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This item about Mexico, via the ChicagoBoyz group weblog, is shocking. The scale of violence in Mexico – largely centred on the drugs trade – is rising rapidly. It ought, really, to be the top security issue for the United States. It is hard to justify actions in the MidEast with this sort of crap happening just across the border. The war on drugs is proving an even bigger disaster than libertarians typically state. May 26th, 2011 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
 “You heard it here first – we were not born in the Garden of Eden.” – Tara Smith, talking at the Adam Smith Institute last week, with reference to the idea that we get to inherit something called Original Sin. May 24th, 2011 | 96 comments - (Comments are closed)
Here is an interesting take on the two mainly libertarian-leaning candidates for the Republican presidential ticket: Gary Johnson and Ron Paul. Our own Brian Micklethwait has thoughts on Johnson (he’s a fan); I certainly would be more inclined, if I were a US voter, to go for GJ rather than Ron Paul. Mr Paul is sound on issues like the Federal Reserve but on a lot of stuff, his classical liberal credentials strike me as a bit suspect, although people whom I respect, like Brian Doherty of Reason magazine, say nice things about him. Of course, the fact that such persons can have a crack at a presidential nomination is in itself a fact that separates the US from the UK. I cannot at the moment think of a single major UK Conservative politician who comes close. And as for continental Europe…….oh dear…..Silvio Berlusconi? (That was a joke). May 23rd, 2011 | 60 comments - (Comments are closed)
“A cleaner (janitor) at a London gallery cleared away an installation by artist Damien Hirst having mistaken it for rubbish. Emanual Asare came across a pile of beer bottles, coffee cups and overflowing ashtrays and cleared them away at the Eyestorm gallery on Wednesday morning.” I still treasure that story, which appeared in this item about the art world (thanks to Tim Sandefur for the pointer. He is on a bit of a roll at the moment). In thinking of art and tracing out the trends, good and possibly not so good, you can do a lot worse than read this book by Ernst Gombrich. May 19th, 2011 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
We seem to be having quite a lot of referendums at the moment in the UK and Europe. As we might note with a sort of grim amusement, the largest recent ones – on the EU Constitution – were airily ignored with customary insouciance by the EU political elites, and therefore fill many people will understandable cynicism. Over at the EU Referendum blog there is a long item about protest movements, violence, referendums and political change. I may have more to say when I have the time to study it. It looks a good piece, and I recommend it. Talking of protests, here is a nice collection of photos of recent “rally against debt” held in central London a few days ago, as taken by our own Brian Micklethwait. May 18th, 2011 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
May 18th, 2011 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
“The man must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and in any event, there is still some chance that the whole sordid affair turns out to have been a political set-up, in which case he might even emerge from this bizarre scandal with credit and sympathy. Yet it is about time Europe’s ownership of the International Monetary Fund, and particularly France’s apparently divine right to the top job, was brought to a close. If Mr Strauss-Kahn’s nemesis in a New York hotel room loosens Europe’s grip, then that may be no bad thing. Whatever the truth of otherwise of the allegations, Mr Strauss-Kahn’s spectacular fall from grace is widely seen as a near catastrophe both for the IMF and the delicate negotiations around further rescue packages for the stricken eurozone periphery. This it is definitively not. To the contrary, it might even bring about a rethink of the currently doomed strategy of throwing good money after bad.” May 17th, 2011 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
The historian and libertarian writer, Robert Higgs. is most upset that some Americans had celebrated when Osama bin Laden was killed by US special forces a few days ago:
I agree utterly with the first paragraph. We should celebrate goodness more than we do. Absolutely right. But come on. I really have had it with the moral posturing of people who wax indignant about their countrymen feeling pleased because an evil man has been killed. When an evil person, in a confrontation such as occurred a few days ago, is killed, then why should not the admittedly rough justice of what happened be marked by a certain degree of grim satisfaction? I don’t imagine for a moment that anyone who voiced satisfaction at OBL’s death is under the illusion that this can possibly put right the evil that was done on 9/11. There are times, however, when grim satisfaction at what happened to OBL is not only the understandable reaction, but the just one. It interests me how some on the almost pacifist wing of the libertarian movement – if I can call it that these days – have reacted to the demise of this man. After all, such folk often complained that “neoconservatives” who supported the overthrow of Saddam or the Taliban, say, were going beyond just retribution in response to the 9/11 attacks. So what I would ask of Higgs, and for that matter, would-be POTUS Ron Paul, is what exactly do they suggest should have happened in the case of OBL, had by any chance a pristine, moral libertarian regime have managed to find him and track him down? File a lawsuit? Suggest he surrenders to the nearest police station where he can be read his Miranda rights? That was not going to happen: the most probable outcome for a person such as this would be a messy arrest, and the charade of a trial and lifetime jail term/execution, or a firefight. Welcome to reality. Higgs finishes with this:
“Unseemly”. Oh get over yourselves. Here are some more thoughts over at Pajamas TV. I particularly enjoyed Bill Whittle’s comments. I share his take. May 16th, 2011 | 62 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Daily Telegraph – which in my view continues to go downhill as a newspaper – has this decidedly mixed quality article by Jim White about the alleged evils of a large sporting institution being owned not by its “local community” but, horror of horrors, by a US family living in the sleazy state of Florida, no less. Words such as “leeches” are used. We are talking about the Glazer family, owner of Manchester United. Perhaps someone at that newspaper might gently remind Mr White that the Glazers are of Jewish origin, and that it is not terribly clever to use words such as “leeches”, given the historical demonisation of Jewish speculators as “bloodsuckers”. To be fair to White, I am sure nothing untoward was involved and he got carried away. Even so, this paragraph should have set off some editorial alarm bells:
Mr White struggles to lay out how awful it is that the club, purchased earlier in the ‘Noughties in a leveraged buyout, is now a privately held firm with a large debt interest bill. Indeed, it does seem eye-watering that since the day of purchase, interest charges of around £300 million have been paid on the debt, financed through things like rising ticket prices and the like. And yes, the days when factory workers could watch the likes of Duncan Edwards or George Best in the 50s and 60s for a relative puny sum have gone. There are even software engineers and financiers watching football these days (how vulgar!). But surely, the Glazers bought the club in a free market – no gun was held to anyone’s head when that transaction was made. Mr White does not, as he could have done, argue that the tax rules could be changed so that equity financing is put on a level playing field (excuse the pun) with debt; arguably, some of the more foolish-looking leveraged buyouts that arose just before the credit market debacle of 2008 were encouraged by favourable tax treatment of debt. But he should realise that had ManU remainded a listed business, then the shareholders would want to see return on equity and for those returns to increase. They also want a dividend occasionally. This growth has to come from somewhere. With many sporting institutions, that growth requires things like rising ticket revenues, sponsorship, and the like. I personally think that outside of a few very big sporting institutions, such capital growth is questionable and that sport is subject to all manner of vagaries that make it an unappealing investment, in my view. Now, if Mr White wants to make the case that the state should somehow decide and regulate the ownership of sporting institutions, then he should have the courage of his convictions and argue for sport to be run on socialist principles. Let’s see how far he can go with that. I don’t like much of the modern professional footballing world, and yes, the lure of big money has made some players behave with particular foolishness in recent years. But Mr White should remember that if people really detest the vulgarity of modern sport as much as he claims they do, there is a simple solution. Don’t go to matches and do something more edifying instead. Or even play some football with your kids in the back yard. May 13th, 2011 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Daily Mash satire site has this beauty of an item on Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. He is the gift that keeps on giving, as Perry de Havilland of this parish noticed a while ago. May 11th, 2011 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
We are already pretty well aware of the case of people such as George Soros – the man credited with helping remove the UK from the European exchange rate mechanism in 1992 – who make a killing from financial markets, while attacking liberal capitalism. Another example is Warren Buffett, the so-called “Sage of Omaha” who, now in his 80s, is one of the world’s wealthiest men with an enviable track record for making money over the long term by what is said to be a ruthless, yet almost heartbreakingly simple commitment to “value investing”. Over at the Cobden Centre, one of its writers, Detlev Schlichter has an excellent, and measured piece about the Buffett phenomenon. He respects Buffett’s track record (who wouldn’t?), but has this to say:
Here is something by me recently about the Koch brothers, who certainly do support capitalism. And this recently top US banker is probably one of the most hard-core defenders of laissez faire around. A refreshing break from the norm. May 10th, 2011 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Anybody visiting the Middle East in the last decade has had the experience: meeting the hoarse and aggressive person who first denies that Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center and then proceeds to describe the attack as a justified vengeance for decades of American imperialism.” – Christopher Hitchens on Noam Chomsky. May 10th, 2011 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
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