You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
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And if you like the idea that a comedian convicted a making a joke in bad taste and fined £800 by a Scottish court could end up making a tidy profit, you might want to drop your mouse on this link and send him some money. I did 😀 Help Markus stop a truly terrible precedent being set and help fund the appeal. If there is any money left over, he promises to invade the Sudetenland. April 25th, 2018 | 44 comments - (Comments are closed)
England’s favourite Roman-Greek dragon slayer grants us licence this day to drink beer and make appropriate Shakespeare quotes. April 23rd, 2018 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have discovered a source of wisdom on the internet (no, really 😉 ) and I am reliably informed that the blessed Theresa herself has been known to solicit advice from the famed Agatha Antigone. April 22nd, 2018 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Conventional theory has it that capitalism arose in England in the 16th century but I long ago found it thriving in the 13th century. Rowland Parker’s ‘Men of Dunwich’, a treasure of my bookshelves for many decades, uses ancient pipe rolls and mediaeval manuscripts in our historic archives as the author turns detective. Why did Ada Ringulf, with a cottage by St Peter’s, pay only ¼d rent a year when neighbours paid 1½d?* Parker thinks he knows. Anyway, Dunwich merchants, shipowners with vessels we know as ‘cogs’, would speculatively take cargoes of wool, barley, cloth to Europe and the Baltic and return with iron, wine, silk and spices. Profits could be handsome – but the loss of a cog to a hostile port, pirates, minor warlords or official blackmail could ruin a man and his family overnight. So merchants offset their risk by investing in eachother’s cogs and cargoes, risking only a fifth or a sixth on each voyage. Parker has the evidence. That’s capitalism. And it was happening three hundred years earlier than thought. Capitalism means risk, even if it’s managed risk. What the global corporates do is risk free; monopolistic, monopsonistic or oligopolistic, they have a licence to make money with virtually no risk, by virtue of their size and power. – Raedwald Agree, disagree? Not convinced by the entirety of the thesis at all but there are some interesting points being made. Read the whole thing. April 20th, 2018 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)
In 1976, the Nobel-prize winning economist, F.A. Hayek, published The Mirage of Social Justice, the second volume of his magnum opus Law, Legislation and Liberty. Despite being widely regarded as the definitive critique of social justice, today one would be lucky to find advocates of social justice in the academy who are familiar with the name ‘Hayek’, let alone those who have read him. Among classical liberals, libertarians, and conservatives alike, Hayek is one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century whose The Road to Serfdom represents one of the most powerful arguments against socialism ever written. But those in the academy who have perpetuated socialist ideas since the 1980s have practically ignored it. In this article, I will argue that this unwillingness to engage with the ‘other side’ is not only endemic in the radical intellectual schools that have overtaken literary studies, but also that it is symptomatic of their entire way of thinking which, being hermetically sealed and basically circular in its argumentation, has no language to deal with critics beyond reactive moral condemnation. April 16th, 2018 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
If anti-semitism was “only about Jews” it would still matter. Jews matter not because they are Jews, but because they are human. No different qualification is required. That anyone thinks a better qualification than being a human is required to enjoy particular human rights is precisely what is wrong with our society today. Every time someone speaks of “Gay Rights” or “Women’s Rights” or “Black Rights” or “Muslim Rights” or uses the phrase “hate crimes” I am immediately on my guard. Such people are more than likely to be a threat to human rights in general. Damn it, how often does this need to be said before tribalists stop blathering? The whole point of the post-Enlightenment West is that every individual matters, regardless of who they are. Not just anti-semitism but tribalism in general is the virus that, as Rabbi Sacks says, keeps mutating. The only valid reason to regard an individual as better or worse is, as Dr King famously said (but as the Left seems to have forgotten) “the content of his character.” The only valid reason to treat an individual differently before the law is his or her conduct. Amen to that. April 14th, 2018 | 75 comments - (Comments are closed)
In a recent interview, PayPal founder Peter Thiel spoke of a ‘totalitarian’ streak that exists in many of the tech titans. Evidence suggests he might be right. If so, are we closer to China’s ‘Social Credit System‘ than we realize? April 5th, 2018 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
April 4th, 2018 | 49 comments - (Comments are closed)
March 31st, 2018 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
[Corbyn’s] Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry and his Shadow Defence Secretary Nia Griffith both saw that briefing and agreed there was “prima facie evidence” and said the party “fully accepts that Russia is responsible”. Corbyn said he didn’t trust British scientists and British intelligence services, and suggested samples of the nerve agent be sent back to Russia because he DID trust them and Russia had asked to see the evidence. The article is ‘all over the place’ regarding the USSR (to be charitable) but it does make this rather good point. March 18th, 2018 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
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