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Samizdata quote of the day – taxing ourselves into poverty For at least two of those three we have no domestic production at all. Rice and bananas simply do not grow on or in our sceptered and silver girt isles. So why does it take some grand and vast international agreement to stop taxing ourselves into poverty on these items?
Now that we have left the European Union such import tariffs are our own decision – as evidenced by this deal itself. But how did we end up with a polity that hasn’t, doesn’t, make us richer by doing the obvious thing that we’ve now the power to do? Make us all richer by abolishing import tariffs?
Answers on a postcard to Ms. Badenoch please.
– Tim Worstall
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I still think BREXIT was a good idea; separating the UK from the soon-to-be corpse of Europe was always something that should have been done as soon as possible, given the outright suicidal nature of the people running the place into the ground.
The issue is that BREXIT was a necessary response to a fundamentally different problem: Your friggin’ unelected bureaucrats and idiot politicians.
Who, precisely, ever put the propositions behind entering the European Union and giving up national sovereignty to Brussels up to a vote of the general public, wherein it was explained in clear terms what was being voted on? I’ve been following UK politics since the 1970s, and I can’t recall that ever having been done. Likewise, when the hell did anyone hold a plebiscite on all the immigration, with all the implications explained to the voting public?
So far as I can tell, this entire charade of “democracy” was carried out in the shadows, decisions being made by mostly unelected bureaucrats, and the actual “will of the people” was never sought out. By anyone.
The same has been true across Europe, which is why I dislike the EU. Immensely. When you have to carry out fraud in order to get your policies put into place, and then don’t actually live up to even the outlines of the promises you made? That’s just asking for trouble; you talk to European citizens, and they all complain about the crap that Brussels produces in the way of law and regulation. Yet, when you ask them why they voted for that, they’re all saying “Oh, we never voted for that…”
The EU is going to evaporate like snow hitting a red-hot stove, when all the internal self-contradictions finally catch up with everyone. I expect that will happen about the time the German economy implodes under energy costs, and the rest of the EU realizes that they got swindled. Without the German economic powerhouse working to keep everything going, I suspect that day is not all that far off.
My guess: rice and bananas aren’t valued because of some riceness or bananity, but because they deliver calories and protein and other stuff, and their purchase means some other more Brit source of those nutrient-goodies will sell less product within the UK. Buy Brit goodies!
@Kirk
Spot on!
I think the 2016 vote was the only actual vote that has ever been held regarding membership anywhere (please correct me if I’m wrong here anybody).
There have been various national votes on various treaties (French, Irish etc) but these were not been technically ignored, just “redone”.
Bit more difficult with a straightforward in/out.
The problem across the whole of the west is a political class(ses) that has long since abandoned any pretence at acknowledging the electorate – even as human beings.
Led by the Wansee economic forum, we are simply livestock: economic or “social” units, raw material for their deluded model of the future.
Wansee? I use that word quite deliberately as I imagine the essential mentality of the isolated monsters is the same: who should live, and who should die; who is allowed to be a member of the “volk”: what the population of a given province should be.
I wonder if, 50 years from now, there will be a drama, let us imagine it is entitled “conspiracy”. A surviving copy of the minutes of one of these meetings has come to light and the shocking, anti-human plans are revealed…….
Is this hyperbole?
Well, the sheer destructiveness of the “nett zero” obsession can only be covered up so far, and it finally looks like the actual impact on real people can no longer be hidden.
The next five years are going to be very interesting.
Entering a political organisation for political purposes while selling it as entering an economic organisation for (even at the time misrepresented) economic purposes was surely a ‘policy’ that would come apart at the seems once (a) the people caught on and (b), heaven forfend, were consulted.
Why Ms Badenoch?
Independence allows good governance – it does not guarantee it.
To achieve real reductions in the size and scope of government (such as getting rid of these import taxes) we need two things – political leaders with understanding, and political leaders with the power to put their understanding into effect.
The 2nd, power to put their understanding into effect, is often just assumed “they won the election, so they are in power” – but this is a very dangerous oversimplification, as someone may be “in office, but not in power”.
Prime Minister Johnson did not want “HS2” (a mad railway scheme), but he was pushed into accepting it – and it carries on wasting money as I type these words.
And Prime Minister Johnson did not want the Covid lockdowns – but they happened.
Prime Minister Liz Truss tried to enact some free market policies (the non free market policy, the energy subsidies, was the only thing she did NOT get into trouble about) – so Prime Minister Truss was removed from office by a squalid conspiracy organised by the Bank of England.
Independence from the European Union is not enough – we need independence from “the Blob”, the Civil Service, the “Quangos” (government funded bodies outside of the Civil Service) and the rest of the establishment.
People, such as the 19th century Sir Charles Trevelyan, who pushed for governance by independent experts “outside of politics” were wrong – horribly wrong.
I suspect that in years to come, the historical facts are going to show that there was an effective coup against actual democracy starting around the time of Wilson (here in the US…) which was conducted by the self-identified “smart people” against the rest of us.
Think of it that way, and a lot of the last century makes more sense. Also, consider that these wannabe tyrants claiming god-like omniscient wisdom about “what to do” in the world have very consistently been very, very wrong.
Not too many remember that it was “all the right people” who looked at Hitler and the Nazis as a brilliant counterweight to the Communists under Stalin. That same sort of benighted idiocy has colored all too much of our international relations ever since: Expediency and fuzzy thinking rule the day, and it’s all brought to you by the “best and brightest” ever…
I do pretty well on all the standardized tests. Really well, by comparison to a lot of my peers. I have absolutely no illusions that that fact means anything when it comes to assessing my intelligence, which is entirely average. I’m just good at taking tests; this is a knack, a skill. It is also utterly meaningless in the face of most real-world problems and situations, something I have come to acknowledge ruefully.
The fact that these “smart people” took over the world? That’s not a good thing; most of them are actually only very good at taking tests and mouthing all the right words. When it comes to real intelligence and acumen? They aren’t it; the truly intelligent are usually humble about that aspect of themselves, and a lot less mouthy about how smart and well-qualified they are. They’ve run head-on into failure in their lives, and have overcome that. That sort of lesson is not imparted anywhere along our current cursus honorum anywhere in the West, and that’s a huge mistake.
Kirk – as you may know Senator Conkling warned against this when the Civil Service was founded.
Aa for Woodrow Wilson – his “New Freedom” is slavery by the instalment plan, and the book he supported “Philip Dru: Administrator” by his “other self” Colonel House shows that Woodrow Wilson was guilty of what you believe him to be guilty of.
As for Hitler and Stalin – they formed an alliance in 1939.
I am not aware of any major politician in Britain of the United States who was pro Hitler – the New Dealers were pro Mussolini and Fascism (those of them who were not Marxists) although the history books do not like to record how the National Industrial Recovery Act and the National Recovery Administration were based on Fascist Italy.
But Hitler and the National Socialists were a bit much – even Franklin Roosevelt (who privately despised Jews – even whilst he smiled at Jews who could be of use to him) drew the line at Hitler.
“Snorri Godhi
April 3, 2023 at 12:45 pm
Why Ms Badenoch?”
Trade Minister…..
Who were all these ‘right people’? Certainly there were many leftists who claimed Neville Chamberlain and his government was supposedly pro-Hitler because they hated Stalinism more. But those leftists were the ancestors of those today that claim Trump is a Nazi Russian spy. The claims do not match the historical evidence.
Is it my imagination, or did all those laudatory articles I read in 1930s magazines about the way Hitler was “fixing” Germany not exist…? Did that not happen?
Jesus H. Christ… Time Magazine had him as “Man of the Year”, did they not? Were not the French non-communists (I hesitate to name them conservatives, because they mostly… Weren’t. At least, what I’d term such a thing…) hesitant to enforce the Versailles Treaty requirements due to their wanting someone in between them and Stalin…?
There were elements within even the UK who were German supporters against Stalin… Like, King Edward? Anyone remember him?
I think your claims here are specious, at best. Hitler was everyone’s boy… Before he wasn’t. Hell, how many US industrialists ordered their German subsidiaries to support him and his party, thinking that if the Communists came in, they’d lose their shirts? I seem to remember something about that sort of scandalous thing being spread across a lot of companies like Coca-Cola, IBM, Ford, and GM. Not to mention a fair number of UK-based multi-nationals that had investments in Germany.
Must be my imagination and faltering memory.
Thank you, Tim!
@Kirk
In the 30s, while Hitler’s anti-semitism was obvious, the actual annihilation was still in the future and while it could be gleaned from a direct reading of mein kampf, it is understandable that many did not think he would actually do it (those who actually read mein kampf that is).
Hitler was evil, but it is easy to see how he could be considered the lesser of two evils. Imagine a communist Germany – which could well have happened – in the 30s and that Germany becoming an ally of Stalin. Would France and Italy have been able to hold out against their own communists? It is not difficult to imagine communism from Valencia to Vladivostok. How would Britain, and most importantly, an isolationist US have dealt with that?
Wanting to avoid war – which as far as anybody was concerned in the 30s meant another 4 years of industrial scale slaughter – was a mistake, but at the time, how different it must have appeared.
I wonder what historians a hundred years from now will make of the current shenanigans. Blogs like this could well be a primary source. I wonder what those future historians will make of us?
If we could review future history and comment on ourselves, would we laugh or cry?
You’re the one who claimed people thought Hitler was a ‘brilliant counterweight’ to Communism. Some people believed that but I think it’s a an overblown claim regarding most of the elites of Britain at the time at least. As for America I can’t say. From everything I’ve read of individuals like Chamberlain, they were perhaps naive on Hitler but they largely saw him as pretty ghastly rather than ‘brilliant’. They also had little time for Stalin or the USSR. Pre-1939 it was hard to necessarily identify if Nazi Germany or the USSR was a more malignant threat. Prior at least to 1938, the USSR had more of a history than Hitler had of being expansionist and internationally predatory.
I have read papers, mostly written by Marxists, claiming business and Treasury interests scotched the possibility of Britain signing a pact with the USSR before WW2. While there was surely a lot of anti-Communist sentiment, the more mundane reality is that pre-1939 a Soviet-British alliance was unlikely because the Soviet leadership thoroughly distrusted the British too at the time, and from a military point of view, Poland, Hungary, Romania, the Baltic States and so on refused to allow Soviet troops on their soil, so a Soviet alliance wasn’t that worthwhile to protect either Czechoslovakia or Poland. There was also the fact that in the late 30s the Soviet regime was quite publicly destroying it’s own military hierarchy with purges. In the end, a Soviet-Britain alliance only became a reality when they had absolutely no other better option in 1941, and despite the fuzzy wartime propaganda, the leaderships of both states continued to distrust and hate one another.
I forgot to point that in the peacetime period (just over two years) of Neville Chamberlain’s premiership, British defence spending increased 250pc in response to Germany rearmament. This may be criticised as insufficient, although considering it was a democratic government in the middle of a depression and unable to rely on loans from the United States (see Johnson Act of 1934), it seems a pretty good achievement. What it doesn’t show is some hope Hitler was some ‘brilliant counterweight’ to the USSR.
@Martin,
Once they’d made the initial mistakes back in the early 1930s, they really had no choice. The time to have crushed Hitler’s aspirations for European dominance would have been back when he was still small enough to have done so. By letting him get away with taking the Rhineland back, doing the Anschluss with Austria, and then handing him Czechoslovakia instead of acting to restrain him, Europe got what it deserved. The leadership class around the world thought Hitler was a great guy, and they all learned otherwise the hard way.
You have to go back to primary sources and read all the encomiums about what Hitler was doing to revive Germany, starting back around the beginning of it all. It’s really bizarre to sit down and thumb through all those magazines and periodicals, observing the way his portrayal shifts. In the early days, it was all “We could learn some lessons from him…” and “What a great man!!”, expounding on all the wonderful things he was doing for Germany. The panic started to set in during the latter days of the 1930s, and it’s also amazing to recognize just how tight the timeline was–Less than a decade from “Great Man” to “World Threat”.
It’s also amazing to sit down and do the numbers, realizing that there was no point along the way where Germany should have been able to do what it did. It was all down to really lousy leadership, and you want to go looking for an answer as to why they let it happen. The only one I can come up with is the counterweight theory I’m pointing out, which seemed to be a lot more prevalent in the materials of that era than it has been in the history books written in hindsight.
Part of the problem here is that I think you’re relying on and trusting the objectivity of people who know better, looking back. What I’m basing my position on is having spent a bunch of time reading through contemporary sources in the media, which while suspect for accuracy in some regards, does give you a more clear idea about the actual zeitgeist of the times.
Neville C described Adolf H as a guttersnipe after dealings with him.
The problem is that rump Austria was full of pan-German nationalists and actual Nazis; and Czecho-Slovakia was represented in every sense by the disastrous Dr Benes, a little man with a big ego (a Who’s Who entry that would exceed W S Churchill’s) – a supposed foreign policy expert who couldn’t read a map, running CZ, of which he was one of the two principal architects as more like a Czech nation state when it was a miniature version of the Hapsburg Empire. Neither were plausible causes for doing what was necessary to stop the Austro-Bavarian corporal.
I repeat – I can not think of any major politician in the United Kingdom or the United States who was pro Hitler and the National Socialists, there were minor figures who were (most certainly) but no major ones.
As for the Soviet Union in the 1930s – the Marxists there were responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of human beings, an alliance with them would have been as despicable as President Richard Nixon going crawling to Mao, the largest scale mass murderer in human history, in the early 1970s – the start of half a century of insane Western policy towards the People’s Republic of China (the “Ted” Heath creature did the same thing).
As for the “success” of National Socialist economic and social policies – as celebrated, for example, by J.M. Keynes in the introduction of the German edition of his “General Theory…” it is true that they got rid of Mass Unemployment by getting rid of union power (but that could have been done in Britain by repealing the Acts of 1906 and 1875 – there was no need for government wage controls, or other use of government force), but the rest of the National Socialist “success” was based on FALSE SATISTICS – pushed by E.H. Carr (later a leading contributor to United Nations “human rights” documents – along with Jacques Maritain, the intellectual adviser to the future Pope Paul VI – Maritain was a sadly confused thinker).
E.H. Carr wrote long, impressive seeming, books – but he was a bizarrely trusting person. He just believed both Nazi economic and social statistics and Soviet economic and social statistics.
It never seemed to occur to E.H. Carr that that these leather bound books could be a collection of lies – which is what they were, a collection of lies.
By the way – both J.M. Keynes and E.H. Carr were considered “Liberals” – which shows just how this word had utterly mutated by the 1930s, coming to mean just about the opposite of the pro liberty, roll back the state, position it had once described.
By the way – the last Chancellor to reduce government spending and taxation as a proportion of the economy was Nigel Lawson, whose death we are mourning today.
Nigel Lawson is the only Chancellor of modern times to roll back the state.