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This might be a bit of a cheap shot, you might say, but the benefit of cheap shots is that they often hit the target and are not expensive to fire. This guy appointed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, an organisation that, remember, did such a splendid job in preventing the 2008 crash, Bernard Madoff, and so on, has the perfect name for the job. Have a good weekend everyone. February 8th, 2013 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
 February 8th, 2013 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
And speaking of short videos, here (with thanks to Instapundit) is Rand Paul, complaining about the new toilets the government made him buy. February 7th, 2013 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
A few months ago I gave a talk to Libertarian Home, of the sort that happen regularly at the Rose and Crown in Southwark. (They have a speakerless social at the same venue which I intend to be at, tomorrow.) My talk was … well, to put it kindly, it was somewhat less than the sum of its parts. It had its moments, but it didn’t add up. Worse, the more I struggled to pull it together, the longer it went on and the more incoherent it got. But something good may yet have emerged from this muddle, because Libertarian Home’s Simon Gibbs and I recently agreed that it might make sense to rescue (i.e. for Simon Gibbs to rescue) one of the somewhat better bits of this talk and make it into a video short. Simon has now done this, with added graphics. The subject is something I have already blogged about here, namely the tendency of statist measures to start out quite good, only later going wrong and then ever more wrong, and on the other hand the tendency of a truly free market, when a particular bit of it starts, to be a mess, and only somewhat later to start getting seriously good and in the long run superb. Two intersecting graphs, in other words, one going up and then down and down, and the other going down and then up and up. My first label for this phenomenon involved hockey sticks, but when it comes to graphs the hockey stick is well and truly taken, and now I’m calling my graphs “alpha” graphs, because that’s how they look when put together. Alas, even this bit of my talk could have been a whole lot more eloquent. For starters, I should have waved my arms around in a way that fitted how the graphs would look to the audience. As it was, I got them the wrong way around, sideways I mean, and hence somewhat clashing with what Simon does with them in his superimposed graphics. Nevertheless, the basic idea survives, I think, and is usefully provocative of further thought, as Simon demonstrates with his own further thoughts. My own main further thought about the Alpha Graphs (here’s hoping those capitals catch on) is that the Adam Smith Institute should be mentioned in connection with them. One of the ASI’s basic tactical insights from way back is that there are indeed often many advantages to be gained and gamed by politically well-connected individuals or organisations or companies, from statist policies rather than free market policies, but that with a bit of cunning these tendencies can be countered, for instance by making the arrival of a competitive market very much to the advantage of a few big early participants, or with right-to-buy, right-to-sell arrangements with regard to such things as public housing that goes back into the market. It’s a matter of how you sell the new market, and to whom. Instead of just using Public Choice Theory (the Alpha Graphs being a tiny part of all that) to excuse libertarian policy failure; use it to point you in better (because more politically effective) policy directions. That isn’t the complete answer to the problems described by the Alpha Graphs, but it is certainly a part of it. The other thing I want to repeat in this posting is that I think that short videos are an excellent way to go, when it comes to spreading libertarian ideas, provided only that you know how to produce them adequately. (The technique has recently been used with great effectiveness by the Adam Smith Institute’s own Madsen Pirie to explicate basic economics.) I hope Simon Gibbs produces many more such video quickies in the next few years, and helps and encourages others to do the same, both in the form of excerpts from other bigger performances (by no means only from performances that he himself has recorded), and in the form of original creations of his own. Such a program could be a great developer of future libertarian star performers, as well as a chance for older libertarians like me to add their pennyworths. February 6th, 2013 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
“In the past few decades there has been a movement sometimes described as the “postmodern movement.” There’s no single word that’s really adequate to describe it, but that’s one that the people [involved] typically accept. In many respects, they see themselves as challenging the Enlightenment vision that there is an independently existing reality, that we can have a language that refers in some clear and intelligible way to elements of that reality, and that we can obtain objective truth about that reality. They advance the view that what we think of as reality is largely a social construct, or that it’s a device designed to oppress the marginalized peoples of the world–the colonial peoples, women, racial minorities. They see the attempt to attain rationality and truth and knowledge as some kind of power play, and what they want instead is what they take to be more liberating–a rejection of the rationalist view.” A philosopher who believes in reality, that humans have volition and can reason about things. Obviously some sort of dangerous maniac who is a menace to society. February 6th, 2013 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
The claim that muslim thugs have been harassing people walking through ‘muslim areas’ of Britain has received much coverage in the UK media. I am always leery of taking such stories at face value… how prevalent is this? I do not live in an area with much in the way of a muslim population but I do regularly visit parts of London that do… and I have never seen anything like what is shown in the linked article/video happening. That is not to say I do not think this sort of thing is at all implausible… not at all and heaven knows I am never slow to think poorly of a religion that explicitly espouses a totalitarian political order in its holy writings. But I wonder just how much of a problem it is? I am not in a position to judge for myself, but that it happens at all is intolerable. Nevertheless, I wonder if the appearance of ‘Muslim Brownshirts’ in Britain is the sort of problem that is particularly amenable to government suppression. In truth, it seems to me it would be best dealt with at a more local and social level… no, I do not mean via some officially sanctioned ‘community outreach’ but rather by people taking a more ‘civil society oriented’ approach, which is to say confronting the fuckers on the streets, getting in their faces and if needed, replying to any violence by kicking them in the bollocks repeatedly. Ideally, this sort of thing should be done by non-lunatic members of Britain’s muslim community, but that should by no means be seen as a prerequisite for pushing back. Indeed as they seem to enjoy picking on perceived homosexuals, perhaps some members of the typically vocal gay community might like to forcibly stick their oar in the water on this… but who pushes back matters less than someone should. I suspect a more ‘grass roots’ approach would be vastly more effective than anything our worthless political class is likely to come up with.
February 5th, 2013 | 50 comments - (Comments are closed)
UNESCO has published some statistics (in a fact sheet) about how badly Nigeria is doing educationally. But, says James Stanfield:
But why is this unfortunate? First, the state of the world is better than someone says it is, which is good to know. Second, a bunch of people with the desire to govern, in practice to derange, the entire world is ignorant of what is really going on in it. To me, that also sounds rather good. Accurate statistics are the lifeblood of government. Stanfield’s answer to why it is unfortunate that UNESCO is wrong about Nigerian education goes like this:
If proving UNESCO wrong about education in Nigeria would really lead to UNESCO’s demise, then Stanfield might be right to call UNESCO’s mistaken statistics unfortunate and to set about convincing UNESCO and the world of UNESCO’s wrongness. But they will surely have no such effect. “If only” says Stanfield’s title, UNESCO would admit its errors. But UNESCO being wrong about it hasn’t stopped education improving in Nigeria. UNESCO will go on being wrong about education in Nigeria. Education in Nigeria will continue to improve. I do not object to the substance of Stanfield’s blog posting, merely its rather unfortunate wording about how unfortunate the UNESCO “fact” sheet really is. The ideal arrangement is for people like James Stanfield to carrying right on telling everyone how well education is now doing in places like Nigeria. This tells rich donors that they can keep their money instead of giving it to UNESCO, and it tells people in rich countries to stop fretting about education in poorer countries, and instead to tackle their own educational problems, by dismantling their own state education systems. February 2nd, 2013 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Google have caved in and decided to appease the French groups shaking them down over having the audacity to spider their news.
But refusing the index the stories in question is exactly what Google should have done. The notion that this appeasement will satisfy these rent seekers is risible. They have seen Google fold under pressure and they will be back for more. February 1st, 2013 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
A court in Iceland has ruled that a 15-year-old girl can officially use her name. It seems that in Iceland there is a Naming Committee, and they can reject names that are not grammatically correct, or are “too masculine”. There is a lot wrong with this. But I am most confused about one thing.
Why does anyone care about the opinions of officials? None of my friends has ever asked to see my identity papers. January 31st, 2013 | 58 comments - (Comments are closed)
Many developed nations are currently in the midst of the worst recession they have experienced in decades. I would like to call for an economic stimulus to aid in their recovery. I am referring not to the useless Keynesian orgy of wealth destruction that is often meant by this word, but an obvious strategy for improving economic growth that (mysteriously) most politicians rarely consider. My proposed means of stimulus is the mass firing of government employees. Every government employee fired aids the economy in three distinct ways. First, there is the direct cost of the salary, benefits and retirement of those employees, which must be sucked out of the rest of the economy through coercive taxation, weakening it. Each dollar we leave in the hands of ordinary people is a dollar they can then proceed to spend on things they really want, which is always better for the economy than a coerced expenditure. (To be technical, the Pareto optimality of free exchanges and non-optimality of coerced ones lead us to the conclusion that a dollar spent freely is always of more value than a dollar extracted by force.) Second, there is the cost to the economy of the negative work most government employees do. Although a small fraction of government employees are engaged in jobs that would exist even in a free society, such as designing bridges and the like, most employees in a modern government spend their time interfering in the productivity of others, reducing their output. Every time we dismiss someone whose job is to produce new rules governing the licensing of hair stylists or who spends their time investigating the conduct of pedicab drivers, we increase the productivity of those who will no longer be harmed by the efforts of those government employees. (Indeed, some individual government employees doubtless reduce the productivity of hundreds or thousands of private workers.) Third, there is the cost to the economy of having someone essentially idle. Most government employees do nothing of actual use, and there is an opportunity cost to that. Such people could instead be doing something of value with their labor — from making chairs to writing computer software to running private enterprises. Every additional chair that gets produced (provided there is market demand for it) increases the wealth of the world. Instead of being a net drain on society, each government employee, once dismissed from their job and allowed to find useful work instead, could be a net gain to society. (Even those government employees engaged in work that might exist even in a free society, such as delivering packages or teaching children, could do so more efficiently if employed in organizations that were disciplined by market mechanisms.) I would go so far as to say that this triple effect of every government employee dismissal implies a multiplier effect. (The uninformed might naively consider only the direct cost savings and not the other added benefits.) I will also argue that the more we fire, the greater the stimulus, without any obvious limit short of running out of people to dismiss. There isn’t even any need to wait for a recession to enjoy the salutary effects of such a stimulus — a nation experiencing high growth can still increase it by this mechanism. Unlike other forms of stimulus, it is also possible for even the most impoverished of nations to undertake such a program without the least fiscal risk. I therefore implore elected officials to adopt such programs as soon as practical. Every day of delay costs. January 30th, 2013 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
The state of nature is not the halcyon, bucolic life of myth. Existentially, the state of nature is a place of predators and prey. To escape that uncertainty, predators or prey can join together in mutual association, forming societies. Associations of individuals seeking escape from the state of nature can take one of two existential forms: Collectivist or Individualist. In a collective existential state, society is one living organism: society and its members are one, and individuals exist only as inextricable parts of collective society. Society itself is alive – so by extension, the rights to liberty and property are also vested in society. Collective societies may grant privilege to members, but they may not recognize individual rights. All rights fall to the living collective society.¹ A collective society must have self-preservation as its primary function, and disentanglement of a collective is the death of something that had life.² In a collective existential state individuals are integral to the community: societal authority must control who joins or leaves the society. Collective societies without strong borders and powerful immune systems lack protection from external and internal threats. Let either its borders or its internal ‘immune system’ fail, and a collective society will bleed out its energy or be overwhelmed by parasites. Allowing departure enables internal threats to reposition themselves as external threats. Allowing departure allows the most productive and capable producers to escape with their skills to where they may benefit the enemies of the collective. This is why, as collectivist societies approach ideological purity, they invariably embrace genocide. January 30th, 2013 | 71 comments - (Comments are closed)
In the UK, most of the price you pay to fuel your car is not paid to the Evil Oil Companies (boo hiss), it is in fact paid to… go on… take a guess… … The State. Nice, eh? So it takes a bit of front for some vile toad from the government to moan about oil companies screwing the customer by not reducing prices fast enough when the global prices fall. So how fast does the government reduce their tax burden when the economy is tanking? Oh yes, I forget, they generally increase taxes when that happens. January 29th, 2013 | 32 comments - (Comments are closed)
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