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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“Oakeshott was an enchanting elfin figure, rather slight with a rather light but seductive voice. Men sometimes found him a little creepy, women never. He was married three times and was said to have various girlfriends scattered in boltholes in London and around the country. He was sceptical in his views, and not at all religious, thus conforming to my general theory that, as soon as British philosophers stopped believing in God, they started believing in sex. There is no more startling contrast between the celibacy, and indeed chastity, of Pascal and Locke and the insatiable appetites of Bertrand Russell and AJ Ayer and PH Nowell-Smith, the author of Ethics, who was said to have regarded it as a positive duty to sleep with other men’s wives.”
Ferdinand Mount, Cold Cream, page 273. Quirky, self-effacing and brilliant about its portrayal of Mount’s life as a journalist and Downing Street policy wonk and conservative intellectual, this is one of the finest autobiographies I have read in years. Among the details that startled me was Mount’s battle with a terrible asthma problem; I also loved his portrayal of his father and vignettes featuring the likes of Malcolm Muggeridge and Siegfried Sassoon.
I can also recommend Mount’s recent book about how we are becoming rather like the ancient Romans.
This is inspired from the Daily Mash satire site. Or is it satire?
We have a fair number of aviation and photography enthusiasts at this blog and readership, so here is a nice little “two for the price of one”, courtesy of that haven of wackiness, Boing Boing.
I sometimes pick up quick-to-read paperbacks, either fiction or non-fiction, at airports to help pass the time during my flight. So, on a recent short break to Malta, I bought Dambisa Moyo’s How the West Was Lost, published a short while ago, which seeks to argue that for various reasons, good and bad, the West (essentially, Western Europe and North America) is in danger of losing out to the East. I was intrigued enough to pay a few quid for the book, but in the end I should have known better.
Moyo has a lot of things to say with which free marketeers might approve of: she denounces the way in which the banking system has encouraged over-use of debt financing, creating all manner of problems, culminating in the sub-prime mortgage disaster and associated asset price bubble; she also understands that modern Welfare States have created many problems. However, for all that she tries to accept that the rise of the former Third World nations from poverty is a Good Thing and to be applauded, I cannot help but feel that she does not really mean it very much. She’s a mercantilist who sees economics as a titanic fight between states and is hostile, or at least sceptical, about the capacity of people operating in markets under the rule of law. And she repeats the canard that the panic of 2008 demonstrated the dangers of unfettered capitalism, oblivious to the fact that the monetary policies of the Fed, etc, were policies of state institutions, as was the interference in the US and other housing markets by governments (Freddie Mac, etc).
In fact, she seems wedded to a sort of neo-Malthusian argument that says that the desire for prosperity and higher living standards in places such as China is unmitigated bad news for the West as there are finite resources in energy, etc, and that Eastern prosperity comes at the expense of the West’s. In other words, she is arguing that economics is, in some ways, a case of winners and losers. Indeed, she talks repeatedly about the idea of there being a race, often using the very word… “race”… to make her points.
Here is one typical paragraph in which she says the West is suffering from all that terrible selfish individualism and we should benefit from a bit more of that no-nonsense collectivism as seen in China (page 172):
“Frankly speaking, the constitutional framework that has defined the US for the past three centuries is not likely to be amended in order to hand over more power to the state. Yet arguably more power, more flexibility and fewer committees are exactly what is needed. What sense does it make in the depths of the financial crisis – a state of economic emergency by most accounts, which brought the country and the world to its knees – for the President of the United States to have to build consensus around a desperately needed fiscal stimulus package before he and his advisors can act?”
She seems curiously unaware of to what extent the powers of the Federal government in the US have already gone way beyond what was envisaged by the Founders – and that’s a bad thing – and that in other Western nations, such as the UK, the government of the day has considerable powers, or has yielded great powers to the European Union and its legions of unelected officials. And yet for Ms Moyo the problem is that is far too much of this pesky liberalism, checks and balances, and so forth. I hate to say it, but she’s coming close to flirting with a form of fascism.
There are other, equally poor, arguments. For instance, she argues that the vast majority of citizens in Western nations have only reaped a small share of the benefits of greater trade and so on because many of the profits earned are paid to shareholders. For instance: (page 178) “The only thing companies were interested in was the company’s profitability and therefore the shareholders’ return on capital.”
Wow, the owners of firms want to make a profit (as opposed to making a whacking great loss, presumably). But even this line ignores the fact that by “shareholder”, we do not just mean a few isolated fat, capitalist bastards in suits; no, we also mean all the millions of people – including people a bit like Ms Moyo – who have savings plans, 401K plans, mutual funds, pension pots, etc. This line of hers also does rather beg the question of what should happen to these profits – should they be taxed in “reinvested” by governments? In several instances, she praises the behaviour of governments, such as oil-rich states, and their massive “sovereign wealth funds”, arguing that these are used to benefit domestic populations. Well they may be in some cases, but even a cursory awareness of public choice economics should alert Ms Moyo to the dangers of corruption, mis-allocation of capital, political favouritism and faddism that often comes when government agencies disburse vast sums. The flashy public spending projects of the past have often brought dubious rewards.
And I just knew I had wasted my aircraft reading time when she scorned Ricardo’s Law of Comparative Advantage, arguing that unless all countries play “fair” (which never happens), then the argument for free trade that the LCA underpins is chucked away.
This argument – that free trade is only beneficial if everyone plays nice – has been demolished time and again. A good example comes from Deepak Lal, in his book, Reviving the Invisible Hand.
Here is a passage:
“a country will benefit from removing its own tariffs and import restrictions even if all its trading partners maintain theirs. For as long as the domestic prices of goods in our country under autarky differ from those at which they can be imported and exported under free trade, the country will be able to obtain the gains from trade both by obtaining imported goods at a lower cost than they are produced at home (the consumption gain) and by specialising in producing and exporting those goods in which it has a comparative advantage and importing the others (the production gain), irrespective of the tariff applied by their trading partners. For these trade restrictions only damage the protectionist country’s welfare, and it would be senseless not to improve one’s own welfare just because someone else is damaging theirs. There is no point throwing rocks into one’s harbour just because others are throwing rocks into theirs. Hence, there is an incontrovertible case for every country to unilaterally adopt free trade, irrespective of the protectionist policies of other countries – with one exception. Suppose that a country is the only producer of some good – say, oil.”
He goes on to explain this case but says that in fact, retaliatory trade practices and other issues take the edge off this argument also.
It is all such a pity. She started well, but I really wish I had read that new Lee Child thriller instead.
I wanted to pass this on to those who might be interested because the Libertarian Alliance, founded by the late Chris R Tame three decades ago, is an organisation through which I got to meet many people, some of whom are now involved in the Samizdata blog, such as Brian Micklethwait, Perry de Havilland and others. This is an interesting development involving Tim Evans, the LA president since Chris’ death five years ago:
After twenty-five enjoyable years of working with the Libertarian Alliance and five as its President Dr. Tim Evans said today that it is now the right time for him to move on from the organisation.”
“I leave the organisation knowing that the Libertarian Alliance has achieved amazing things. Today, the LA is in financial rude health as never before. Its conferences, lectures and seminars are second to none and it freely makes available online 1,000 diverse and scholarly classical liberal and libertarian publications. Moreover, it provides a focal point and network for hundreds of libertarians both in this country and further afield who seek radical free market ideas and debate.”
“As Chief Executive of The Cobden Centre, a Consultant Director at the Adam Smith Institute, Chairman of the Economic Policy Centre, Chairman of Global Health Futures Ltd – not to mention concluding my studies for an MBA – I have decided to refocus my workload. Wanting in particular to spend more time with my family, I wish the LA and its supporters well for the future. For me, libertarianism has always been at its best when it is positive in outlook, methodologically individualist and it seeks to engage and persuade people from many different backgrounds and outlooks. I wish Dr. Sean Gabb, the Committee, and everyone else associated with the organisation the very best for the future.”
“Just before the organisation’s founder and director Dr. Chris Tame died five years ago Sean and I promised him that we would strive to strengthen and grow the organisation. Today, I leave the Presidency knowing that this objective has been fulfilled. I am reassured that the LA now has the potential to further build upon its record of success.”
I won’t presume to speak for Tim, or for Sean Gabb, whom I have known and regarded as friends for a quarter of a century, but this is clearly sad news, even though Tim’s reasons make plenty of sense. I would add one thing that has concerned me about the LA in recent years, which is that much of its public pronouncements, especially by Sean, have tended to focus on a lot of what I would call the “isolationist/nationalist” side of the street, whereas I know that Tim Evans is not really cut from the same ideological cloth. Tim, for example, radiates optimism and enjoyment of the modern world; Sean, as he’d be the first to tell you, is almost blackly pessimistic (although he seems to enjoy it!), and is also a fierce cultural conservative.
Then again, the LA is an organisation that deliberately stresses that it is a broad church and does not insist on any kind of hard “line” on certain issues. I hope that remains the case.
For my part, I really hope that the LA gets less fixated with what I would call “nation-state” issues, which are not always congruent with issues of liberty, or tilting at absurd historical windmills.
“OK, for years, people who claim to be my intellectual betters on foreign policy (and pretty much everything else), and particularly about the Middle East, have been telling me that the root cause of the problems in the Middle East is the “occupation” of disputed territories in the West Bank and Gaza, and that we won’t be able to make any progress without solving that issue. It is what motivates Arab anger, and animates their protests. Well, surely if this is the case, with all of the apparent anger and ongoing revolt in Cairo, we should be seeing many reports on the ground of protesters with angry signs against the Zionist entity, right? Or have I just missed them somehow?”
– Rand Simberg.
I have seen some Sci Fi action scenes in my time, but for sheer, oh-my-god-that’s-incredible-when-can-I-see it? sort of level, this India-made film is extraordinary. Another sign, by the way, of India’s economic prowess, I think.
There are robots, lots of them, and of course, the all-important hot brunette in a tight costume. That’s got your attention, Perry!
(H/T, Boing Boing).
“The moon shot has long been a favorite trope of politicians plugging for new government programs, right up there with the Marshall Plan. It was a wondrous achievement, but it presented a relatively discrete engineering problem. If only reforming education, a complex task involving the crooked timber of humanity here on earth, were as straightforward.”
– Rich Lowry, giving his less than joyous take on the State of the Union address by The One.
I look at this item over at Wired, the technology/culture publication, and think that this is all very geeky, very Sci Fi and very clever, but it also makes me think, as a commenter does on the article, that it is hardly surprising that defence procurement costs are so high, and getting higher. Which is possibly not very smart if government budgets are under so much strain.
Leaving aside current affairs for the second, feast your tired eyes on these absolute beauties of motorcar design. Ralph Lauren certainly has an exceptional collection of classics. My favourite is the mid-60s Ferrari.
There is a nice piece by Don Surber (H/T, Instapundit) seeking to explain the hatred that is felt among some folk for Sarah Palin. He obviously focuses on the attitudes of Americans, but I’d wager that some of that applies also to non-Americans who hate or despise her in much the same way that such people also got riled by Ronald Reagan’s folksy speaking manner and ignored the wisdom and intelligence of that man. It is a good piece.
It got me thinking about why certain politicians, even if they espouse views which are not necessarily all that outrageous or objectionable, provoke feelings of such hatred in some quarters. In the UK, for example, the last person I think who was really hated in the Palinesque sort of way was our own Margaret Thatcher. There are certain things in common – although not ones I would stretch too far – such as that they came from unfashionable parts of their countries (Lincolnshire/Alaska); made a point about religion in their lives (they are obviously nutters then); happy marriages (which provokes a strange kind of resentment among some folk); a certain middle-brow, cultivated lack of pretension; the pitch and tone of their voices (Maggie sounded very arch early on), and so on.
Add in the fact that they are women in a male-dominated arena of politics, and the reason for hatred grows. And I also think that for a lot of so-called feminists, a woman who espouses “family values”, supports capitalism, etc, is seen as letting the side down. This rather ignores what we Samizdata writers would say, that free markets, when freed of state interference, are usually very good news for women, since bigotry against women, like any other group, is a cost.
There is also something quite useful about Sarah Palin in this regard. Although I do not agree with all her views, at least as far as I know what they are, I usually find that the sort of people who say they hate or despise her are nobs of the first rank. So it is a sort of useful marker: if I find myself talking to someone and her name comes up and the reaction is as described, I can usually pigeonhole that person as someone to be avoided.
And Palin has great legs. The sources of hate must run very deep indeed.
The other night, when I had the TV on, I saw that one of the programmes, featuring the BBC top economics and business correspondent, Robert Peston, was all about the financial panic of recent years. Oh dear, I thought, I can just imagine the usual line about how it was all the fault of greedy bankers, insufficient regulation, “unregulated laissez faire capitalism”, and on and on. Well, not quite. Yes, some of those elements were there, but there was also quite a lot of sophisticated explanation of how a combination of forces – leverage, “too big to fail bailout protection, over-confidence in newfangled ideas of risk management and misalignment of incentives for bankers – combined to create the storm. I would have liked to see more focus on the role of ultra-low central bank interest rates in creating the crisis, as well as government intervention in the housing market and through deposit insurance, but to be fair, this was mentioned, several times. There was little in the show with which someone like Kevin Dowd, recently referred to here, would dispute, although I imagine Kevin might want to make more about the vexed issue of ownership of banks and limited liability.
And about three-quarters of the way into the show was Toby Baxendale, founder of the Cobden Centre, the organisation founded last year to flag up the problems caused by central banking fiat money, and which sets out alternative ideas, such as the possibility of giving depositors in no-notice cash accounts the right to demand that their cash is properly looked after, not lent out for months in a risky play. (Yup, it is that pesky fractional reserve banking issue again). Toby was very forceful and his views were treated respectfully by Peston. There was no sneering.
In short, this was and is a pretty good programme as far as the MSM goes. I give it about 8 out of 10. Yes, I am not drunk.
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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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