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I would never have considered that the energy output of a TypeI Civilization could fit into my flat:
It is difficult, even for someone who has been working with these ideas and numbers for the past couple of decades, to get one’s head around the utter raw power potential of real nanotechnology. What Drexler is saying in this dry passage is that the amount of nanomotors needed to power a Kardasheff type I civilization, using all the sunlight that hits the Earth, would fit in a 500 square foot apartment (with 8-foot ceiling).
I might need a bit of air conditioning though…
They still don’t get it. In what is a generally very good, readable account of the life and times so far of Andrew Sullivan and his role in driving the blog format, the author, Johann Hari, comes out with this:
Oakeshott believed we should be sceptical of all human institutions—including markets. He savaged Hayek’s market fundamentalist bible, “The Road to Serfdom”, as another rationalist delusion. He saw it as a utopian plan to end planning, yet another argument that a perfect system could be found, this time in markets. Sullivan’s scepticism, by contrast, has been lop-sided. He is highly sceptical of the capacity of governments to act, but he has often presented markets as close to infallible, if left undistorted by government action.
Well I cannot recall what Oakeshott – a writer that I have studied a bit – said about the Road To Serfdom (both men taught at the London School of Economics, by the way), but that strikes me as a terribly confused paragraph. The whole point about Hayek’s demolition of the argument for central planning and socialism is that these ideas take no account of human ignorance, of the inability of any central planner, or group of planners, to have at their fingertips all the knowledge needed to co-ordinate supply and demand. Capitalism, and the “discovery process” of competitive markets, and risk-taking of entrepreneurs, works precisely because it does not require humans to be omniscient, but to capitalise on what they do know. Far from being a utopian, Hayek’s brand of classical liberalism – he called himself an “old Whig – is premised on the very kind of doubts and skepticisms that someone like Andrew Sullivan professes to hold. In fairness to Sullivan – to whom I have been rather unkind because of his support for a Big Government man like Mr Obama – he understands this point, or at least he used to do so.
Hari then goes on to approvingly quote a bete noire of mine, Naomi Klein:
This belief has been at the core of the left-wing writer Naomi Klein’s criticisms of Sullivan. She says: “Where is this ideal capitalism of which [he] speaks? It reminds me of people on the very far left who, where when you present them with evidence of the real-world application of their ideology, say, ‘That doesn’t count, that was a distortion.’ Well, where’s the real version?”
The “real version” of free markets can be found in say, parts of 18th and 19th Century Britain, when wealth exploded by any historical precedents; in Hong Kong, a place with no natural resources other than the entrepreneurial vigour of its people, and in the US, for much of its history, etc.
The more free, the less distorted, such markets are, by such things as central banks, taxes and regulations, the better such places tend to be, although the public can be misled by the prophets of big government into thinking that further progress requires something different. As I unashamedly say over and over, the current financial snafu lies, at root, on the doorstep of central – state – banks. That is not just a quibble. It is at the heart of the issue. It is no good socialists like Ms Klein trying to compare free market critics of mixed-economies like the UK with socialists trying to claim that the Soviet Union did not work because it was not done right or was a bit oppressive. The two worldviews are coming from fundamentally different premises about the issue of how you deal with lack of complete knowledge by individuals who must still act and take decisions. The disasters of socialism are features, not bugs.
There is another point for Mr Hari and others to consider: when firms go bust, it actualy generates knowledge and encourages businesses to do something different, to adjust. When a government department fails, as the CIA failed in not stopping 9/11, or the SEC failed in not stopping Bernard Madoff, does the organisation suffer the equivalent of going bankrupt? No, of course not. Instead, there are calls for more regulations, more officials, bigger budgets. There is no negative feedback loop in government, apart from the highly unreliable process of the occasional general election.
At some point, I have to wonder whether simple ignorance can explain why such articulate writers can get it so wrong. A part of me wants to suppress the desire to say, “Because they are evil”, since that clearly is not quite right. Why do such misconceptions stick, like barnacles on a ship’s hull, so tenaciously? Perhaps such people have crafted a viewpoint for themselves that defines their very being. I guess even I might have to admit some of that.
Update: Sullivan asks some hard but fair questions about the Tea Party protesters. He’s got a point. If opposing the bailouts means letting say, AIG go down the U-bend with all that implies, the protesters should perhaps concede as much. That is why the work of economists over in the UK such as Kevin Dowd is so important. We need to chart a course to a better, less imperfect, place.
“There will be about as many people prepared to admit that they ever voted Labour as there were prepared to admit they collaborated with the Germans. Everyone was in the resistance, honest.”
– Blognor Regis
And then there is this piece of genius from Harry Hutton.
Okay, let’s remember that there is a world outside the Westminster Village. The president of Iran is not a man whom anyone would want with his hands on the nuclear button, certainly not Israel, which has reason to worry that the man is an anti-semitic fruitcake. It appears that there has been a possible change in the tack of US policy towards Iran now that Mr Obama is at the helm. Now it may be that Mr Obama is playing a devilishly cunning game and, by trying to make nice to Iran, is either buying time or trying to engineer real, positive change. Of course, it also may be that Mr Obama is out of his depth and has made the fatal mistake that one can do business with a regime like Iran.
The danger, it seems to me, is that failing to stop Iran from proceeding with an enrichment programme for nuclear material is going to worry the hell out of Israel. And remember, that while Iran may not be the West’s immediate problem, it is a massive, existential one for Israel. The US may be wise not to want to pick a fight on this issue, given that such a course could go horribly wrong. Israel may not have the luxury of having to make even that choice.
Given that the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction tends to work when both sides are basically rational, even if they are bad, it is folly to suppose that nuclear deterrence will work with a regime led by a man who sincerely dreams of taking his place in heaven, and putting lots of those he loathes somewhere else, very violently. At the very least, a defence policy must now involve greater development of anti-ballistic missiles to shoot down incoming weapons, since there will be the risk that the launch sites and development sites may be out of reach of an airforce or ground assault team.
Consider this: why does Iran, with all its oil reserves, want to spend billions of its currency reserves on developing enriched fissile material? What does the Iranian government propose to do with it – use it for garden compost?
Alice Miles in the Times:
The media are all chorusing now: we knew, we called him McNasty and McPoison, we had nothing to do with him, he sent us foul messages, we didn’t like him. But the point is, we did know. We may not have known the detail of the nasty smears about senior Conservatives that Mr McBride was dreaming up, but we knew about the smears against his own side. We knew what he was up to, and we knew that he was being paid more than £100,000 a year of public money to do it – and we did nothing to stop it.
Mr McBride used the system of anonymous briefings under which political journalism operates to spread dirt about Labour opponents of Mr Brown. Should journalists still be under a duty to protect their sources when those sources are abusing public money, or should we have been bolder in exposing it? Mr McBride did not poison the well on his own. There has long been a “dirty tricks” cabal around Mr Brown that any Westminster journalist or minister could name – Ian Austin, Tom Watson, Ed Balls, Mr McBride and, formerly, Charlie Whelan, who is now political officer of the Unite super-union (and working hard to place favoured candidates in winnable seats for the next election).
The poisoning was at its worst in the run-up to the leadership noncontest two years ago. Yesterday I spoke to somebody who balked at challenging Mr Brown then, because he couldn’t face the poisoners. “It’s the reason why Gordon came to office untested,” he said. “When I considered challenging him for the leadership, people warned me it would be a very unpleasant campaign; and it would have been an unpleasant campaign because Gordon’s people would have run it in an extremely vicious way.”
Which makes quite a change from:
Mr Brown is a good, decent man but …
See what I mean about the dead tree dog pack? These people just are not scared of Gordon Brown any more, or of his dogs. They are now more scared of him getting booted out before they have each stuck their knives in. I can’t see Brown lasting into next year now, I really can’t. I give him a month at the most.
UPDATE: Here‘s Guido. Summary: Now they tell us. Watch the film clip and note that the Cameron machine gets mentioned, not at all grovellingly.
This, as the robot bomb in Dark Star said to the astronaut who was trying to persuade him not to explode, is fun. I think that things are now developing on the Gordon Brown front very fast.
As I have already commented today (I’ve recycled my comments earlier today here, and have added relevant links) on an earlier posting, I think that one of the key moments in this was when this got said, two days ago now:
The spokesman added that nobody in Downing Street knew of the e-mails and that it was Mr Brown’s view that there was “no place in politics for the dissemination or publication of material of this kind”.
If Downing Street had left it at “nobody in Downing Street knew of the e-mails”, all might have been well. I say “well”, for these things are relative. Well as in Brown might have been able to stagger on for another year. But, I think fatally, they continued to the effect that it is Mr Brown’s view that there was “no place in politics for the dissemination or publication of material of this kind”. This is a flat lie, and we all know it to be a lie. The spokesman knows it. Brown knows it. We all know it.
Worse, from the purely tactical point of view, this lie turns the story from one of merely a few particular and, approximately speaking, deniable emails, into one where anything nasty presided over by Gordon Brown, and the longer ago the better, becomes relevant, because it proves that the Prime Minister not only does now believe in dirty tricks, but always has done. Suddenly, every newspaper hack in Britain knows what to ask, of anyone he can find with anything remotely like an answer. You were at school with Brown, were you? What was he like? Ran the University paper with him, did you? So, how did that work? Tell me about Scotland back in the eighties, the nineties, the noughts. Hm, sounds nasty. What’s that you say? Wales as well, well well. What exactly did he say about Blair? How exactly was Blair toppled? … The whole miserable litany of nastiness going back about three decades suddenly roars back into the centre of British politics, right now. The Prime Minister, with his fatuously excessive denial, has made this happen. (As always with these things, it is not the thing itself that does the fatal damage, it is the denials. See the prediction to that effect in this, although I had no idea then how quickly the fatal denial would come.)
For all the surreal daftness of the Daily Telegraph printing Guido stories after he’s blogged them, but mentioning him only to call his a “Tory blog”, Janet Daley does have a point when she says that this story only really got seriously going when the clunky old dead tree media got around to printing it. But now, printing it they are. The dog pack has now assembled and is baying for blood.
Even Brown’s demise will not quieten them, for as soon as he is gone, which I now think could happen very soon, the next cry will be: general election, general election, general election. Not only might the country soon be slightly less disastrously governed, it might be less disastrously governed before this week is finished. Because if a general election campaign does start in a week’s time, there is at least the faint hope that the politicians will – and call me a mad dreamer but I just cannot help saying this – stop doing things.
Well, maybe. We shall see. What I do definitely know is that when The Sun starts saying that Brown must go, that must count for something. The story is adorned with a picture of one of the mere Brown creatures (an MP and Minister called Watson), but pretty soon it is clear who is the main target:
The Prime Minister HIMSELF needs to be taken away by the men in white coats.
Men in white coats? How Guido, who has been blogging for month after month about the Prime Mentalist, must be loving that. The Prime Minister is not just disastrous. He is mad.
Every Labour politician in the country must now be in despair. Will this despair finally cause them to make the decision they should have made about Brown (“Oi! Brown! No-o-o-o-o!”) decades ago? Maybe, maybe. I really think that this time, they might. If you doubt this, do what these people are now doing. Consider the alternative.
UPDATE (see the update here): Watson is about to resign. He will spend the rest of his life being the ex-Minister for Digital Engagement, which according to a commenter on this was his actual, no really, title. CLANG! “Isn’t going to resign.” The wish was father to the thought. Sorry. He just didn’t know about the emails. Blogs eh? No quality control. Apart, that is, from the fear of looking like a prat, being told one is a prat, etc. etc. Here‘s the story.
“When you keep a kennel of attack dogs then I guess you can’t entirely claim ignorance or absence of responsibility when one of them bites several passers by.”
– Andrew Neil
Via this website is a list of the ten most annoying taxes. I am not sure if I agree with the rankings, but still.
The website does seem to have many attractive features (absolutely! Ed).
This Daily Telegraph story, which if true, implicates Gordon Brown directly in the recent scandal about a brutish plot to smear political opponents, is dynamite. (Guido writes to point out that he got the story first. But of course).
If this whole affair helps accelerate the demise of Gordon Brown, a conceited, foolish and ultimately rather revolting character, and hence speeds up the day when we might just improve some of the things that vex us, then I am going to send Guido Fawkes a bottle of some very good red wine. That’s a promise, Mr Staines!
It is a strange atmosphere at the moment. Such has been the oppressiveness, but also clownishness, of this government, that it resembles that of Charles I. His time did not end well.
Update: Since we are in the process of jumping up and down on Mr Brown’s soon-to-be-dug grave, I should add that one thing that has bugged me about him is this whole schtick about his being “the son of the manse”. What is a “manse”? I understand it is a sort of Scottish vicarage. Like this commentator, I have had to search for enlightenment. “Manse” is – with apologies to Scottish friends of mine – not a terribly attractive word. For a while, we were given the line that Brown, while he may not have the charisma of Mr Blair, had this sort of Calvinistic, godly work-is-good-for-the-soul quality, which meant that he would not use the sort of sordid, Renaissance Italy-style tactics that have now been exposed. And I am afraid that one side-effect of this whole sorry mess will be a further estrangement between the English and the Scots. Mr Brown is not a great advert for a nation that has given us Adam Smith, James Watt or this even great man.
Update: I see that EU Referendum blog, which I recall has actually partly defended the arrest of Tory MP Damian Green by anti-terrorism police officers (remember that story?), is now arguing that all the blogging about Derek Draper, or whoever, is playing the same game as the MSM, which is to encourage the real, underlying problem of mediocre people rising to positions of power because anyone who has a spicy private life cannot survive.
I disagree. If mediocre people are so rising, it is surely because a political class has deliberately emasculated itself by enabling a situation in which about 80 per cent of laws in this nation are not made here, but in the European Union, a point that EU Referendum points out regularly. Mediocrity is what you get if serious power drains away from an institution such as Parliament, leaving only perks and minor stuff behind. The 900 llb gorilla in the living room is the fact that Parliament, and backbench MPs, are far less important than they used to be. By discrediting this statist monster of a Labour government, and keeping pressure on a Cameronian Tory Party, bloggers such as Guido are not fostering mediocrity or timidity, but quite the opposite.
Is this just a bad video at Fox News or do any of you have problems with it as well? About 4 or 5 seconds into it after the commercial it freezes on me. I have been seeing this fairly often lately and usually on things I most want to see!
It looks like it might be interesting if I could only watch it here in the UK.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day. But I wasn’t on that particuar job.”
– Brian Clough, the late English club football manager who did not suffer from the national trait of false modesty.
I see that Tony Blair’s former master of spin is trying to put as much distance between himself and Gordon Brown’s henchmen as possible. Truly glorious stuff.
I have been deliberately avoiding the internet these last couple of days as I have been enjoying a lovely Easter weekend with my relations. We sank a bottle of Rhone wine last night that was particularly enjoyable. Having caught up on the news via Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale, I am decanting another one. Oh yes.
Happy Easter to believers and non-believers alike.
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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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