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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Following on from Perry’s post immediately below this one, I see that Guido Fawkes (aka Paul Staines), has, by his standards, a pretty long, and more significantly, very strongly worded item pointing to all the various links between the late, unlamented Labour government, and the equally unlamented Libyan dictator. I wonder how Tony Blair regrets that photo of him shaking hands with Gaddaffi?
Maybe not. Maybe, Blair might argue, that yes, the guy was and is a bastard, but he came clean about his own WMD programmes in 2003 after Saddam was toppled and to that limited extent, it was right for the West to “reward” those countries run by people who had shown some signs of seeing sense. But the trouble with this sort of realpolitik is that it requires a country like Britain to turn a sort of Nelsonian blind eye to the manifest wickedness of a regime and its past. And let’s not be partisan here: the same calculations have been taken by rightwing administrations as well. Such statecraft is an ugly business, and not a place for high-falutin sanctimony. That said, the deal to release the guy blamed for the Lockerbie massacre, only to see how this release was treated by the Libyan authorities, stank to high heaven. It also unnecessarily has damaged relations between the UK and US.
As for what happens next, I haven’t the foggiest idea.
A graph on the growth of the regulatory state, courtesy of the National Review Corner blog.
This person at the Daily Caller appears – with some justification I might add – to take a dim view of Ron Paul, the US congressman and Republican primary contender for the presidential ticket known as “Dr No” on account of his saying no to various government measures and enterprises. He is, famously or infamously, a hardline anti-interventionist in foreign affairs, so much so that his views might be dubbed as almost pacifist. He has called for accountability by the Federal Reserve, and argues that institution ought to be closed down. But he has feet of clay, and this article I link to, which is written in a sort of furious burst of anger, focuses on those flaws and makes light of Paul’s merits. In particular, the article unfairly misrepresents the Austrian school of economics and its methodology. It also seems to smear libertarianism on issues like legalising prostitution and drugs, ignoring the obvious arguments that criminalising consensual acts has created huge costs for society.
All the way down at the bottom of a comment thread prompted by this article, is large item by commenter Michael P. Ivy. It is so good that I reproduce it here. There is the odd typo, but it is worth quoting in the raw:
I am always amused by wannabe economists, who call themselves capitalists, but, are unable to embrace or understand the true axioms of capitalism when push comes to shove. Austrian economics spins on essentially to axioms: (1) that there is no free lunch, and (2) all human action is purposeful action motivated by the individual’s (not society’s) desire to move from a less to a more desired state. These are self evident truths, much like the “more is preferred to less” axiom of the neoclassical school. You butcher Rothbard without understanding his work and particularly his crititique of the neo classical school of wackjob indifference curve analysis and welfare economics. The notion that an individual can be indifferent between two different states of the world without ever actually exercising choice is not a reliable basis for recommending redistribution measures of the Kaldor/Hicks kind. Even Samuelson so much as admitted that it is impossible to derive a social welfare function without making assumptions about the marginal utility of money et al (1951).
The problem with Keynes’ economics, is that it must rob resources from one sector of the economy to furnish another and it consumes resources in the process. Moreover, in doing so, the government does so without the knowledge of the benefits that those resources procure that only those individuals holding those resources…know. This is the problem with any measure of government involvement in economics. That they suffer from fiscal illusion (not my money so it don’t matter) is one thing, but, they effectively create an environment of uncertainty by destroying productive incentives. Incentives do matter after all and I have yet to see the mathematical models of the neo-classicals actually recognize this and quantify them. The fact is, is that you can’t unless you invoke a value judgement of the Keynesian/Samuelson kind.
Welfare economics has never worked and it never will work, for as M. Thatcher so plainly points out, “Socialism is a great idea until you run out of other people’s money”. The statement captures two notions: (1) if their actually was a multiplier effect on GDP from government spending, don’t you think this would be a permanent line item of the government’s income/expense statement?, and (2) the No Free Lunch axiom is underscored by the fact that since government is an unproductive entity that consumes resources for its existence without actually creating anything of value is that eventually the productivity of the market is unable to keep up with and compensate for the unproductive actions of government. True capitalists understand this.
And if you think the market is unable to coordinate itself with respect to defense, innovation, policing of private property, mass transit, health, education, indeed all the things you think we require a central planner for, then you obviously have not bothered to school yourself on the opportunities that can and will present themselves if productive individuals are left alone and allowed to participate. Finally, I see that your article is riddled throughout with incorrect and obnoxious assertions about economic theory presented by Rothbard, Mises et al. (semi-autistic dogmatism). The fact is, is that there is nothing dogmatic about the Austrian school. Its core tenet is that the best production, exchange, and coordination of resources occurs when individuals are left free and unfettered to choose. And by whatever math you might care to invoke, given the level of debt ($16T) incurred by the Welfare State, I’d say you’re pointing the dogmatic finger in the entirely wrong direction. THAT is what is dogmatic….doing the same illogical, nonsensical thing over and over again (at the people’s expense), and expecting a different result every time. So before you decide to write another diatribe on someting you don’t know much about, I’d recommend that you review Rothbard…again, and in particular his piece on “Towards a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics”. There is nothing dogmatic, hairy scary or offensive about it.
Very good.
Ron Paul is very much a mixed bag, and I would not vote for him, and I am troubled by some of his views. But the fact has to be faced that almost unique in Western politics, he has put forward a classical liberal agenda on certain issues, and done so consistently. And he has managed, despite his age, to touch a lot of young people. There is a lesson here somewhere.
As has been noted before, the disaster of the eurozone is, in the eyes of some policymakers, as much an opportunity for further pan-European empire-building as it is an occasion for shame and embarrassment. This week, Angela Merkel, German Chancellor, and Nicolas Sarkozy (remember him? He’s the one who married one of Mick Jagger’s old flames), came up with this barnstormer of an idea, in the form of a European-style “Tobin tax” and a form of increased economic central government. It has the ring of inevitability about it.
The problem for the UK is that said tax, which has been assailed by the likes of Tim Worstall before, would apply not just to the eurozone, but to the UK, which is not in the euro. And given the relative size of London as a financial centre compared to Paris, Frankfurt or Milan, guess which place takes the biggest relative hit? You guessed: London. Never mind, of course, that banks that can do so will put some of their activities outside the EU, or that the costs of the tax will be borne by savers, borrowers and users of financial services generally, in the form of lower rates of savings interest – already negative in real terms – more expensive costs of hedging forex transactions, and the like. This is what is known as tax incidence. Politicians are not, as we know, in the business of understanding the Law of Unintended Consequences. Indeed, we might even define today’s political class as people who defy this law.
Of course, Cameron, Osborne and others (but not their LibDem allies) will protest about such a tax on London’s financial sector, but look how far such protests got us before concerning sovereign debt bailouts by the UK. And such men have shamefully pandered to such anti-capitalist sentiment in the past, so there is a sort of brute justice if they fail to prevent this latest move now. Such men, of course, have enjoyed the fruits of financial wheeler-dealing when the going was good, such as financing of the Tory party by the likes of Michael Spencer, the founder of derivatives powerhouse ICAP. (As an aside, I see that the odious Vincent Cable, Business Secretary, wants to slap capital gains tax on housing transactions of wealthy properties if the Tories decide to ditch the top 50 per cent rate of income tax. Even a land value tax is better than CGT, although not by very much. There is no such thing as a benign tax.)
Alas, banker bashing has reached such heights of hysteria that some might even try and argue that such a tax on the evils of speculation is a jolly good idea. It pained me to see that even that otherwise fine book on the recent market disaster by Kevin Dowd and Martin Hutchinson, floated the idea.
Allister Heath weighs on the latest eurozone wheeze. He’s unimpressed, not surprisingly.
Update: Here is a twist on the issue of tax incidence and taxes on companies. Milton Friedman is magnificent.
“Richtie is the true Clausewitzian nightmare, an industrious idiot who never stops.”
– David Moore, commenting on an item by Tim Worstall, who fisks the absurd Richard Murphy.
Okay, back to the recent violent disorder. Eating in a local cheap restaurant for lunch, I grabbed a copy of the Daily Mail and was pleasantly surprised at this remarkably non-hysterical piece on the recent controversy about David Starkey, the historian. But of course, if you want a reliable mix of social conservative rant and shafts of lucid insight in the same piece, there is always Peter Hitchens (brother of Christopher) on hand. In the article I link to here, I broadly agreed with some of it but as usual, there is always the equivalent of a crack in the pavement.
“Say to him [Cameron] that mass immigration should be stopped and reversed, and that those who refuse any of the huge number of jobs which are then available should be denied benefits of any kind, and he will gibber in shock.”
Interesting. So Mr Hitchens thinks that mass immigration should be “reversed”. How exactly? There is often, I find in some of the denunciations of mass immigration, an unspoken assumption, never fleshed out, as to what said denouncers want to do about it. Does Mr Hitchens think, for instance, that those who have been living in the UK for some time, and who hold UK passports, should, if they fall into the “wrong” demographic groups as he might define them, be deported? To where? How? Never mind European “human rights” legislation, how can any supposed “conservative” such as Mr Hitchens, with his famed love of “family values” and the rest, countenance a reversal of mass immigration without spelling out the details? Casually referring to “reversing” X or why without saying how is foolish, in my humble opinion.
Of course, there are tens of thousands or more people who emigrate from the UK every year in pursuit of a better life. And I suspect the recent mayhem will only add to the shift. But I get the impression that such folk are not the ones that Mr Hitchens has in mind.
We tend not be very nice about the BBC around here. It is a state-created broadcaster that forces everyone to pay for it, etc. (Boo, hiss, throw rotten tomatoes, etc). But it does occasionally put up programmes of some value. In view of the popularity of shows in which the rich, famous or infamous track down their ancestors, such as “Who Do You Think You Are?”, there is a show that runs in the dead-zone of daytime TV, called Heir Hunters. It shows how various financial/legal professionals earn a living by trying to track down people who could inherit money from the deceased but who don’t know about it because there was no will signed. The actual commission or fee that these people charge for this work is not disclosed but the general effect of what these businesses are doing is positive, in my view. The reason for my saying that is that at present, if a deceased person’s estate has not be carved up in a will, then it is grabbed by the state.
A friend of mine who works in this area reckons that in his own, modest way, he is keeping private wealth out of the hands of the state by making sure that those who could inherit the money actually do so. Anyway, the popularity of the show suggests that inheritance of wealth is something that Brits of many backgrounds are comfortable with. Most of the people highlighted in the programme are not exactly the Duke of Westminster type.
The popularity of this sort of programme also, of course, speaks of the enduring interest people have in history, family traditions and roots. Like certain other passions and enthusiasms, it appears to be ineradicable, and woe betide the politician who attacks it, however indirectly, via taxes.
“The global paper standard has lasted 40 years but evidence is accumulating daily that its endgame is now fast approaching. The world economy is caught in a deepening financial crisis caused by excessive levels of debt, severe asset price bubbles and overextended banks—all imbalances that are the direct consequence of four decades of unprecedented fiat money creation, of artificially low interest rates and of “lender-of-last-resort” central banking. Monetary policy today—whether by the U.S. Federal Reserve, the ECB or the Bank of Japan—is not much more than an increasingly desperate attempt to postpone via super-low interest rates and periodic debt monetization the painful but unavoidable liquidation of these imbalances. This will not only ultimately prove futile, but will lead to a complete currency catastrophe if pursued further.”
– Detlev Schlichter, writing in the Wall Street Journal. The fact that he is now gigging at the mighty WSJ is, of itself, a great thing.
Update: today is the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s decision to kill off the link between the dollar and gold, although in reality the old gold standard had been dead for much longer.
Whenever a senior political figure, such as David Cameron or Boris Johnson (the London mayor) writes a newspaper column on some issue or other – and Boris Johnson does this a good deal, being a good writer – you can bet that in light of recent events, at least one commenter will make some remark about the politicians’ holidays. You see, it was terrible, apparently, that our Prime Minister was sunning himself in Tuscany or that BJ was carousing in Canada, rather than working 24/7 in their offices. To delay coming back to our Sceptred Isle for a few days when the disorder broke out is inexcusable, just the sort of lazy, arrogant stuff you can expect. Etonians. Bullingdon Club. These bastards probably did PPE at Oxford! (Sarcasm warning).
As you can see, I find all this type of commentary tiresome. It suggests an inability to realise that in the age of the internet, video conferencing and the like, that things don’t collapse when a political leader is away. The Prime Minister is not my Daddy.
And from the point of view of someone who believes in minimal government, the free market and the open society, this mindset is very foolish. While I don’t want to pay for their holidays, I happen to think that the idea of politicians taking time off from their politicking is a very good idea and should be encouraged. A century or more ago, the Peels, Palmerstons, Gladstones and Disraelis holidayed a good deal, and their backbench members of Parliament holidayed even more, or ran their estates. In the USofA, Congress was deliberately located on the swamps of the Potomac in order to discourage people from meeting during the hot, malaria-filled summer months. (Arguably, the governence of the US went down the tubes when air conditioning was invented). And London stank so badly because of the lack of drainage that getting out of London was a good idea for anyone who could do so.
As I said, I don’t mind politicians taking time off so long as we, the taxpayer, don’t have to pay for it. But in principle, the idea that Civilization will come to an end unless Dave, Boris or Barack are constantly at their desks or in the assembly is barmy. There is much to be said for a bit of time out from these people. As the saying goes, we should be grateful we don’t get all the politics we pay for.
(Aside, the commentators on the Daily Telegraph site are truly awful, arguably worse than the Guardian. Take a look at the moronic stuff regarding BJ’s latest article on the riots).
I am a busy person this weekend so I haven’t time to do much more than to link to this fascinating interview with a former CIA operative on his experiences of living in Iran. With all the troubles in the world right now, it pays to keep an eye on a country and a regime that continues to be a serious threat. More optimistically, though, if Iran ever did move towards genuine openness and democracy, the impact on the rest of the Middle East region would be immense.
This struck me:
“If the Iranian regime dared for one day, for even half a day, to allow Iranians to come into the streets and say what they really want, then you would see tens of millions of Iranians in the streets shouting “Death to the Islamic Republic!”
“If there were a free referendum today, “yes” or “no” to the Iranian Republic, more than 90 percent would say “no.” If there were a free referendum today saying “yes” or “no” to establishing ties with America, more than 90 percent would say “yes.””
Here is a good collection of some of the strangest looking bits of architecture in the world. Some buildings will be familiar – like the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain – others, less so. Click on the link and scroll down. It’s a large collection.
Notice how the loudest complaints about “broken politics” come from those who lost the debate. It’s understandable for sore losers to rage against the machine. But there’s no need for the rest of us to parrot their petulance.
– Charles Krauthammer.
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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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