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There’s another of Patrick Crozier’s “world in a grain of sand” pieces (the sand this time being the use of a portable phone while driving a car) over at UKTransport today, this time about the assumptions, all of them mistaken, underlying the epidemic of legislation that is now sweeping the hitherto civilised world. These assumptions are:
· That if something nasty is happening then the government should do something about it
· That that something is new legislation
· That legislation will be enforced
· That enforcement will be effective
· That legislation will have no adverse side effects.
I realise this is not exactly original stuff. But some things must be said again and again. And when someone else says them well, I’ll link to them, and then say them again for good measure. Copy and paste at will.
Paul Marks points out why the likes of Paul Krugman really dislike what we have to say.
Paul Krugman (the pet economist of the New York Times) is fond of sneering at the Austrian school theory of the boom-bust cycle as a ‘moral theory’.
According to Professor Krugman, Austrian school economist believe the bust is a moral punishment for the degenerate luxury of the boom.
Of course to a ‘liberal’ like Paul Krugman moral and morality are ‘boo words’ to be sneered at (unless they are talking about George W. Bush – in which case it is quite all right to talk about lack of morality). However, Professor Krugman is (I believe) up to a bit more than this here. Ludwig Von Mises was insistent that economic science be “value free” – the methods of natural science were not suitable for economics (or so Von Mises taught), but economics (like natural science) must be kept distinct from ethics. As an economist one explained the consequences of a policy – and only then did one (as a human being) decide whether these consequences were good or bad.
So by claiming that Austrian school of economics is a moral school Professor Krugman is playing the same game that Marx and Engels played with Max Stirner – knowing he was obsessive atheist (even more so than they were) they insisted on calling him “Saint Max”, “Our Saint” (and so on). Stirner had claimed that a communist society (which he opposed) would have to be based on the ethical (‘religious’) principle that equality was good (communism as an overgrown monastery) – so Marx and Engels were trying to get their own back on someone who had argued that communism was not ‘scientific’.
There is clearly a long tradition in ‘social science’ of regarding the accusation of ‘morality’ as a deadly insult, so Professor Krugman clearly knows where to hit. However, is he totally wrong? Is there no connection between Austrian economics and morality?
Murray Rothbard often argued that there was a connection between the concept of economic law and the idea of natural law in ethics.
I will not examine Rothbardian Aristotelianism in this blog but I mention it in case any one supposes that I am the first person to try and explore the connections between economic law and moral law.
Von Mises (like Carl Menger before him) based his whole conception of economics on human choice – on the reasoning “I” which decides how to act and then acts. It is true that Hayek (being influenced by determinism) did not go along with the concept of agency (the choosing agent – the “I”) but, in practice, Hayek accepted that people should be considered “as if” they were actually different from clock work toys so he need not be examined here (although I wonder who is doing the considering if Hayek himself was not an agent-subject – but simply a complex object like the rest of us supposed to be).
Mises himself was careful to never actually formally endorse the concept of free will (to do so would have been the ultimate horror in early 1900’s Vienna) but clearly (as for the Aristotelian Menger) the whole of his thought depends on man being able to think – to consider, to make choices, to be “acting man” the agent. Agency may not be ethics but it is at least a doctrine of metaphysics. This is why both Mises and Karl Popper were amused when they were accused of being ‘positivists’. The Vienna Circle would never accept any metaphysical doctrines – indeed that was the whole point of the Vienna Circle (circles with points? oh well “you know what I mean”).
Still how does all this metaphysical stuff relate to practical ‘policy issues’? Someone might accept that not allowing private ownership of the means of production and money prices derived from voluntary interaction will (eventually) lead to mass starvation, but still hold that mass starvation does not matter (the Cambridge economist Maurice Dobbs came close to this – he accepted that socialism was not as good at giving people what they wanted as capitalism was – but held that this was not relevant, as it did not matter what people wanted) surely then Mises’ distinction between economics and morality still holds? → Continue reading: Economics and Morality
Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.
-Albert Camus
Claire Berlinski, a professor at Niccolo Machiavelli University, has some fresh Swiftian thinking that could really crack some ice in the Middle East. We are privileged to publish a preview of a working paper she has written for the Bilderberg Trilateral Commission Council on Foreign Relations… well we’d rather not say actually
SADDAM, LET’S THINK outside the box for a change.
We know you don’t really give two shits about the Palestinians, and you sure as hell don’t give a rat’s ass about Islam, either. And we know you’re a practical kind of man. So here’s a little suggestion that might meet both of our needs.
Here’s the way it is. Unless we make some kind of arrangement here, we’re going to have to turn all of Iraq into a pane of stained glass. It’ll be an ugly business; everyone in the world will get their panties in a wad about it, and we’ll all have to waste a lot of our valuable time and energy holding useless press conferences explaining things we’d rather not explain. We will, that is. You won’t, because you’ll be dead. You can take Israel with you, sure, but you’re still going to be dead as a dodo, and there ain’t no 72 virgins in Paradise waiting for you. Take my word for it, we know from the pleasures of the flesh in our country.
Now here’s what we suggest, Saddam. This might come as a surprise to you, but we’ve been giving it some thought, and lately it occurs to us that the Iraqis and the Americans might actually have more in common than we first thought. You know that book about what to do when someone moves your cheese? Well, we’ve read it too, and it really spoke to us. It’s time to look at that cheese again.
For one thing, we’ve noticed lately that we really don’t feel a lot of love for the Saudis, and it just doesn’t seem to us that they’re running those oil fields as responsibly as they could. And you know the Kuwaitis? Well, we were wrong, you were right, and we’re man enough to admit it. They’re repulsive little ingrates and they’re too damned cowardly to have a country of their own. Hell, they probably were stealing your oil.
So you know what, Saddam?
Go ahead.
Yep, you heard us right. That was the green light, just like the one you thought you got from that Glaspie woman, only this time we mean it. Take Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia too. It would take you what, three days? Go ahead and butcher the Al Sabahs and the whole Saudi royal family. Have at it. Any dissent? We know you know how to handle it, just don’t tell us about the details. Let Noam Chomsky worry about it.
And hell, Saddam, you want a free hand over Iran? We see no problem with that either. We know they gave you a bit of hassle the last time around, but after 23 years under the Ayatollahs, this time they’ll probably be throwing roses at your tanks. As far as we’re concerned, you can have the whole Persian Gulf. All of it. You can even keep your WMD program. We’ll sell you the damned Trident missiles if you like, just as long as you keep them pointed toward the right people. Oh, and we’ll give you a free hand to slaughter all the Islamic fundamentalists you want – in Saudi Arabia, outside Saudi Arabia, in Iran, Yemen, wherever. We know you’re dying to do it anyway; heck, you love killing people. Give ’em a taste of what the Kurds got. Like I said, we don’t want to know the details. Kind of like we said to the Indonesians back in the day. Let Robert Fisk worry about getting the scoop. (Oh, and if something unfortunate were to happen to him, you didn’t hear it from us, but you know – accidents do happen. The will of Allah and all that.)
Way we see it, Saddam, there’s really no reason the two of us should go to war when we really have a lot of common emotional needs. Sure, we think you’re a little ruthless, a bit of a homicidal maniac, but you know, we managed to see the bright side of Stalin when we needed to, and in retrospect, it’s a fine thing what those Russians did at Stalingrad – that could have been our boys taking losses like that. We think we might have sort of a similar situation here. Let’s face it, we Americans just don’t have the stomach to do what it really takes to wipe out these Islamic lunatics. And they seem awfully serious about wanting us all dead. So why not give the job to a man who has both the appetite to do the job right and the expertise?
We just have a few little things we’d like in return. Lay off of Israel, stop sending money to those idiotic suicide bombers, and keep the price of oil below nine dollars a barrel – forever. The way we see it, everyone ends up happy, except maybe the Al Sauds, and frankly, at this point, their happiness is just not our number one priority. You get what you always wanted – total control of the Gulf. We get what we always wanted – – cheap oil and the assurance that every fundamentalist maniac in the Middle East will enjoy your excellent vacation facilities and your trademark Iraqi hospitality. We can be buddies again, just like we were during the Cold War. Remember the good times we had together back then?
What are the Europeans going to say about it? They’re the ones who keep blathering on about how they don’t want us to antagonize you, so they should be thrilled by the announcement of the Iraqi–American Peoples’ Alliance for Peace. And figure this: We lift the sanctions, you control all the oil in the Gulf, you start pumping it out like there’s no tomorrow, and within a week you’ll be able to feed all those poor little starving Iraqi children and keep your palaces maintained in the fashion to which you’ve become accustomed. No more of this undignified slinking from house to house every night to escape detection – you could really live in style. And a constant supply of nine–buck–a–barrel oil will do wonders for this unpleasant little economic slump we’ve been facing here. It’s a win-win situation.
So that’s really the deal, Saddam old buddy. It’s simple, isn’t it? Lay off of Israel, do the needful with the terrorists, and the Gulf is yours. We tried to do the right thing by the Kuwaitis and the Saudis, but you know, there comes a point in every relationship where you have to ask – “Am I giving more than I’m getting here?” And honestly, we think that point came and went a long time ago. It’s like they say in the books about healthy relationships. We feel like one of those women who love too much. Have you read that one? It really spoke to us, all that stuff about being co–dependent and all. Always bailing out some penny–ante, Jew–hating Gulf potentate whenever he gets himself into some stupid mess, and getting no thanks, none at all, not one word, just more abuse about how we’re such bullies and warmongers.
Well, we’ve talked it over with our therapists and we’ve seen that we’re worth more than that. It’s all about Toughlove now. If they think they don’t need us, fine – let them go it on their own, just don’t come crying to us when the Republican Guards start yanking out the plugs on those tiny widdle incubating babies. They had their chance.
Nine dollars a barrel. Lay off of Israel. Do whatever it is that you do best with the Islamic Fundamentalists. And the Gulf is yours forever. Tell me you don’t see the beauty in it, Saddam.
And of course, remember the alternative.
Claire Berlinski
If you like shooting guns for sport then it follows, as a matter of unalterable logic in today’s world, that you must be a nutter, a psycho, clearly not the kind of person to invite to dinner parties and definitely not in tune with today’s world. Well, that at least is the message given out by our ‘splendidly objective’ state-owned broadcaster, the British Broadcasting Corporation.
In an excellent article in this week’s edition of the Spectator, Michael Yardley shows how Britons’ recent success in shooting competitions at the Commonwealth Games were blanked by the BBC.
I particularly liked this paragraph:
“Shooting by law-abiding individuals remains an icon of liberty and thus a target for destruction by the apparatichiks of the nanny state. Shooters understand what political correctness is about: the empowerment of the central state by means of the disempowerment of the individual. Accept the idea that the individual is not to be trusted, that there is a need for wardens of thought in a world without sharp edges or real risk, and the battle for freedom is lost. You might, meanwhile, like to take up shooting just because it is fun.”
Well, on the latter point, I am doing just that. I am off to Las Vegas in September to attend a Front Sight course, in what promises to be three days of excellent handgun shooting practice. It is such a shame that this noble sport cannot be practised in the UK.
Over at TBHN, there are two further comments from readers about modern housing, one being of particular interest because it is from an architect.
Alistair Twiname confirms an inexpert impression I have long had, which is that while the finish of modern buildings is indeed fairly tacky, because of this being a craftsmanship thing and craftsmanship now being either worse or more expensive than a century ago, anything in a building where modern industrialisation techniques can work their magic is now improving steadily.
(The above direct link seems dodgy. The blogspot archive thing again? To get there by hand, it’s www.tbhn.blogspot.com – August 22nd 2002.)
I remember, when I worked as a junior functionary for a house builder many years ago, being very impressed with how clever the hidden bits of the buildings often were, and how rapidly such things were progressing, underneath the twee and conservative exteriors, which just looked like cheap copies of past glories with added garages. That being because they were.
Any man-made, mass produceable object small enough to be moved easily is improving fast, in quality, price, cunning, everything. Why can’t houses be as good as cars and aeroplanes? Because you can make cars and aeroplanes in convenient indoor factories, and then move them easily to where they’re wanted. A house is a hell of a lot harder to move, and to make it movable, you have to build a self-supporting structure into it which will only be used once (unlike the equivalent car and aeroplane structures, which get used throughout the machine’s life). But with a house, for the rest of its life, the ground will support the house. Doesn’t work. So, the thing has to be assembled on site, in the rain, by those now reasonably well paid building workers. Thousands have tried, but nobody has cracked industrialised housing yet.
The other thing Twiname’s comments confirm for me is the enormous value of specialist blogs, and specialist debates and discussions on blogs. These draw specialist people, who might have no interest in or agreement with general pro-free-market bombast, into debates and discussions of genuine interest to them in which our questions and concerns still set the agenda. And, such people educate us.
It may have caught the eye of readers in the UK the other day that the Inland Revenue has redesigned its logo. Samizdata.net brings you a special preview!
Paul Marks sees the rotting effects of increasingly authoritarian statism on both coasts of the USA
New York City has been known as the heart of statism in the United States since the late 1930’s. However, in recent decades the State of California (or rather its rulers) have been keen to overtake New York in statism.
New York State still (by some measures at least) manages to just have higher taxes than California (although I doubt that New York State is still ahead in terms of state spending as a proportion of average income), but in terms of regulations California is well ahead, and in terms of the practices of the courts California has (in some ways) the worst legal system in the United States.
Statist Californian cities (most notably Los Angeles and San Francisco) are handicapped in their race to have higher taxes than New York City by the fact that so much is centralised in California – but they do their best, and in terms of regulations are in many ways ahead of New York City in statism.
Why I am going over this well known and rather sad story? Well there have been recent developments in the race to collapse.
California has decided to ban home schooling (at least parents will now need to be qualified teachers) – this should increase the government education budget (in a state that is heading for bankruptcy anyway) and reduce the standard of education.
Not to be outdone, New York City is banning smoking in restaurants, bars and so on that seat under 35 people (smoking is already banned in establishments that seat 35 people or more) – all this is a direct aping of Californian regulations. New York City already has the highest taxes on tobacco in the country (much to the joy of organised crime). Both the anti smoking regulations and the higher taxes are the brain children of the new ‘Republican’ Mayor (both New York City and New York State have a long tradition of ‘Republicans’ of this sort).
Is the race to collapse intentional? I do not think so. Although the Greens and other small groups (stronger in California than in New York State) really do want collapse, mainstream Democrats and Republicans do not. However, intentions will not change results (objective reality sees to that).
Which area will collapse first? I simply do not know. New York City has already gone bankrupt once (during the mid 1970’s), and been bailed out (in return for some fiscal responsibility) by New York State and the United States government, I suppose history could simply repeat itself.
California may simply be too big for such a bailout, especially as the national (and world) economy goes into decline next year (unless there is an oil price collapse of course). A Californian collapse should finally get people’s attention focused on the fact that statism does not work.
However, academia and the media will work hard to prevent people drawing this conclusion. We can expect lots of articles and TV interviews from the likes of Paul Krugman on the lines of “the collapse of this symbol of capitalism proves that laissez-faire does not work”.
At least in the United States the TV networks (although utterly dominated by ‘liberals’) still feel the need to sometimes have people on screen arguing against the statist account of an event – they are not quite on the level of British television.
Paul Marks
Human society is probably “sustainable” only in a very low-tech mode, or a very high-tech mode. Anything in between is necessarily transitional, in one direction or the other. We must either move forward, or die in large numbers, and face miserable stagnation afterward. Personally, I’m against the latter.
– Glenn Reynolds
It seems that our regular samizdata.net e-mail (as found in the sidebar) is now operational again and can be used once more.
Alas we seem to have lost some of the e-mails that were sent to us over the last week (i.e. since late last Friday) unless they were sent to our emergency address.
In Wednesday’s Daily Telegraph, Janet Daley wrote an article called The Tories have room for liberals of both persuasions.
Now I really have no quarrel with the thrust of her contention:
The cruellest and saddest irony of all is that the self-styled new model army, with its social liberalism ticket, need have no dispute with the old faith. Social liberalism and Thatcherite economic liberalism are consistent with one another.
Nothing is more likely to give people the confidence and the wherewithal to live their lives as they choose than personal prosperity and the freedom that it brings. Respect for personal liberty sits neatly alongside the promotion of economic self-determination. Together, they could make a coherent, radical and very modern party programme.
Well as our confreres in the United States so lyrically say: no shit, Sherlock.
What I find so saddening is that perhaps Daley has indeed set the level and tenor of this article to what is appropriate for the current state of sophistication and received wisdom of the typical Daily Telegraphy reader, i.e. acting as if ‘all the elements of truth and measure’ were to be found within the essentially bipolar world of parochial Westminster party politics. But frankly what Ms. Daley is saying is nothing more that what libertarians in Britain have been saying for a great many years. When she says:
Respect for personal liberty sits neatly alongside the promotion of economic self-determination.
This phrase practically defines the libertarian meme and yet you will search the article in vain for the word ‘libertarian’.
Question: if someone wanted to swathe you in cloth dipped in turmeric water and then bury you alive in a pit, what would you say? Awww, c’mon, it’s only for a minute or so, and in the 400 years of this tradition, no one has died yet (they say). Actually, the participants on the sharp end (or is it in the deep end?) are typically young children, it being far too terrifying a procedure to subject adults to. They say it’s completely consensual, and after all, if the gods are not appeased, who knows what might happen! Naturally, the police don’t want to intervene, because no one is calling them to do so. Hang on a minute, one of those little children is bound to place a call to her local police station or submit a complaint in writing if there is any problem, isn’t she? The fact that her parents are making her submit to being buried alive by putting the fear of the gods into her is neither here nor there, is it?
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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