Socialists complain about jurisdictional competition as a “race to the bottom,” as more successful societies put pressure on the less-successful ones to lower taxes, relax irrational regulation, and terminate failed state boondoggles. This is seeing things from the perspective of the state. Viewed from the perspective of the individual, jurisdictional competition is a race to the top: a competition between jurisdictions to provide the better environment for starting or expanding a business, pursuing a meaningful personal goal, or merely living free from the ability of other people to force their views of how you should conduct your life. America benefited greatly from general jurisdictional competition in previous eras, and has suffered from the lack of it more recently. Gaining an attractive partner and a friendly competitor for the talent of citizens and other productive newcomers would significantly expand national and personal options in coming decades.
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It is rare at the moment to see an advocate for Remain come out openly and state that the lack of democracy is precisely what is good about the European Union. Most Remainers I encounter will bluster that there is nothing undemocratic about it, that MEPs have lots of powers, or that powers wielded by bureaucrats are okay because they are holding delegated powers, and stop moaning, shut up, etc. But Sam Bowman, of the Adam Smith Institute (broadly pro-leave as far as I know although there isn’t an official stance) has this to say from a FB posting he made the other day and which, he stresses, isn’t the official ASI view:
Of course, there are perhaps several reasons why you won’t read such a bracing critique of democracy from most Remainers. For a start, it would produce condemnation from all sides, including those on the Remain side who would be embarrassed that one of their side had spilled the beans, as it were. It is also brave to state a key issue of political theory, which is that, if you love liberty, then democracy can be as much a bug as a feature. The greatness of the United States, at least in terms of how it was conceived by the Founding Fathers, is that it is a constitutional republic, first and foremost, not a democracy. Democracy is the least-worst way we have of getting rid of governments; it is not a sure guardian of liberty, and there are examples of how democratically elected governments have trampled on property rights and other rights. Even if the UK does quit the EU – I personally suspect the Remain side will win this week – there is a real need to address how some of the checks and balances of the UK political order have been weakened dangerously by a succession of Conservative and Labour governments. The Common Law has been badly weakened and often this cannot be blamed on the evils of Brussels. We did this to ourselves. There aren’t a lot of Edward Cokes, Thomas Jeffersons, John Lockes or James Madisons on the Leave side, but we are going to need to do some clear thinking on the kind of country we want. I personally think that Sam is wrong about the beneficial constraints, as he sees it, of the EU. It may be that some oppressive and foolish measures have been struck down by the EU, but there are also cases – such as a recent horrific example of the EU Arrest Warrant – where the illiberality of the EU is all too clear. Some dumbass British laws may have been struck down, but this is outweighed by outrages that haven’t been. The Leveson restrictions on the free UK press do not, as far as I know, face a challenge from Europe; the EU arguably is in favour of such a move. Quite a lot of the restrictions on freedom of speech in order to outlaw “hate crimes” haven’t been restricted by our being in the EU and the EU is pushing for moves in this area, in fact. Not many checks or balances there, I am afraid. I cannot think of any major “nanny state” restrictions pushed for at a UK level that have been beaten back by Brussels (I invite readers to give any cases if they exist). The regulatory upswing in the UK after the financial crisis has been made worse, not restricted, by the EU. The EU is pushing for additional layers of regulation on the City, and hasn’t as far as I know pushed in the reverse direction. In areas such as health and safety, the record of any constraint is non-existent. Some subsidies and so on have been restricted by the Single Market, but that seems to be the main area where the EU might have been a net plus from a classical liberal point of view in keeping national lawmakers in check. Sam’s other points are well made, but too much of it seems like he is against Leave because of that “tone” issue I mentioned the other day here. I am afraid I have long gone beyond the point where this matters to me one iota. Addendum: Here is a nice item on James C Bennett, whom is known by some of us here, about the EU and the case for Brexit. Here is a link to his book, Time For Audacity. June 22nd, 2016 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Over the last two days two scions of notable political families have attracted controversy related to the referendum. In a leaked telephone call, Will Straw, Remain campaign director and son of Jack Straw, said the following:
I see little to condemn there. He is a political campaign manager: deciding how to adapt his campaign message to best take advantage of recent events is what he is paid for. I do resent how the Remain side has smeared the Leavers as somehow responsible for the doings of a deranged neo-Nazi, but what was Straw meant to do, ignore it? Does anyone think his counterpart on the Leave side was not similarly briefing his team on how to minimize the fallout? Stephen Kinnock MP, son of Neil Kinnock, has also been the subject of angry comment. At the ceremony – basically a secular memorial service – held in Parliament to honour Jo Cox he was one of very few MPs to depart from the consciously bipartisan tone. While wearing (unless my eyes deceive me) an “In” campaign badge, he said,
That catch in his voice was not faked. Jo Cox was his personal friend. It seems probable that she was murdered for political reasons. (The likelihood that the killer had mental problems makes that no less true.) It must have seemed urgent to speak for her when she could no longer speak for herself. He still should have stood firm against the temptation to make a political point at that time and place. To do so struck in its own way at the very thing he said he wanted to preserve: the sense across all parties that, as Jo Cox herself said, “We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.” Mr Kinnock’s speech did not play well among the Independent‘s commenters. June 21st, 2016 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
There’s been an awful lot of this Brexit thing recently so – in the way of light relief – I’m going to talk about the First World War. I think just about everyone has heard of Passchendaele which was fought in 1917. The better informed will know that its official title was the Third Battle of Ypres. Which makes this headline (from 12 June 1916) somewhat premature:  The Times 12 June 1916 p5 What they are referring to is what we now know – or more accurately: don’t know – as the Battle of Mount Sorrel. There are eerie parallels with the Somme. The attacker unleashed a huge artillery bombardment:
He exploded mines. He came on in waves. He was mown down in his thousands:
Only one difference: the attacker was German. And how did the defender (mainly Canadian) respond to this? By organising immediate counter-attacks just as the Germans would on the Somme. At first they didn’t work. However, when they decided to sit down and do some planning – Arthur Currie take a bow – they succeeded. Did I say one difference? Actually there were two. The Germans achieved surprise, to the extent that at the very moment they attacked there were two Canadian generals in the front line, there because “Oh it’s a quiet sector and we’re not expecting anything to happen.” One was killed, the other captured. There’s also this:
Alas no. The war was too big for that. June 21st, 2016 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
Of all the dire threats, this from the French Economy Minister (there is one? an economy I mean) is the most chilling, since it reminds me of how far we have fallen.
So the rate of income tax would be a standard 20% and there would be no VAT and no Capital Gains or Inheritance Tax? That’s some good deal for being insignificant. Of course, this 20% tax rate is an anomaly in Guernsey, it was introduced as 4 shillings in the pound (20 shillings per pound/livre) in WW2. Let’s look at some of the measures the Nazis introduced in the occupied Channel Islands.
Well we have a long way to fall before that state of affairs, and cycling in double file is by no means discouraged bar some circumstances by the Highway Code, presumably in the hope of causing more accidents. So let freedom reign, even though the sky (and tax rates) may fall. And today, I couldn’t help noticing the timing of these sequential adverts on a hoarding in Newcastle. and next this: June 20th, 2016 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
We’re nearing the date of the EU referendum we’re having in this part of the world, and a great many people are fed up of being lectured to, or frightened, or lied to. Understandably, people are beginning to have a moan about this atmosphere of negativity – but this just adds to the gloom. To change the mood you have to go out of your way to do something positive – set appropriately in context but nevertheless positive. It takes effort to think of what positive would look like when the subject is so dangerous and horrid. Ayumi, one of my colleagues at Libertarian Home (which is now very much a joint effort) had an idea about how to do it. We backed her to the hilt. So here, thanks to Ayumi and to Devika and Richard and little James and teeny tiny Abigail (and dozens of people whose names I quickly lost track of) is a little bit of positivity. Making this was seriously hard work, but it was really very satisfying. June 20th, 2016 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
When the government (i.e. Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne – they are the government) supported the Labour Party continuing to get automatic payments from trade union members (i.e. no need to “opt in”) and supported eleven more years of the BBC tax – I knew the “fix was in”. Now we hear that Baroness W. has “left Leave” – the lady was never a supporter of the Independence of this country. Actually Baroness W. is a typical member of the “chattering classes” – endlessly going on about “discrimination against Muslims” and “the politics of hate” (look in the mirror dear lady – you will see someone who practices the “politics of hate” all the time). The idea that this lady was ever really in favour of getting out of the E.U. is absurd. As for the chattering classes in general – they are wrong about just about everything (I say “just about” as even a stopped clock is correct twice a day). Their ignorance is only matched by their arrogance. – Paul Marks June 20th, 2016 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
The tone of an argument should not matter, I like to think, as much as the quality of the argument itself. I have been reading Charles Moore’s multi-book biography of Margaret Thatcher (he is working on volume three) and I am reminded of just how much a segment of the “chattering class” loathed her as much for what she sounded and looked like as what she said. To some extent, we try to rise above all this and point out the irrationality of disliking a view about X because of who is saying it, and so forth. Maggie was not the kind of person to pour a lot of oil on troubled waters (she was, however, more willing to temporize and compromise in certain cases than the standard narrative suggests). The accent, the emphasis, the Methodist-inspired approach, that “tone”, set a certain kind of person off the deep end. (To some extent, having wankers such as playwright Harold Pinter as your enemy is something to be quite proud of.) But even those who broadly agreed with a lot of what Maggie did and said might have to admit that it did put some quite otherwise rational people off. And this leads me, to, yes, the Brexit vote this week. I cannot help but think that the very fact of Remainers often being the likes of the IMF, or Very Grand Economists, etc, is like the sensation for many of chalk scratching down a blackboard (I am giving my age away). When a EU Commissioner like Juncker attacks Brexiters, you can imagine how well, or badly, this goes down. And on the some of the interactions I have had on Facebook, much the same effect applies. I have been told, for instance, that the UK electorate has no excuse for whining about the undemocratic nature of the EU because British voters, by and large, don’t vote for MEPs and that the EU Parliament is chosen via proportional representation and therefore a fine and worthy body, and stop whining. The fact that MEPs cannot initiate, or repeal, legislation of any serious nature is ignored (MEPs do have blocking powers). And there have been a few outpourings of rage from a few of my acquaintances that a referendum is happening at all. What such folk don’t seem to realise is that such attitudes only make those of a EUsceptic strain even more annoyed, and more likely to vote Leave out of a “that’ll show you arrogant bastards” tone. In much the same that however logical a position of Mrs Thatcher in her heyday might have been, people, given the cussedness of human nature, disagreed. The tone does matter, in other words. And although some of the vibe coming out of the Leave side is unsavory and foolish, the Remain side’s collective impersonation of 18th Century French aristocrats (just before the Bastille fell) is, in my view, even worse. It should not always matter, but it does.
June 20th, 2016 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
One of the arguments of those wishing the UK to stay in the European Union is that if the UK decides to leave, it will still need to accept most, if not all, EU laws if the UK wants to continue to trade and interact with this bloc. (This is the position, for example, of Norway and Switzerland, or so the Remainers say.) It is all about keeping British “influence”. The Remainers often don’t appear to realise where the logic of their argument leads. Surely it leads to the case for World government. Let’s look Westward for a moment. Consider the recent example of how the US uses a “worldwide system” of tax. Any American living abroad has to file an annual return to the Internal Revenue Service. The US recently enacted a thumpingly controversial and intrusive piece of legislation called the Foreign Account Taxation Compliance Act, or FATCA. This means any foreign financial institution must take all necessary steps to establish whether a client is American or not or, if it interacts with the US. If no such steps are taken, the FFI must pay a 30 per cent withholding tax. It means that the IRS and other branches of US government have been able to enforce a massive piece of extra-territorial legislation on the rest of the world. Many Americans can’t get access to accounts when they live abroad. The situation is a shambles. Do I hear Remain-type people arguing that we should join the US in political union to try and sort this out and “influence” the US? Of course not. In another case, that of the football organisation FIFA, it was the use of dollar-based transactions by the alleged crooks at FIFA that led to the US Department of Justice, rather than the Swiss or others, sending in the investigators to Zurich. I haven’t heard of Swiss people arguing that Switzerland should become part of the US so that the Swiss can gain “influence” in Washington over such powers. In other words, countries that have the economic muscle to create a situation where dealing with it entails certain extensions of judicial power can have influence way beyond their borders and aren’t likely to want to have that power diluted by sharing it with others. The US is, despite the best efforts of its political class, the world’s largest economy, and likely to remain so for a while. Ironically, the US hasn’t actually signed up to many of the very cross-border tax compliance moves that it insists upon when applied in other lands. Rank hypocrisy, you might say. But what this also reveals is that when you hear a lot of fine words about “gaining influence”, what it really boils down to is brute economic wealth and power. China, for example, owns a lot of US Treasury debt, as do a number of other Asian jurisdictions, and I suspect that explains why the US hasn’t launched many noisy campaigns about evil expat “tax evaders” in that region. This isn’t edifying, but that’s reality. The “influence” that the UK may have in the corridors of Brussels comes, if it exists at all, from the relative prosperity and hence economic power of the UK, rather than on anything else. In fact, to gain the “influence” that involves going along with the Brussels machine as the Remainers see it requires the UK to operate under the Qualified Majority Voting system of the EU. So, on key issues, such as a proposed EU transaction tax on banks, the UK is likely to be outvoted, suffering damage to a key industry (the City). The UK is most likely to object to EU directives where the UK sees a key interest at risk, and by definition, most likely to be in a minority when a QMV process occurs. The “influence” is diluted, often in ways that hurt real UK interests. QMV may seem to benefit the larger countries, but in certain respects it means that the UK can lose key votes on issues that really matter, such as to financial services. Competition between jurisdictions, with freedom, crucially, of citizens to be able to migrate and with open capital flows, represents arguably the best check on power that we have. A looser Europe, enjoying free trade and free capital flows, but without such centralised political power, is arguably the best outcome from a liberal (in the right sense) use of the word. World government is a deluded dream, but I fear the Remain camp is not willing to face up to where the logic of its argument is leading. June 20th, 2016 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
I do not know what “balance the economy” means and I doubt Mr Corbyn does either. But at least he is not a weasel like Cameron. In a TV appearance allegedly aimed at persuading us to vote to stay in the European Union Corbyn resignedly says that the main claim of the other side regarding the most hotly contested issue, immigration, is correct. Then he says that the EU’s treatment of one of its member states is “appalling” and deliberately aimed at lowering living standards. Why he wants to stay in a union that wants to impoverish people is a mystery… or it would be, if he did. My sunken hopes rise a little, given added lift by the fact that the dear old Guardian had this story on the front page for about a minute and a half before someone realised. It now can only be found if you already know it is there. For its part the BBC has clipped the key words off the beginning of the relevant clip from its own programme. Mr Corbyn answered a straightforward question in a straightforward fashion. That media organizations in favour of Remain seek to hide this rather than boast of it speaks volumes. June 20th, 2016 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Why do you want to leave the EU? Because I think it’s vital that you are able to vote out a government. The EU has a façade of democracy but do you ever remember it making a difference who you voted for in EU elections? Are you hostile to foreigners? You can be friends with someone without wanting to live in the same house as them. Actually many people in Europe are hoping for Brexit so that their countries can be encouraged to become independent as well. The EU has prevented war. No, that was NATO. The EU’s arrogance has increased tensions. A few years back the scars of WWII were almost healed. Now look at the hostility between Greece and Germany. Farage / Boris / Gove will do awful things. Farage isn’t even an MP. The Tories will still be in government if we vote Leave. The difference is that they can be voted out at the next election, unlike the EU. Economic experts say “Remain”. Many of the same ones said that we would be left isolated if we didn’t join the Euro. The EU’s own experts said the Euro was a great idea. Now look at Greece with 50% youth unemployment. The best economic experts in the European Union were spectacularly wrong. Stay in the EU, and we will be bailing out their next mistake. We can reform the EU from within. There is a saying, “The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same things and expect a different result.” How well did we do at reform for the last 40 years? How well did Cameron do when he negotiated with Angela Merkel even with the threat of Brexit? Once we vote Remain we will have demonstrated that when it comes down to it, we will back down. The Leave campaign has no plan for what to do next. Since a vote for Leave will make it start mattering again who wins the next UK election, we can’t say exactly what the plan is because that depends on what the British people vote for. In contrast we can say what the plan is if we remain: “Ever closer union”. * I have not mentioned immigration because this is a post about quick arguments and I cannot think how to edit my own rather complicated views down. I suppose I could remind people that opposing the EU does not have to be about immigrants. What are your quick arguments for wanting to leave the EU? Or for staying? June 19th, 2016 | 61 comments - (Comments are closed)
Amid the blanket news coverage of the EU referendum and the murder of Jo Cox, it went almost unnoticed that a major report from the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) and the Faculty of Public Health (FPH) called for drug decriminalization in the UK. The Times, still seen as the Voice of the Establishment, came out in support:
Not that long ago Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary-general, said it was time to legalize drugs. I hope this trend continues. June 18th, 2016 | 78 comments - (Comments are closed)
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