork of their craft is their prayer.

This guy liked it too, when this show was first aired, on Nov 8th.

Not saying I agree, mind. Read what precedes it (e.g. by following the immediately above link) and you discover that the writer of these stirring words had no problem with the working stiffs playing no part in government. That's strictly for the idle - and therefore wise - rich to take care of.

But, stripped of that context, the above quote reads more like a protest on behalf of the downtrodden craftsmen and a claim that they should be sought in the "counsel of the people". Understanding it that way, which is how I did understand it when I first heard the words on my radio this morning, I liked it a lot.

I also think that these words capture something of what the Tea Party is about. We, say the Tea Partiers, run the world, even if we don't rule it. We certainly maintain the world. We know how the world works. Without us the world – the "fabric of the world" - stops. When the idle rich, mounted on high in their assemblies, decide about how the world shall be ruled, they should damn well be listening to us. A healthy majority of those in such assemblies should be us.

(6)

Ministers should not spend more time consulting business about the general question of what should we deregulate. Exisiting businesses can handle existing regulations and often see them as allies to keep others out of a market.

- John Redwood

(48)

Some have asked how the Tea Party movement hopes to pressure Republican leaders or influence the party. That's the wrong way to look at it. The goal is not to pressure Republican leaders but to become the Republican leaders. The goal is not to influence the party but to become the party.

- Richard Viguerie

(6)

"Not for to hide in a hedge,
Not for a train attendant,
But for the glorious privilege
Of being independent."

Robert Burns.

As quoted in The Constitution of Liberty, FA Hayek, page 118.

(3)

- Richard Cobden (1804-1865), quoted at the Cobden Centre website. Quoted again by Steven Baker MP at the end of his presentation this morning to the Libertarian Alliance, and featured in his final slide, of which the above is my somewhat wonky photo.

(13)

(Seriously, apart from the mobile phone, is there any invention that is more empowering for people in poor countries than the motorcycle?)

- Michael Jennings parenthesises during the early stages of a piece about taxis the world over and about taxi