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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Dependable as ever, Peronists in Argentina are claiming that the economic meltdown in their nation is due to the failure of the ‘free market’. Now let’s not mince words, the Peronists are neo-fascists (and not very neo at that) and thus to get a right-socialist critique of free markets from them is hardly a surprise.
“Now is the time for us to recognize that Argentina and Argentines come first – we must protect ourselves from [foreign] financial interests,” said Sen. Eduardo Duhalde, a key Peronist and a leading candidate to be interim president. “We must abandon this economic model. That is why the people are in the streets today.”
The Peronists are people who are trapped in the 1940’s in their thinking. Yet at the risk of starting to sound like a broken record given my recent posts, the Argentine economy was never, by any stretch of the imagination, a free market…it was just less unfree than under the Peronists, who ran things along full fat, non-diet real McCoy fascist lines. The biggest problem for the economy is not foreign competition but a massive borrowing spree by the Government (surprise, surprise). Exactly how were they expecting to repay its most recent loans, let alone the staggering $132 billion outstanding?
The Argentine Government was quite successful in curbing the hyperinflation that was ravaging the country in the early 1990’s, introducing wide reforms and pegging the Argentine peso to the US dollar.
A useful comparison could be made with Croatia in 1992-3. Croatia found itself collapsing economically due to the Balkan War and it’s currency, the Croatian Dinar, was hyper-inflating as the Government printed money to keep its army running. When I was there in 1992, after having been in the country for less than one month I took my dollars to a bank in Zagreb and found they had gained 30% in value against the local money in 25 days. To prevent complete economic melt-down, the Croatians scrapped the Dinar completely, replacing it with a new currency called the Kunar, pegged to the Deutschmark. As in Argentina, this drastic move rapidly brought things back from the brink. Yet unlike Argentina, Croatia did not embark upon delusionary spending sprees. Whilst I would hardly call Croatia a paragon of fiscal rectitude (I know Natalija is very critical of Croatian economic policies) they were certainly restrained by comparison in spite of having had huge amounts of national infrastructure destroyed during the war.
What Argentina has done was cure the problem of hyperinflation with strong medicine but they kept taking the drug for that particular ailment after the patient had recovered. What they should have done was either re-float the currency again or go the hole hog and dollarize (i.e. simply adopt the US dollar as Argentina’s national currency). The latter was rejected by the ruling Radical Civic Union Party, never staunch ‘free marketeers’ to begin with, as it would take away a powerful tool of economic control from the government, which of course is exactly why they should have done it!
But even just allowing the peso to free float once inflation was at tolerable levels again, say in 1996, would have prevented the build up of pressures that can be seen today, by allowing devaluation of the peso to be spread out over many years. What we will see now is a huge traumatic crash in value of the peso that will take vast chunks of the economy down with it as dollar denominated loans become unserviceable with worthless Argentine money.
The fascist Peronists will reintroduce trade barriers, compel all exporting businesses to submit to de facto state management and simply impose debt restructuring on foreign banks. A measure of stability will eventually return but the Argentina’s first world pretensions will be exposed for the absurdity they are. Only banks run by madmen (i.e. about 20% of them) will even consider lending more money to Argentina for the foreseeable future and therein lies the silver lining to this dark and stormy cloud… no more loans, the economic equivalent of crack cocaine, means eventually reality will reassert itself even through the thick skulls of the Peronists who are about to preside over the third-worldization of Argentina.
I for one shall not be crying for Argentina over what is largely a self inflicted wound, albeit one inflicted with a weapon sharpened by the buffoons at the IMF. Reforms require courage and vision and sufficient social evolution to grasp objective realities. Argentina had none of the above I am sad to say.
Breathtaking, mind boggling, abject stupidity as well.
In today’s London Evening Standard, Labour Members of Parliament Glenda Jackson, Tony Colman, Jeremy Corbyn, LibDem Members of Parliament Jenny Tonge and Vince Cable and Oxfam Campaigns Officer Rajinder Dadry write in to say.
Together with Oxfam, we are concerned that the Government has given permission for the export of an air-traffic control system with military capabilities at the cost of $40 million. […] We are disturbed that one part of the Government has, rightly, played a full part in the cancellation of debt for Tanzania, but that another part of the Government has played a part in increasing the debt on an unnecessary project…
So let us analyse what is being said:
- The statist MPs and their NGO cheerleader applauds the British Government for cancelling foreign debts on behalf of the Tanzanian Government… debts that the Tanzanian Government freely entered into in the first place by borrowing money from western banks.
- The same chorus of MPs plus NGO cheerleader deplore that the Tanzanian Government is acting irresponsibly and therefore it is the responsibility of the British Government to prevent the duly constituted Government of Tanzania from acquiring military air-traffic control radar that they obviously think they need.
Now read that again, gentle reader, before we continue… are you making the causal links that elude this chorus of clowns?
The Tanzanian Government entered into loans with Western and Japanese Banks in the 1980’s and 1990’s. This money financed years of highly inefficient socialist centrally planned spending (plus a bonanza for the Swiss bankers working for a few inexplicably wealthy ‘retired’ Tanzanian ministers) that resulted in far less of an increase in Tanzania’s ability to produce wealth than was required to service the debt on the funds borrowed. Years later, well meaning and largely socialist elements in the West decide that somehow the actions of an African sovereign government are a ‘stain on Western capitalism’ and a large chunk of the debts are written off (at Western tax payers expense).
And the lesson that we have taught the Governing classes in Tanzania is…?
- Borrow as much as you can get banks to lend you because the consequences for imprudent economic decisions are, well, there aren’t any.
The Tanzanian Government is not acting foolishly in buying this radar, they are just playing by the rules of the game we have written. Have I missed something here or is Glenda Jackson MP and her ilk really as obtuse as I think they are?
Today I have read of outrage amongst the chattering classes in Britain over the UK government allowing Tanzania to purchase a £28 million (about $40 million US) air traffic radar system with some fascination. Now I must confess I have no opinion whatsoever on whether or not Tanzania actually needs such a system and the last time I was there was 20 years ago so I am rather out of touch with the realities on the ground. But what is astonishing to me is that statist British pundits and their NGO cheerleaders with Christian Aid, Oxfam etc. have directed their ire primarily at Britain.
Now I am rarely one to come to the defense of any government purchasing baubles with their stolen tax monies, but last time I looked, Tanzania was a sovereign state, a member of the Commonwealth and their government presumes to speak for the people of that nation. Surely the question of Tanzanian need is a matter for Tanzania to determine.
Might I suggest that what NGOs and sundry mouthing politicos really mean is “Africans are too stupid to decide what is in their own national interests and thus ‘we’ must save them from themselves and prevent their governments from actually governing.” To put it bluntly, the white bwana knows better.
Of course it may well be that the government of Tanzania is venal, foolish and corrupt, highly likely in fact… but does that give the British government the right to block it from purchasing a radar from a private British company? Of course not. Argue with the Tanzanian government that the money is better spent elsewhere by all means, but where do these people get off attempting to get the British state to coerce them ‘for their own good’?
…when it was never actually operating in a free market? Over on AintNoBadDude, the indomitable Brian quotes part of an e-mail of mine but also takes the view regarding the Enron fiasco.
I still maintain my position that Enron is a failure of free markets, but I’m more concerned with the bad impression something like this leaves in people’s minds. If nothing much happens in the way of prosecution, the case for open markets will be harder to make in these industries.
Well I certainly agree that incidents like Enron crashing and burning does not help the case for free markets, but the reason for that is folks do not seem to understand that heavily regulated markets, whilst they are certainly a form of capitalism, they are in fact not free markets, they are (obviously) regulated markets.
Thus what Enron’s failure suggests is not that free markets do not work but rather regulating a market sector like energy in the way it is currently regulated is a failure. Here is a novel idea: how about actually completely deregulating the power sector (for starters) and make the market, er, free. What is the worst that can happen? Maybe Enron will go broke if subjected to the full force of market pressures… oh, I forgot, it already did.
California’s power industry provides us with another lovely example of what happens when heavily regulated markets are required to respond to dynamic circumstances… and it ain’t pretty. Either abandon the pretence that the market is ‘free’ and in effect nationalise the power sector, or let the market do what it does best and stay the hell out of the way. The alternative, like so many half way measures, is to get the worst of both worlds: bloated corporations who do not fully control their own businesses and who are also not fully vulnerable to more agile corporate predators and new market entrants.
Regulating fixed infrastructure sectors of an economy because they are said to either be ‘natural monopolies’ or because they are ‘strategic industries’ rather misses the point: they are actually not natural monopolies if you have a large (preferably global) market of power companies. Functioning fixed infrastructure for which there is a demand does not just vaporise if the owning company goes belly up in the fish tank… other people will most certainly leap into the breach and take over the assets (plus the associated revenue streams from users), hopefully at fire sale prices, and thus life goes on. That might not be the case in Nigeria or Romania or Myanmar, but in a sophisticated and well developed Western economy it most certainly is.
If it is indeed a ‘strategic’ industry, then why encourage a few fat sluggish players to develop who, if they cock things up, fall with rather a big crash (i.e. Enron). Surely it is better to allow full global competition to ensure no player can get so damn important.
Enron in the USA and RailTrack in the UK are two classic cases in point not of ‘free market failures’, but rather of regulated market failures. If all you have to do to make things work better is to impose layers of cunningly crafted regulations, then I suppose that explains the longevity of the Soviet Union and why China is the world’s wealthiest country… oops, sorry, wrong parallel universe.
Actually I do not mean Sauron at all, I mean Noam Chomsky (I know, I know, same thing).
What do they have in common? Flit, an interesting new blog run by Bruce R., that is what. I found this polished looking little jewel via Dawson, whom I was checking out to see if he had any new Ann Coulter pictures <snigger>.
There is an excellent article critiquing the Horowitz attacks on Chomsky and I must say I largely agree with him on all but a few minor points. I think Christopher Hitchens‘ attacks were far more damaging to Chomsky than those of Horowitz, though he does indeed land a few blows on the Vile One too.
In an earlier Flit article, had I started blogging sooner than November, I would have made much the same points regarding the historical analogies in Afghanistan. Much of the ill informed punditry fretting US involvement in view of the disastrous Soviet and before them, British Afghan wars missed something rather importent… Britain learned the lessons of the horrendous First Afghan War and kicked the crap out of the Pashtun in the Second Afghan War. Likewise the military ‘template’ of successful colonial style warfare, namely using the synergy of friendly local forces and a smaller but highly professional British force with higher technology (the famous mountain warfare ‘screw gun’ light artillery) is exactly what we have seen in Afghanistan once again with the Americans (and some Brits too) operating with the various anti-Taliban forces. It is gratifying to see someone else make those points. However it also backs up what I have also pointed out myself in earlier Samizdata articles, the trick after victory in the Second Afghan War was to install ‘friendly’ local leaders and then get the hell out before an insurgency developed…so why oh why does that cretin Tony Blair want to stick around ‘peacekeeping’? The Americans clearly understand the relevance of British military history better than the half-wits in the Foreign Office… no surprise there I suppose.
But Bruce, as for Kylie and that song… resistance is futile, you have been assimilated.
Generally rational content, sheer variety and remarkable quality, that is why. Although sometimes certain stories get widely blogged, the differences in style and perspective makes it interesting to read them all.
Überblog Instapundit‘s often sardonic style contrasts with The Fly Bottle‘s head-on philosophical deconstructions. Natalie Solent‘s irony intensive and highly ideological approach makes an interesting juxtaposition with Dawson‘s anarchic Ann Coulter fixated streams of consciousness. Over on Where HipHop and Libertarianism meet we are just likely to be presented with a statement of home truths as we are to read a brief exegesis of some rap singer that I have never heard of. Tim Blair‘s dependably hilarious daily roundup of the sundry ruminations in blogland is an absolute ‘must see’. Combative Ken Layne is a treat as he ‘fact-checks the asses’ of the talking heads in medialand… and he may well have introduced a new verb into contemporary on-line English. Muslimpundit delivers intermittently updated but chunky analysis from a perspective that is Muslim and yet unmistakably British. Mind over what matters ponders with a style that is often querulous and analytical in equal measure. Transterrestrial Musings displays a style reminiscent to Instapundit (no bad thing) but tends to target different subject matter. Matthew Edgar reminds me of a splendid economics professor I knew, but hopped up on far too much caffeine. Daimnation heaps expletive ladened abuse upon moral relativists and would-be invaders of Canada. What is it about Canada that it produces so many pissed off bloggers?
And the list goes on and on and on and on…
Receiving junk snail-mail and spam e-mails can certainly be irritating, particularly when it is yet another pyramiding scam/’teen-slutathon’/debt consolidation/shyster solicitation/weepy group-hug chain letter or whatever the annoyance-of-the-week is. As a result the urge to legislate over what is frankly a pretty trivial matter is on the agenda on both sides of the Atlantic.
Matthew Edgar wrote a worthwhile piece on this as it pertains to the USA. In Britain, ever since 1832, Election Rolls have been for sale and have been used by marketing professionals as a source of information and ‘list cleaning’ ever since. In this age of spam, we sometimes forget that marketing is an essential aspect of capitalist economics. Restricting it with regulations that go beyond anti-fraud measures adds unnecessary costs that we, the consumer, inevitably end up paying in the end via more expensive products.
Under the absurd British Data Protection Act, the recording of marketing data has been made subject to ever more bureaucratic red tape and imposed cost. This has made Election Rolls a particularly valuable source of reliable data. Yet now there are plans to require local authorities to produce a severely edited version of the Electoral Roll, which will be available for sale, whilst the unexpurgated version will be available only to the government and for ‘election purposes’… in other words, parties will have unrestricted access to your personal information in order to market their political candidates, yet people who want to sell you something you might actually need are told to get stuffed. If I dislike a piece of junk mail I can bin it; if I an annoyed by e-mail spam I can delete it… oh how I wish we could remove the intrusions of our political ‘masters’ so easily.
Over on muslimpundit there is an interesting analysis of Arafat‘s self-serving objectives for Palestine and his ‘credibility gap’. Adil Farooq administers boot-to-groin therapy where it is needed as usual.
Over on Cal Ulmann‘s blog Where HipHop and Libertarianism meet, he points out a simple truth
Bush says quitting drugs will stop terrorism. Well then why can’t marijuana that is grown on American soil be given to medical marijuana patients?
Quite so.
Over on National Review, Jonah Goldberg remains in the hole and appears to be digging with all his might. He writes in The Libertarian Lie:
Virginia Postrel suspects that my “anti-libertarian outbursts” stem from a desire to get her and other libertarians to link to my site. Well, we can put aside the suggestion that it’s a web-traffic bonanza to get linked on something called “Libertarian Samizdata” (I actually lose traffic when I indulge my anti-libertarian bent). But Postrel seems to believe my arguments are so silly that they’re better explained by some sort of cynical ploy.
Gosh, I wonder why she might think that? Could it be that she actually has a genuine objective philosophical underpinning to her ideas? Just a guess.
In fact, he makes libertarianism sound like a warm bath you can slip into to melt all your political cares and concerns away. And that’s all fine. Except for the fact that when criticized, all of a sudden libertarianism becomes this deeply complex body of thought with all sorts of Kantian categories and esoteric giggling about “rational fallibility” flying all about (many of my blogger critics actually sound like self-parodies). On offense, you guys are like the “Drink Me” bottle in Alice in Wonderland, or Morpheus’s pill in The Matrix. But on defense, you turn on the smoke machines and cloud the room up with faculty-lounge verbiage. You can’t have it both ways.
Of course not for a moment did I expect Goldberg to actually recognize Karl Popper‘s theory of rational falliblism. Those sort of ideas inevitably lead to the rejection of irrational dogmatism of the sort which underpins Mr. Goldberg’s flavour of anti-intellectual intuitive conservatism. So what does his defence upon finding his views challenged intellectually amount to? “No fair! You’re using big words!”
Thank you for living up to my expectations, Jonah. And by the way, if you are going to insult the Samizdata, you could at least have given us a link! Sheesh.
Prof. Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago opines against the Internet in his article The Daily Me, due to its ability to present ‘customised’ news that is pre-filtered to suit the readers preconceived ideas.
Of course the power to personalize makes life much more convenient and in some ways much better. But from the standpoint of democracy, the rise of “The Daily Me” is a mixed blessing. For democracy to work, people must be exposed to topics and ideas they would not have chosen in advance.
[…]
In short, good citizenship requires far more than countless editions of the Daily Me. Democracy is undermined when people choose to live in echo chambers of their own design. The task for the future is to find ways to ensure that the Internet reduces, and does not increase, the risk of social fragmentation.
This does indeed raise some interesting points and I too have sounded off about how unwise it is to reside in a news-ghetto in which one is fed a diet of insular pabulum. Yet the ghetto that I had in mind is actually the mainstream media which, even more in the USA than in Britain, is in reality a near intellectual mono-culture of recycled received wisdoms presented within a profoundly statist meta-context. Nothing in print or on TV even approaches the variety of superb insights, loopy conspiracy theories, pedantic disections and pointers to obscure stories that can be found on-line.
Thus I would argue that there is a subtext to Sunstein’s remarks. Perhaps the source of his disquiet is that people will no longer choose to allow themselves to be propagandised quite so easily as was the case when BigMedia(tm) ruled the ink and airwaves unchallenged. I suspect that customised news from the established media’s on-line outlets is not all that perturbs the good Professor. Although news collection remains the realm of well resourced established media companies, the oligopoly of interpreting what the crude news data actually means has been broken forever. Just refer to Glenn Reynold’s article on instapundit a few days ago announcing his millionth visitor (1). I suggest to you that in our own small but growing way, the newsblog movement is contributing to this disquiet in academia who are, even more than the media companies themselves, the distilled essence of the ‘qualified’ purveyors of opinions. Yet the Internet can, and indeed has, provided a true market place for punditry that is aggressively non-deferential, fact-checking and dissecting the ‘experts’ in near real time… and some people out there do not much like it.
The new wave of ‘instapundits’, for Glenn is indeed the one who started humming the note picked up by the ever growing swarm, are saying things the main stream media would regard as commercial suicide regardless of what they actually believe to be true. For example how many mainstream journalists would admit to being profoundly ambivalent about democracy or admit to rejecting the very concept of exclusive national citizenship that Prof. Sunstein thinks so important? Yet that is what I think and I can say so without incurring the ire of a media proprietor. You do not have to agree with either of these views and that is the beauty of it all: I don’t really give a damn either way because I have no pecuniary interest in your views as a reader. I am not selling your eyeball time to advertisers or worrying about ratings, so if you decide the articles on the Samizdata are just so much pixilated flatulence and thus decline to come back, we will still be propounding our views of the world come what may. Regardless of whether or not Cass Sunstein approves, new and controversial voices are indeed being heard: after all, you are reading this!
Thanks to Basia Jedrzejowicz for pointing out the orginal article.
(1) = Editors update, September 2003: Instapundit had its 25 millionth visitor & Samizdata.net is well past one million visitors ourselves
Over on The Fly Bottle blogista Will Wilkinson writes about Totalitarian Chic.
Resistance is futile. You will be commodified. Attack us with ideology and we will sell it as nostalgia.
It reminds me of someone catching sight of my collection of pretty enameled Soviet Political Activists Pins, Red Army Hats and ‘Heroic Soviet Worker’ posters. As he was well aware of my anti-communist background, I saw his eyebrows raise. Heading off his question I interjected.
Headhunters keep the severed heads of their enemies as trophies.
He understood immediately.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
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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