The left-wing commentariat seems to be using the argumentum ad nauseam against the Thatcher record. This consists of repeating an allegation, no matter how much evidence is produced against it, or how many times it has been shown to be false.
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Every time I read of drunken noisy celebrations from assorted people following Margaret Thatcher’s death… every time I read of someone spewing vitriol and spitting on her memory… every time I read “Ding Dong The Witch is Dead“… my smile grows ever so slightly wider. Why? Well I think I may have given a clue why I was likely to think this way a few days ago when I wrote this:
Before Margaret Thatcher took power, we had a Tory party lead by Edward Health… a man who was frankly so indistinguishable from the people he purported to oppose that his ‘conservative’ government nationalised several businesses. The broad statist political consensus amongst the Great and the Good (try not to spit when you read those words) was that the only thing to argue about was the rate at which the state took over, well, everything. The Flat Caps and Beer Party and the Champagne and Barbour Party carried on a wonderful pantomime show of how they disdained each other and how they were like chalk and cheese, much as they do now, but in truth, it disguised just how much they had in common. Free(er) Markets were a talking point amongst some Tories but in truth they loved to intervene “before breakfast, dinner and tea”. And then Maggie T started talking about free(er) markets and actually meaning it. She polarised the Party and the country and that was exactly what was needed. She smashed the cosy consensus, over and over and over again… and many people hated her for it, which means it actually did some good. And now, the late Margaret Hilda Thatcher is doing it again. What we have at the moment is a toxic political consensus. We are all the same, we are all in agreement and (whispered aside) don’t worry, those ‘cuts’ in state spending are really just cuts in the rate of increase. You can trust David Cameron with the regulatory welfare state. And indeed you can. Ok long suffering Middle England, just watch those people on the news and in the papers. And then look at that pallid ‘Conservative’ toad in Number 10 who has de facto nationalised Britain’s leading banks. Does he remind you of someone? There are still neo-Thatcherites in the Tory party (David Davies most prominently) and then there is always the Joker in the deck of British politics, Nigel Farage, whose admiration for Maggie T has always been obvious even if she dropped the ball on Europe (as did many of us). But there are few things better at flipping that switch in people’s heads than seeing unedifying hatred from people who reek of naked greed for the state extracted money of others. And so every time I see people pouring out their bile for Thatcher, I smile and hope there is a TV camera around or a journalist happy to write down what they say. By their own words, they shall be revealed. Oh Margaret, you really were the gift that just keeps on giving. April 14th, 2013 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Indulge me in a little sermon. The tradition among many anthropologists and archaeologists has been to treat the past as a very different place from the present, a place with its own mysterious rituals. To cram the Stone Age or the tribal South Seas into modern economic terminology is therefore an anachronistic error showing capitalist indoctrination. This view was promulgated especially by the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, who distinguished pre-industrial economies based on ‘reciprocity’ from modern economies based on markets. Stephen Shennan satirises the attitude thus: ‘We engage in exchanges to make some sort of profit; they do so in order to cement social relationships; we trade commodities; they give gifts.’ Like Shennan, I think this is patronising bunk. I think people respond to incentives and always have done. People weigh costs and benefits and do what profits them. Sure, they take into account non-economic factors, such as the need to remain on good terms with trading partners and to placate malevolent deities. Sure, they give better deals to families, friends and patrons than they do to strangers. But they do that today as well. Even the most market-embedded modern financial trader is enmeshed in a web of ritual, etiquette, convention and obligation, not excluding social debt for a good lunch or an invitation to a football match. Just as modern economists often exaggerate the cold-hearted rationality of consumers, so anthropologists exaggerate the cuddly irrationality of pre-industrial people. – This little “sermon” is on pp. 133-4 of The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley (also quoted in this earlier posting here), in the chapter about the simultaneous rise of agriculture and early industrial specialisation, all within the context of a wider web of exchange relationships. What most clearly distinguishes humans from animals, and successful humans from all the failures, says Ridley, is trade. Early agriculture and early industrial specialisation are both manifestations of the division of labour, which depends on trade. You can’t have early agriculture without specialists supplying crucial agricultural implements, such as axes to clear forests. You can’t have specialist suppliers of agricultural implements without specialist food-growers feeding them. April 12th, 2013 | 64 comments - (Comments are closed)
As the editor of CityAM points out, getting the narrative right is essential. The Left is great at understanding this, whereas classical liberals/libertarians have tended not to be, although part of it comes down to numbers of people. That is why it is essential, in my view, for people who want to push the tide of affairs in a better direction to break into the MSM, as well as keep pushing new channels of media in the internet age. With that thought of narratives in mind, it seems to me vital to keep pushing back at the idea that 2008 was caused by “unregulated capitalism”. It is utter nonsense. And the “Austrian” school is the best place to go in figuring this out:
Heath is right – we are in a statist phase right now, not just in the UK. Perhaps the turning point may come from a country that hasn’t been considered. Maybe, for example, one of the continental European nations takes a dramatic turn towards sanity, although at present the odds look low on that. I still think Asia is going to be where the impetus will come from. Consider what might happen if China, India or, say, Indonesia adopts a gold-backed currency and other radical reforms. If Asian policymakers quote Hayek and Mises more than, say, Keynes or Krugman. Hong Kong’s example of vibrant, laissez faire success eventually changed the mainland of China. Could Asia eventually force the old West to change course and come to its senses?
April 12th, 2013 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
No, this is not a posting about the European Central Bank. ECB, in Brian Micklethwait World, stands for E(ngland and Wales) C(ricket) B(oard). And IPL stands for Indian Premier League, the twenty overs each way cricket tournament, the 2013 version of which has just got under way in India and which will end near the end of May. I’m watching it now on my television, and very entertaining it is. What this posting is about, besides cricket, is the rise of India and the necessity for people in England who have dealings with India to acknowledge that India has risen. From Cricinfo earlier this week:
BCCI is B(oard of) C(ontrol for) C(ricket in) India, i.e. India’s cricket bosses.
I told you so. That earlier posting, about how England star batsman Kevin Pietersen wants to play both for England and in the IPL, still holds up very well. It isn’t just English players who are losing out here. Insofar as England’s own county cricket season involves, like the IPL, cricketers from around the world, the England season not clashing with the IPL would also make it easier for top overseas players to play in England over the summer. Playing in England is nothing like the financial windfall that an IPL contract is, but it can be a nice little earner, to say nothing of a nice little learner about the different playing conditions of England. Ricky Ponting, the former Australian captain, is now playing in the IPL, captaining one of the teams. Later this year, Ponting will be playing some English county cricket, for Surrey. England’s cricket bosses still have a way to go. They appear to have at last realised that they do indeed have a problem, and that this problem is not adequately described by being labelled “Kevin Pietersen”. This is progress. But, this Collier man is still going on about what he and his mates would like.
Yes, it would. But the IPL is now an established success. It has done wonders for Indian cricket, and for the comfort and excellence of India’s cricket grounds. It gives young Indian cricketers a marvellous stage to impress. It has transformed Indian fielding, once notoriously sluggish. Because twenty-twenty cricket only obliges bowlers to bowl four overs, it has also encouraged Indian fast bowling, which also was once upon a time a joke. (Fast bowlers from everywhere, come to that.) Whereas the typical Indian international cricketer used to a little man in the Sachin Tendulkar mould, of the sort who would have been a bank clerk had he not had the trick of playing cricket, the new Indian cricketer is more likely to be a towering alpha male with the physique of a super-hero, who either bowls like the wind or who hits the ball deep into the crowd with ease. When Indians think about the IPL now, that is the stuff they are thinking about, not the fact that all the IPL clashes with the frigid beginnings of the English season. Why on earth would India now rearrange the entire IPL timetable, just to suit the English? Would it not make more sense for the English to rearrange their season by starting that later? Like, after the increasingly cold and prolonged English winter has ended? (I would love to know what Britain’s Meteorological Office has been telling England’s cricket bosses about how the weather in April was going to get more cricket-friendly.) Why cannot the English season start in mid-May rather than mid-April, like it used to? (I can recall when a batsman getting a thousand runs in May in England was a huge deal, because he only had the fag end of May to do this in.) If England’s cricket season must start in the rain, wind and snow of April, then can it really not do without a few increasingly rebellious star players? It can, and it will, because it will have to. All the English cricket bosses have to do is acknowledge reality. All the Indian cricket bosses have to do is … nothing. If the Indians do decide to shorten the IPL season, this will be entirely for their own reasons, mostly to do with television. Happening to oblige the damn English would probably, for many of them, be a bug rather than a feature. The basic problem is that the English have for too long treated the IPL as just another foreign tournament, instead of what it clearly has been from the moment it started, namely the premier franchise cricket tournament in the world, based in the premier cricket-supporting nation in the world. Only now, prodded by England players who are becoming ever more desperate not to miss the IPL bus, are the England cricket hierarchy beginning to grasp this obvious fact. Even Wisden, in among having another moan about Kevin Pietersen, realises that the ECB has badly mishandled this issue. Now, about that European Central Bank, and its need to adjust to reality … April 11th, 2013 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Just about now, I had hoped to be writing in some detail about some of the many interesting things said at the Liberty League Freedom Forum 2013, which happened last weekend. I still hope to. Meanwhile, I have already done a quick posting at my personal blog, with lots of photos, about how good, in general, this event was. And here is another posting about LLFF2013 to say, again, that it was very good. As I said at my own blog, the best thing about this gathering, excellent though the line-up of speakers was, was the audience that it succeeded in attracting. This audience was big, around two hundred strong. It was mostly young, mostly students. And it was very smart. As you will observe if you take a look at my crowd shots, most of the audience, besides being young, was male. But not all of it was. And the young males looked like they are the types to be going places in the future. A good way to get across the quality of this whole event is to quote from the comment that Michael Jennings added to what I put at my blog, in connection with the two talks that Randy Barnett gave:
Indeed. At the obvious risk of insulting others who contributed importantly, I singled out for particular praise for their organisational efforts: the IEA’s Stephen Davies and Christiana Hambro, and the Liberty League’s own Anton Howes, not just for their work on this LLFF but for previous iterations of it, in London and elsewhere in the UK. Time was when there was a sprinkling of libertarians and free marketeers in London, but when similarly inclined people outside London hardly knew of each other’s existence. People like Davies, Hambro and Howes, and others of course, are now changing all that. There is now a big and growing pro-liberty network among Britain’s student population, with pro-liberty student groups getting started in university after university. When I spoke with Davies about all this, his main worry seemed to be in finding places to fit everyone in. The answer seemed to be: smaller events, but more of them, in more places. Sounds good. Sounds very good. I have long had the impression that the organisation which has lead the way in earlier years in building a pro-liberty student network in the UK was the Adam Smith Institute, as I mentioned towards the end of this earlier posting here, about the history of the ASI so far. Now, under Mark Littlewood‘s leadership, the IEA is piling in also. In general, the amount of inter-organisational co-operation that you now see going on (it always has gone on but now especially), between the various UK pro-liberty groups and think tanks, is most admirable. If I have got it a bit wrong concerning who exactly deserves a pat on the back for all this pro-liberty activity, well, that is but a symptom of the fact that, as has been said before, it is amazing what you can accomplish in life if you do not care who gets the credit. April 10th, 2013 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Theodore Dalrymple, the doctor and essayist, is always well worth reading and this item about Mrs Thatcher (oh no not again! ed) is particularly insightful, and fair, if a touch arch in tone. He points out her flaws on domestic policy, such as an obsession with certain targets as well as the strengths. But his essay is not without its own flaws. Here is a key paragraph, which starts well, but ends with a bum note:
It seems nanny-statist to imagine that solicitors should not be allowed to advertise their services to the public. To be blunt, he’s arguing for censorship of a profession in terms of its ability to put forward its services. An absurdity. It is not much of a stretch to imagine that any supposedly important profession/trade should also be banned from the grubby business of making itself known to the public, lest the weak-minded public be led astray into bad habits. This is the sort of paternalistic approach that Mrs T. rightly pushed back against. If it encourages the odd frivolous lawsuit, well, freedom has its costs. Solicitors soliciting for business. Fancy that.
April 10th, 2013 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
Philip Booth, of the Institute of Economic Affairs (peace be upon him), has this excellent article about the mix of reforms enacted in the 1980s, which have come in for some criticism from those who claim it contributed to the late unpleasantness in 2008. He refers, in particular, to the “Big Bang” reform changes to the City of London.
As always, whether looking at the Cold War, or financial crisis of 2008, or other issues, it is crucial to see how certain groups are trying to “shape the narrative”. The reactions to the death of Mrs T. are a textbook example of how these sort of things play out. Someone should make a film about it.
April 10th, 2013 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
From the Daily Mail website:
The article, which chronicles the outbreaks of violence and antics of – mostly – young people following the death of Margaret Thatcher, does not inform us as to whether Mr Styles has been permanently out of work since 1984, a period of 29 years. It may be that he has worked for periods, no doubt adding his magnificent skills, charm and knowledge to the global economy. On the other hand, I suppose it is possible that this individual has spent the last, entire 29-year period living off the benefits provided by fellow taxpayers. I hope he has managed to cope. He sounds as if he certainly will be able to drown his sorrows with plenty of drink. Forgive my sarcastic tone, but while I certainly do sympathise with anyone made redundant – I have been through that experience and I know what it feels like – it seems to be stretching one’s natural compassion to the limit to feel much sympathy for a person who might have been out of work, or at least some form of productive activity, for almost three decades, even while remaining an able-bodied citizen. (The article does not say if he is disabled.) Among the many things that the late Margaret Thatcher strived against was what she thought of as an “entitlement mentality”: the idea that we are, simply by virtue of being alive, entitled to coerce our fellow man into providing us with things or services. The assertion of such “rights” is impossible without stipulating that others have some duty to provide these things. But how much of a right does one have? To one job? To a permanent job? A highly paid one? A moderately paid one? In your home town? Globally? To pose such questions is to cut to the heart of the incoherence and contradictory nature of such bogus “rights”. A right is, by definition, an assertion that one has a personal space that cannot be invaded, which is why property rights are an essential component of the idea, and why socialist “rights” are a hopeless muddle. I suppose all this philosophy might be a bit of a stretch for this ex-coal miner and his fellows, but it might be nice to think that in contemplating some of the sentiments of recent days, one might also reflect on the principles that are highlighted by Margaret Thatcher’s 11 momentous years in power. April 10th, 2013 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
Earthquake near Iranian nuclear power station leaves four people dead… Claims that Israel caused the earthquake in 3…2…1… What? You think I am joking? April 9th, 2013 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
“In 1978, West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt declared: “England is no longer a developed country.” Just as Spain had, in its decline from Empire, ceased to be part of the developed world, and Argentina followed in the mid-twentieth century, many expected that Britain would go the same way.” Of course, in 1979, when I was a mere 13-year-old Suffolk farmer’s son, some blonde lady by the name of Maggie changed Herr Schmidt’s assessment rather drastically. And by the way, since one of the urban myths is how Mrs Thatcher destroyed our manufacturing while Germany encouraged its own, ponder the fact that the value of manufacturing output in this country has scarcely been higher. I just thought I should mention that as part of a daily service. April 9th, 2013 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Since the Cyprus crisis the price of Bitcoins has rapidly increased. Felix Salmon wrote one of the better articles about this. But the article has its problems. He opens by talking about someone who lost all his Bitcoins when his computer was hacked. This is avoidable by storing funds in an off-line wallet, which is just a file containing a private key used to transmit funds. It is not much different from storing gold, except that it takes up less space, backups can be made, a thief would need to both steal your wallet and know your password, and it is possible to pay money in to an off-line wallet. You only need to expose your wallet to the Internet to pay money out of it. All this requires a certain amount of skill and knowledge but so does any method of storing value. Salmon uses the word “anonymous” carelessly. Bitcoin is not anonymous and not intended to be. It is pseudonymous. Every transaction is visible, and it is possible for the government to find out, for example, which bank account was used to buy some Bitcoins. You can probably take steps to make this so expensive that law enforcement could not afford it. But that is a practical point, not a mathematical one, and it would be a mistake to think that anonymity is built in. Salmon complains that Bitcoin needs too much technical expertise to use. But not everyone need use Bitcoins directly for them to serve as a store of value, any more than people need to handle physical gold themselves. That one has the option to do so if one does not trust others is nice, but trusting others for convenience is possible too. If Bitcoin were widely adopted, I would expect to see secondary currencies backed by Bitcoin to be used as cash, and the equivalent of Visa and Paypal to be implemented by someone. Salmon points out that the value of Bitcoin is very volatile and closely tracks media coverage of it. This is because there is a fixed supply (there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoins) and new people are still discovering the currency. After every media report the number of people who want Bitcoins increases. Once everyone knows about it who would want to buy it, the price should settle down as the overall demand for money is not so volatile. Salmon’s main point is that Bitcoin is doomed to fail because as it is adopted its price will increase rapidly, which hyperdeflation will mean no-one spends it. But such a situation can not persist; as soon as the price settles spending will resume. Although I am optimistic, there are plenty of ways it could fail. Something better might come along, or governments may attempt to put a stop to it and may succeed enough to make it fail. Or in twenty years’ time you could find yourself having bought one 21-millionth of the global money supply for a very good price. 😉 April 8th, 2013 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
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