We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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John McGuinness chides NRO’s blog The Corner for their disinclination to link to articles they reference.
I’m enjoying National Review’s new Blog — The Corner, but one complaint is that they don’t seem to be as diligent in linking to articles they’re referring to as most bloggers are. So it’s not always easy to tell if they’re representing opposing viewpoints fairly.
John makes a very good point. I also groused about that and why it is actually counter-productive in an earlier article. I suspect the NRO team are so steeped in old-media-think that it just does not seem ‘right’ to link to people they incorrectly view as competitors. Well the fact is that links are what makes the blogosphere and the very internet itself go around and they are a resource in themselves… and like unilateral free trade, which works even if the idiots in other nations are protectionists… I will continue to link to Corner if I quote them (and they are also in the blog side bar) because it is in my interests to do so for both the reasons I mentioned in my earlier article on the subject “Jonah Goldberg comments on the joys of group sex“, and also for the valid reason John McGuinness gives: it actually boosts credibility to be able to check the facts yourself.
So guys, what are you afraid of?
Andrew Sullivan is pleased that Irish singer Bono is not slagging off drug companies. Well a word of advice, Andrew… don’t get your hopes up that Bono’s seeming conversion to the forces of reason is more than a fragile veneer. He does have this disheartening knack for seeming to make sense, only to dash your raised expectations on the rocks of reality a little further down the road, as I observed back on January 14th 2002 in the article Teeth grinding illogic and grotesque conflation…or perhaps genius?. He is either a perverse genius or a jackass. You choose.
This humourous phase was once used to describe fox hunting but could just as well be applied to the US Congressional investigation into the fun and frolics pertaining to Enron. For a rather more forthright view of this investigation, let me refer you to the blog known poetically as Gut Rumbles:
The central point seems to be that a bunch of overblown, publicity-seeking assholes who lie, cheat and waste other people’s money for personal gain have a lot of nerve to appear on television and barbeque a bunch of overblown, secrecy-seeking assholes who lied, cheated and wasted other people’s money for personal gain.
Not quite how I would have phrased it but I can’t say I disagree.
Suman Palit on the Kolkata Libertarian has some interesting links and commentary about hawala, a system of trust based independent networks for transferring money across borders completely outside ‘official’ financial systems. I have touched on the subject of hawala in previous articles and Suman points out the absurdity of US (and other) efforts to try and stamp it out
Criminalising such a large-scale human endeavour that is rooted so deeply in history is laughable and idiotic. Like the failed drug war which penalizes consensual behavior and therefore can never be effectively enforced, stigmatizing hawala simply drives it deeper underground.
The fact is that there are millions of people who simply do not see why the state, any state, should have oversight over their business. The usual demands that people must simply ‘trust the authorities’ is seen as fundamentally irrational in many communities. Too many people have both direct experience and deep societal folk memories that such contentions are simply foolish, leading to a whole culture of economic activity occurring under the radar. The very essence of hawala is that of an audit trail-less trust within a closed and multiply redundant distributed network.
Not only do I predict the US will fail utterly to regulate hawala, I expect that their actions will once again prove the law of unintended consequences is alive and well and living in a town near you. The very actions of the financial regulators will reinforce support for it by proving why hawala is still as needed as it ever was: to enable genuine free trade when princes and policemen try to restrict it, and to avoid confiscation of the proceeds of that legitimate trade by the same people.
Whilst I often agree with Glenn Reynolds over on Instapundit, there is one pet theory of his that he has mentioned several times before that I find baffling:
I still say that what’s going on right now is that the Israelis are dismembering the Palestinian Authority and all the various terror groups there so that there won’t be any significant resistance when the Jordanians move in and take over.
To which I say, and have said before, what on earth is in it for the Jordanians? Why would the Hashemites want to risk another Black September uprising against their Bedouin dynasty five to ten years down the road by adding 2 million pissed off, radicalised, impoverished Palestinians to an already complex Jordanian 5 million strong ethnic Palestinian/Bedouin mixture? Quite apart from the horrendous political and security nightmare the occupied territories would present to Jordan if they were handed back to them, they are an economic booby prize. The Jordanians have a GDP of about $3,500 per capita, hardly rich…compared to the West Bank Palestinians GDP per capita of about $1,500, which is truly dire.
So whilst it might well take the pressure off Israel, so what? I must ask Glenn to say what on earth is in this for Jordan? They would have to be bonkers to want the West Bank back!
[Update: Glenn responds on Instapundit. However I do not doubt that Jordan and Israel will continue to cooperate in security matters, just that Jordan will accept the poison pill of reacquiring the West Bank. The article to which Glenn links seems to strengthen my case regarding the lack of enthusiasm on the part of the Jordanian monarchy for having the West Bank Palestinians within Jordanian borders]
Ah, those famous lines from the Stealer’s Wheel. Brendan Nyhan over on American Prospect drew my attention to the fact that Ted Kennedy was not the only one making a total ass of himself over the meaning of a game of American football.
Now there was a time when Rush Limbaugh was actually witty and insightful, hell I went to see his show live once in New York some years back. Yet after listening to his radio remarks (available via the Brendan Nyhan article linked above) I am forced to the conclusion that Rush has finally completed his journey from right wing punditry’s doyen to its doofus. I guess the bailiffs must have come calling and repossessed that ‘talent on loan from God’.
Limbaugh contends that because the Patriots Football Team market themselves to ‘the soccer mom’s season ticket base’ as a team rather than by emphasising the individual players, then the Patriots are in fact ‘socialist’. Never mind that it is just a capitalist marketing ploy and never mind that socialism is a political system in which the means of production, including labour, are controlled by the state (unlike a voluntary football team of millionaire players).
And so there we have it: Rush Limbaugh and Edward Kennedy in agreement as to what the Patriots Football Team actually represents. Two of a kind: a brotherhood of absurdity, spouting fallacies that must surely reduce anyone who actually knows what the word socialist really means to either stunned silence or embarrassed laughter.
Honourless buffoon Senator Ted Kennedy read into the Congressional Record, as a result of a sports event, the following example of breathtaking absurdity.
”At a time when our entire country is banding together and facing down individualism, the Patriots set a wonderful example, showing us all what is possible when we work together, believe in each other, and sacrifice for the greater good.”
And so we are lead to believe that a voluntary collaboration of free individuals, working for personal profit, a great deal of profit at that, is a rejection of individualism and an affirmation of collectivism. And what exactly are these sportsmen supposed to have ‘sacrificed’ in the course of their highly paid jobs?
[Update: Mickey Kaus has also picked up on this nincompoopery]
[Updated update: I am glad to see everyone and their brother in the blogosphere has picked up on this floridly ludicrous rant by the dishonourable ‘gentleman’ from Massachusetts]
A salute of many popping champaign bottles to our confreres with the Movimiento Libertario Costa Rica on winning at least five (and possibly seven) of the 57 seats in the Congress of Costa Rica. Bravo!
Recent events in Argentina have helped drag quite a few things out into the light that would rather have remained skulking in the shadows.
One of the things that is now clear is that the idea a debtor nation can be ‘too big to be allowed to fail’ is revealed to be a myth. When Ecuador defaulted on $6 billion worth of bonds in 1999, people just shrugged it off as ‘only Ecuador’. Yet now we see Argentina going the same way to the tune of $132 billion.
Another thing has become clear about the IMF. Anne Krueger, the IMF’s deputy managing director, has let it be known that the fund is very keen to get out of the ‘sovereign bailout business’. To this end the IMF has some fantastical plans for ‘harmonising’ international bankruptcy laws which will of course come to nothing. Yet the source of the impetus for restructuring the IMF’s relations with debtor nations is quite revealing and not one you might think. Much of these ‘new’ ideas being floated come in almost whole cloth from Jubilee Plus, a leading anti-globalization pressure group whose very name you would think would be anathema within the hallowed halls of an ostensibly pro-capitalist organisation like the IMF purports to be. In fact what is clear is that Jubilee Plus and the IMF are just different sides of the same pro-stasis coin, profoundly hostile to dynamic free trade networks and in favour of state centred status rather than value based economics.
It says much about the inevitable evolution of the IMF from a supposed facilitator of the global capitalist economic order to being little more than the financial arm of a network of pro-stasis organisations underpinning almost every kleptocratic state on the planet. For as long as the IMF is not just happy to prop up heavily regulated force based value destroying economies of the sort favoured by Jubilee and its ilk, there is little motivation for financial institutions to tailor their lending to the economic realities of a nation’s governance. Yet there is always the fond hope that while the IMF ponders its restructuring, a few really large international lenders will feel some serious pain.
What is really needed is for a few nice large international names to go belly up as there are few things that get the financial world’s attention better than that. I am thinking of people like Citigroup, FleetBoston, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya and Santander Central Hispano, who are all massively exposed to the mess in Argentina… sadly this is probably not going to happen but if it did, what we would have is a clear causal link established between a willingness to lend to kleptocratic governments and disaster. This in turn would impose a real cost in terms of an inability to borrow on governments which pursue anti-economic statist/stasist policies.
Just as companies with bad ideas must be allowed to go broke, so must governments. Sovereign default can be very invigorating to the cause of liberty and advocates of true non-crony capitalism should oppose any institutions which seek to ameliorate the link between government actions and the consequences of those policies. And if those governments, such as in Argentina, are democratic then all the more reason for allowing the voters of that country to reap the bitter consequences of their theft-by-proxy mandates. Let the financial tumbrils roll and lets see whose heads get cut off without the Scarlet Pimpernel of the IMF to come to the rescue.
It is a few minutes past noon and I can hear the sound of artillery from my home here in Chelsea… no, it is not the start of an anti-European Union revolt but rather a 41 gun salute being fired off in Hyde Park that heralds the start of the Queen’s Jubilee.
The Oracle of Delphi was the flip side of the ancient Greek culture that brought us the underpinning genius of modern western thought. The Oracle was the voice of superstition and irrationality. As a result I have always thought it appropriate that the name of the company founded by supporter of the Panopticon surveillance state Larry Ellison was ‘Oracle’.
Over on Matt Welch‘s blog, he reports the inane comments of my pet hate Ellison who, it turns out, is a great fan of Napoleon. Hold on to your tricorn hat for a trip into the history à la Larry:
Napoleon codified the laws for the first time in Europe. He was constantly limiting kings and other tyrants.
Quite right Larry. He constantly limited other tyrants as he insisted on being the only tyrant allowed. Military dictators generally don’t like political competition.
He opened the ghettos and stopped religious discrimination. He was an extraordinary man who wrote a lot of laws himself.
Indeed he did. He used the French Army to impose his own will on most of Europe. I wonder if Larry thinks when this was tried again in 1939, it was necessarily a bad thing?
He was incredibly polite, generous almost to a fault, a remarkable person who was vilified. By whom? The kings that he deposed. The kings of England, and the old king of France, and the kings of Prussia, and the Czar of Russia were all threatened by this man who was bringing democracy. […]
I see. So EMPEROR Napoleon, self-crowned military dictator of the French EMPIRE, conquered much of Europe and caused several million deaths during the Napoleonic Wars because he wanted to bring democracy to everyone? Including democratic Britain (that’s ‘England’ to you Larry)?
He was a liberator, a law-giver, and a man of incredible gifts. He never considered himself a soldier, he considered himself a politician, though he was probably the greatest soldier — the greatest general –perhaps in all history.
For a man who never considered himself a soldier that was quite some military career. Particularly the bits where he went to military school, joined the French army, gave some folks a ‘whiff of grapeshot’, hijacked the French Revolution and then led the French army on a war of aggression against most of Europe. My guess is that Larry Ellison has probably never considered himself a poorly educated jackass either. Other than the fact unlike Mussolini, Napoleon was indeed a great general and he had a more extravagant tailor, there is actually little to differentiate him from any number of brutal collectivist military despots. Today he would have been called a fascist. Of course as many of the political causes Larry Ellison backs are indeed aimed at turning nations into police surveillance states I am hardly surprised he admires Napoleon-the-lawbringer, albeit from the perspective of a historical ignoramus.
I can certainly understand admiring Napoleon-the-General, but to praise him for authoring the world’s first truly global war in order to impose his will, his Code Napoleon on everyone at bayonet point? It is rather like admiring Heinz Guderian not because he was a brilliant general but because he was a Nazi.
Steven Den Beste has replied to my remarks about World War Two aircraft. Tally ho!
Perry’s British sensibilities do not need to be defensive about that, because the British contributed nearly as much to the success of the Mustang as did the Americans.
It has nothing to do with my ‘British sensibilities’ but I do know a thing or two about aerocraft of the era.
As a Brit, it was inevitable that Perry should be nostalgic about the Spitfire. In 1940 there was no better air defense fighter in existence, and the UK damned well needed it. Twice as many Hurricanes fought in the Battle of Britain than Spitfires, but it was the Spitfires which made the difference because the Hurricanes were not really able to stand up to the 109’s. That said, it has to be recognized that as an all-around fighter, the Spitfire had major weaknesses, especially compared to later designs. Its airframe wasn’t as rugged as those the Americans built, and for most of the war it was undergunned (because it relied on .30 caliber machine guns). And its biggest weakness all through the war was short legs; it simply could not carry enough fuel for anything except defense.
I will try not to get too irked that Steven seems to imply that my presumed nationality somehow skews my historical judgement. He also should have read my article more carefully. I said I was talking about mid-to-late war piston engined fighters (the P-51 was not around in the early war period), and what Steven is describing is a 1940 Battle of Britain era Spitfire I. By 1941 all (non-PR) Spitfires, from the Spit V onwards, were armed with two 20mm cannon as well as (usually) four .303 machine guns. It is the lack of cannon armament in the P-51 to which I was referring. More importantly all the Luftwaffe fighters which the USAAF were facing were cannon armed aerocraft. Of course it was not a decisive flaw because the six 50 cal HMGs favoured by the USAAF were good enough.
When most aficionados of WWII aircraft speak of “the best”, it mainly becomes a question of sending 8 of each into the air to duke it out and see how many of each come back. On that basis, the Spitfire would not have rated against the Mustang because of the Spit’s final drawback: it wasn’t as fast. In combat, speed is life. Which doesn’t take anything away from the Spitfire’s designers; North American designed the Mustang six years later and had learned much.
Quite incorrect. Stephen seem to be again comparing the 1940 Spitfire I with the 1943+ Mustangs, rather than the Spits that were flying at the same time as the various marks of Mustang (such as the Spit IX or the formidable Spit XIV or Spit XIX). In fact, there was never really anything to choose between the two fighters in terms of speed because as the newer versions of Mustang came out, so did the newer versions of Spitfire. There were many versions of the P-51 and even more of the Spitfire and the Spits in particular had many sub-variants optimised for certain altitudes making the comparisions even harder. In fact the late war Griffon engined Spitfires were generally both faster, better armed and more heavily armoured than the directly contemporary Mustang versions. But this also goes to show the fallacy of comparing them at all: the Mustang was fighting most of its battles at very high altitude over Germany, for which it was optimised and handled beautifully, whilst the Spitfires were fighting at low to medium altitude over the battlefront or defensively over Britain, neither of which required long range. Certainly Spitfire LF variants would be able to outfly a Mustang of equal era at low altitude by a significant margin, but that is not really what Mustangs were for, even if they were occasionally used that way, so is it even a useful comparison?
Perry brings up night-fighters. They were important (especially to the RAF, which did most of its bombing at night) but most people don’t consider them to be the same kind of thing. Night fighters had to be larger because they had to carry radar. There was much less emphasis on maneuver because night fighters didn’t tangle with each other, so most of the emphasis was on simple ability to carry weight. The Mosquito made a decent night fighter, but it could never have competed during the day. (It is noteworthy that the ME-110 was meat on the table during the day but ended up being a pretty decent night fighter.)
The fact is RAF nightfighters did indeed operate against Luftwaffe nightfighters. For much of the war, hunting German nightfighters was the primary RAF nightfighter mission, both as escorts to the RAF night bomber streams and as night counter-air intruders over German airfields. If you want to know more about that I strongly recommend History of the German Night Fighter Force by Gebhard Aders. It is written from the German point of view and is a superb book, pretty much the definitive work on the subject of the night air war in WW2.
Also to compare a Mosquito (of any mark) with an Bf.110 is like comparing a Ferrari with a Pinto. Mosquitos did indeed operate against single engined day fighters in a way that would have been suicide for a Bf.110. There are a host of books on the history of the Mosquito, but I would recommend Mosquito by C. Martin Sharp & Michael J. F. Bowyer, if you want to see a very broad range of information and statistics of all versions. By day, what it could not outfight it could outrun (until the jets arrived of course). Mosquito day fighter-bombers (mostly the FBVI version) regularly clashed with high performance single seat fighters like the formidable Fw. 190 and were quite capable of holding their own. For some excellent accounts of Mosquito tactical day and night operations, I recommend 2 Group RAF: a compete history. 1936-1945 by Michael J. F. Bowyer, which I have just finished re-reading.
[…] If one really wants to open up all the stops and say what the best fighter of the war, anyplace, anytime was on the basis of “send 8 up and see how many come back” then there is no question of the choice: it would be the pure fighter version of the ME-262. With a hundred mph edge in speed and a decent weapons load, it was deadly. It is fortunate for us that Hitler had his head wedged and ordered the majority of ME-262’s to be equipped as fighter-bombers.
Maybe, maybe not. There are many historians who disagree with that widely held view and contend it was production problems, not the so called ‘bomber directive’ that was actually the reason so few Me-262’s ever became operational.
Update: As a couple people have asked me to recommend some sources regarding my remarks about the Mosquito, I have edited the article to include two in the text above.
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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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