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.
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Like many other people trying to plan arrangements over Christmas, I am keeping a close eye on the weather reports. I have the grim task of driving to East Anglia on Tuesday for a family funeral; on Thursday, I am due to be flying to southern Germany to stay with relations but have no idea whether that is likely to happen. But at least I am able to be in the comfort of my home. Thousands of people are not so lucky.
Watching the BBC’s rolling news channel today, I listened as a woman, who has been on board a BA flight to Pakistan, described how her aircraft has been standing on a runway, moving no-where for about 6 hours. Passengers were suffering panic attacks; the cabin was very hot and there was no water to drink; and of course there are few toilet facilities. One thing that the woman said struck me: the passengers were not allowed to try and get off the plane. If they did, she said, they’d be arrested. The staff were to all in intents and purposes holding passangers hostage, a nice inversion of a hijacking.
It seems to me that this situation is absurd. Given the privileged position of an airline operating under such laws governing international flight, there ought to be a clear “duty of care” on such airlines to provide all decent condtions, including things like food, water and so on, for passengers. If they cannot do this on the plane, then the passengers are entitled to ask to get off, go to a building and wait for developments.
What we are talking about are hostage conditions. I’d be interested to see if the passengers could join together and bring a lawsuit against the airline, and what the outcome would be.
The weather has been severe – and flight safety is a key concern, but the airlines are having a bad Christmas. And it does not look to be getting better any time soon. As far as I am concerned, I cannot wait to see the end of December soon enough.
Estate taxes – or what are called inheritance taxes in the UK – have been an issue in the public sphere lately. Russell Roberts, who writes over at the Cafe Hayek blog – a fine one – has an article criticising such taxes in the New York Times, typically a bastion of Big Government “liberalism” (to use that word in its corrupted American sense). Check out the subsequent comment thread. Here are a couple of my favourites for sheer, butt-headed wrongness:
“There should be 100% confiscation of all wealth at death; except for a family owned business, not incorporated! Passing on wealth is a huge negative for society and probably and even larger negative for those who get the moola; they generally end up with pretty wasted lives! There is no value to passing on wealth except for the egos of the passees!! And there should be a liquidation of all existing foundations, trusts, and other tax avoidance schemes as well! I know so many trustees and administrators who have no economic value whatsoever; and most of these things just perpetuate the arrogance of the founders!”
“chaotican”, from New Mexico.
Here’s another, from someone called “jmfree3”:
Finally, there is the big government is intrusive arguement, which is most commonly made by cold-hearted conservatives (are there any empathetic conservatives or is it wrung out of you all in Young Republican meetings?). Wanting the most greedy people in America to be able to keep the fruits of their greed is not really defensible unless you believe, as most conservatives do, that people who cannot help themselves should be left to die in squalor before the government takes one penny from the more fortunate to help them. Fortunately, liberals care more for there fellow human beings and fight for those who cannot fight for themselves (which is how I know most Democrats in Congress are NOT liberals). After all, isn’t there something in the Bible about “as you treat the least of these”?
Okay, there are other comments from people which are more sensible, such as making the point that there are other examples, besides estate taxes, of taxing people twice. The double-taxation aspect of inheritance tax is not, in my view, the worst thing about it. Rather, it is a tax on the maker of a bequest; it effectively says, “We, the State, are going to ban you from giving all your legitimately owned money to whoever you want, and we demand that a large chunk of it should return to the State that nourishes you and protects you”. If you read the comment from “jmfree03”, that is pretty much what such people believe. They don’t, not in any rooted sense, believe in the idea of private property and respecting the wishes of the owners of said.
Now, of course, the NYT readership is not typical of US public opinion as a whole, if the recent mid-term Congressional elections are a guide. I would also wager that while there has always been a strong egalitarian strain in American life – more so than here – that it has tended to avoid a general denigration of someone just because they are born to rich parents. After all, everyone born in the USA these days is, on this basis, a very lucky person compared with say, someone born in the former Soviet empire, or large bits of Africa, for example.
I remember, many years ago before I started this blogging business, having a chat with Brian Micklethwait and we commented on the size and power of the left in parts of the US, especially in the big universities and other such places. A theory of Brian’s was that it is precisely because the US is so fabulously rich in its mostly capitalist way, that it can afford to support a large class of people inclined to attack it.
It is, of course, ironic that the left supports confiscation of inheritance, since a large element of the left in the US can be described as “trustafarians”; over here, as is sometimes noted, a lot of the Greens – such as Jonathan Porritt or Zac Goldsmith – are born to money and privilege. The Toynbees and the rest are fairly well minted.
Here is one such article here, back in October 2007, that addresses this whole idea that inheriting lots of money gives someone an “unfair” advantage in life over someone else, as if life were like a pre-defined race, such as the Tour de France. But that gets things entirely wrong. It is the fallacy of the zero-sum approach to life generally.
And here is another article by me on the same subject, responding to a letter in the Times (of London) newspaper.
“American conservatives who want to blame pet villains like the public-employee unions for the insolvency wave in the U.S. are missing the forest for the trees. Those unions are doing nothing but rational minimaxing within a system where the incentives are broken at a much deeper level. And it’s no coincidence that the same problems are becoming acute simultaneously nearly worldwide, because the underlying problem transcends all details of any individual democracy’s history or particular political arrangements. Between 1880 and 1943, beginning with Bismarck and ending with Roosevelt’s New Deal, the modern West abandoned the classical-liberal model of a minimal, night-watchman state. But the redistributionist monster that replaced it was unsustainable, and it’s now running out of other peoples’ money. We are living in the beginning of its end.”
– Eric Raymond.
If you have friends with a fondness for great, acerbic wit and writing, then get them this collection by H.L. Mencken, the “Sage of Baltimore”. Here is a good article in the Times (of London) about a nicely bound double volume of his writings.
I’d love to have seen him get to work on Obama, iDave, and for that matter, Silvio Berlusconi.
Reflecting on the Wikileaks issue – see Perry’s post on Samizdata on Saturday – it occurs to me that one group of folk who must be a bit miffed by the leaks are parts of the anti-war side, especially those of a conspiracy theory cast of mind. For example, where is the leaked memo that “proves” there was some evil Jewish/neo-con/international banker/armsdealer/insert villain of choice conspiracy to blow up the WTC and then blame it on bin Laden? And I note that one of the leaked cables suggests that the Saudis are very alarmed by the geo-political ambitions of Iran, and want the West to contain it. Well, that surely fits with what a lot of those supposedly bloodthirsty neocons around George W Bush had been saying. And so on.
The leaks have done damage, no doubt about it, and unlike Perry, I am not so sangine about the overall impact of Wikileaks as far as rolling back the state is concerned. This is one of those things I find hard to be able to prove conclusively one way or the other; generally speaking, the more openness, the better, and the fewer hiding places for governments, the better. I also think, however, that leaks of secrets that may harm self defence efforts of genuinely liberal states against terrorist groups, if they occur, are enough to send such leakers to jail on the grounds of being reckless in offering, however unintentionally, aid to such groups.
But it is, nonetheless interesting that none of the dottier conspiracies swirling around 9/11 have yet to appear. The reason is that such conspiracy theories are bunk.
Jim White at the Daily Telegraph has a good piece about the recent unjust – in my view – sacking of Newcastle Utd manager Chris Hughton. Apparently, Hughton’s “mistake” was that he was a “nice” person: straight-talking, honourable, considerate towards his players and unwilling to suck up to the owners of the club. White points out that it is silly to suggest that “nice guys” cannot do well in sports management or sports more generally, and cites examples such as Andrew Strauss, the England cricket captain, whom I have met and thought was a very likeable person; tennis gods Rafal Nadal and Roger Federer, two gents who are brilliant players, and for that matter, the late Sir Bobby Robson, football management great and all-round fine man. I hear stories that Sir Alex Ferguson, the gruff-appearing Scotsman who manages Manchester United, takes a fatherly concern for his players, especially the younger ones. Another example of a nice guy doing well in sports management is Harry Redknapp, currently doing great things at Spurs and presiding over a very entertaining team.
I think the same point about decent people able to achieve greatness because, not despite, their niceness applies in the realms of business, too. Generally speaking, some of the best business people in my experience are certainly hardworking and committed, even aggressive, but they are not nasty pieces of work. That is how anti-businesspeople imagine business people should be. Alan Sugar, the front man for The Apprentice TV show, hams it up by coming across as a total monster, which is presumably what the TV producers want. In reality, any businessman who behaved like that would lose a lot of talented staff. Being a tosser is not a great business strategy, as far as I can see, but there obviously exceptions.
In politics and sport, I can, of course, see why aggression, even nastiness, can be a winning strategy given that politics and sports are, in some ways, zero-sum. If politician A achieves office, he or she does so by pushing B out of the way. And that sort of eye-gouging gets worse the greater the stakes are, such as in totalitarian systems. Hence FA Hayek’s point, in the Road To Serfdom, about why “the worst get on top”.
Anyway, I hope Hughton gets another job in football management from a club that values his qualities. No wonder Newcastle Utd fans are steamed.
Tim Worstall has a new book out, Chasing Rainbows, which sets out what he regards as the economic fallacies of much of the Green movement. Such fallacies, he argues, actually get in the way of solving or at least trying to handle the genuine problems that may exist.
What is good about Tim’s book is that he is not some sort of cliched “denier”; he does not base his argument on the idea that AGW is some sort of evil collectivist con-trick or piece of doomsterish nonsense (although I am sure some commenters will want to raise that point). Rather, he says if there are problems caused by a buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere, and there are costs of such problems, then let’s use the tools of economics. For instance, he talks about carbon taxes. I am not a fan of taxes, but I can see a certain logic. They are far better than carbon credits and carbon trading, in my view.
Like Nigel Lawson, I see the idea of a market in carbon credits not as a solution to AGW but as something with great potential for fraud. The question I have about carbon tax, however, is what happens to the revenues. If they are levied by nation states, then clearly there will be demands for such taxes to be “harmonised” and levied by some sort of single organisation. And then the question arises as to what happens to such revenues?
Much of the book bears many of the trademarks of Tim Worstall’s own excellent blog: lots of data flecked with his caustic wit, often at the expense of such buffoons like George Monbiot and Jonathan Porritt, and on tax, the appalling Richard Murphy, who gets a solid going over at least once a day. There is a touch of PJ O’Rourke in how Tim likes to use a quip to make a serious point. I particularly like the way he gets hold of important concepts, such as the Law of Comparative Advantage, or the idea of opportunity costs, using examples of how forcing households to recycle waste imposes unpaid labour costs, which if added up, can be shown to represent a large cost. Being a good student of the great French classical liberal Frederick Bastiat, Tim understands the point about “what is seen and what is unseen” – understanding that the visible costs of environmental degradation need to be balanced against the unseen costs of trying to deal with it. Bastiat is one of those writers who ought, in a sane world, to be on the compulsory reading list of every school pupil.
The central message of this book is that there are problems, but there are also rational approaches to them, and that the Green movement, or at least its most collectivist parts, are blocking rational reforms. It is a similar point to that made by Matt Ridley in his book, the Rational Optimist, to which I have referred before. By their one-eyed focus on AGW alarmism, and by adopting a reactionary, command and control approach to the issue, they are blocking sensible alternatives, and also crowding out other issues, such as alleviation of poverty, which can be made worse by such foolish ventures as subsidies to biofuels, for example.
Chasing Rainbows makes for a good stocking filler this Christmas. Go on, do it for the children and for Tim’s bank balance.
I have been reading and enjoying Matt Ridley’s recently published book, The Rational Optimist, which shoots down a number of doomsterish ideas with great aplomb. For instance, he zaps the idea that we somehow reduce our “carbon footprint” by not importing foodstuffs from overseas. The international division of labour, he argues, is good for the planet, not harmful to it. The book is crammed with data to back up such points.
Ridley also has a blog based on the book, and it is worth bookmarking, in my view. Whatever his shortcomings as the former head of failed UK lender Northern Rock, Ridley is a fine writer and debunker of fashionable nonsense. More power to him.
I suppose that if someone asked me what is the subject that libertarians get into the most debates about with each other, I would probably say foreign policy (ie, should or would a libertarian polity even have a “policy” at all?); but then I might say that in second or third place would be intellectual property rights. It never fails to get the fur flying, metaphorically anyway. Here is an example of a fierce opponent of IP who is also an equally robust defender of property rights in everything else, at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Stephen Kinsella.
My SQOTD a few days ago created a comment thread where IP came up. Now, I am not going to reprise the arguments for or against IP – here is a great essay by Tim Sandefur on the subject and here is another defending IP – but ask a slightly different type of question from readers, which is: what happens if state-created IP rights no longer existed? Could or would such things ever exist under any kind of Common Law system? How would new, potentially immensely useful ideas, come into being if folk could immediately copy them?
It is not good enough, I think, for a person to respond: “well, if writing books/making music/etc no longer pays, then take up bricklaying or perform live, or teach kids for a fee, or whatever.” I do not find such answers entirely satisfactory. In the age of the Information Economy, when so many people create value not by hard physical labour but increasingly, by manipulating ideas and concepts, it seems glib, to say the least, to shrug one’s shoulders about this.
So here are some ideas I have about what would happen. Remember, this post is not about my defending or attacking IP, but posing the question of what happens in a non-IP world, and whether we like the results:
More prize competitions to stimulate inventions, such as the Ansari X-Prize. Consistent libertarian opponents of IP should, of course, want the prize-winning funds to come from private donors and businesses, not the state. I happen to think that such prizes are a great way to foster innovation anyway.
Drugs: we might see a fall in the number of drugs being brought to market, if copying could be done. Bringing drugs to market is notoriously expensive; of course, libertarian anti-IPers might retort that a lot of the cost is caused by regulatory agencies such as the FDA in the US and their international counterparts, and they have a point; even so, reputable drug firms do not want to kill their patients, so trials and tests can take many years, even in a purely laissez faire environment. So we might have fewer drugs being sold and developed from what would otherwise be the case. We cannot measure this shortfall, but it seems a fairly reasonable guess that such inventions might decline. IP opponents need to address this, or at least state that this is a cost that “we” (whoever “we” are) are willing to pay. (This is a bit like the argument that getting rid of limited liability companies could harm, rather than help, economic growth but that the price is worth paying if we remove other problems allegedly connected to LL).
Contracts. Some firms, fearing that staff might defect and take blueprints of ideas to competitors, might insist on non-disclosure rules on staff in the event that they leave. This might actually lead to pretty draconian contracts being enforced in certain sectors, such as drugs and software, though not always easy to enforce in practice. Again, this would depend on the circumstances of individual firms, the sectors they are in, barriers to entry, etc. But some firms might be able to draw up such contracts particularly if the supply of labour for such jobs exceeded present supply.
Secrecy and concealment. Some firms, such as makers of radical new inventions, would go to far greater lengths to build them in such a way that the design was concealed, making it harder for people to get hold of the object, break it apart and reverse engineer it. It may still happen anyway, but firms might go to all kinds of ploys to try and make their stuff harder to copy, not always in ways we would like. Such efforts are a cost; again, is this a cost that outweighs the alleged negatives of IP?
And as a matter of practical reality, we might see some individuals get so enraged at having their ideas copied that this could get quite nasty. If a composer of a piece of music sees his score copied by someone who cannot even be bothered to acknowledge the source, and who performs it live and earns a fortune, then the composer might find out ways of seriously ruining the career of the performer, such as by libelling that person, blackmailing them, even physical violence. Do not forget that libel laws, for instance, are in part a way that the legal system tried to prevent folk killing each other in duels over affairs of honour. No-one likes the plagiarist, and opponents of IP need to accept that such conflicts might arise. I am not saying that the example of the irate composer would be justified in what he might do, but we are talking about likely outcomes, whether we approve of them or not.
One other consequence of a world without IP is that it makes enforcement of property rights in non-rivalrous stuff – such as land, movable goods – even more important in economic life than it is now. Property is inseparable from wealth creation, since if we cannot have the security of knowing that we can build up a store of wealth, then we cannot plan ahead and deal with our fellows in peaceful, voluntary ways. Good fences and good neighbours, and Englishmen in their castles, etc, etc.
Anyway, comment away. Play nice in the sand-box.
“What you need to know about Ireland’s economic crisis is that it’s not about Ireland: a small country of slightly more than 4 million people and an economy of roughly $200 billion. It’s about Europe. For decades, Europe has pursued two great political projects. One is the democratic welfare state, designed to improve economic justice through various social safety nets. The other is European unity, symbolized by the creation in 1999 of a single currency — the euro — now used by 16 countries. The fact that both contributed to Ireland’s troubles suggests that Europe could be on the brink of a broader crisis.”
Robert Samuelson.
He’s a steady-as-she-goes, moderate voice of, well, good moderate sense. And he’s just said that the welfare state and the creation of the euro are going to tip Europe over a cliff. When Tory MPs said this a decade ago, they were called “swivel-eyed extremists”, and in Mrs Thatcher”s case, deemed to be insane.
“The Wikileaks story is great fun. The embarrassment of others always is. But however much the Guardian, the New York Times and Julian Assange assure us that this represents a shattering blow to every assumption we hold about foreign relations, the fact remains that it’s a collection of little substance that will do nothing to reshape geo-politics. The Saudis would like someone to whack Iran? No kidding. Afghanistan is run by crooks? Really? Hillary Clinton would like to know a lot more about the diplomats she is negotiating against? You surprise me. The Russian government may have links to organised crime? Pass the smelling salts, Petunia. The Americans are secretly whacking al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen? What, you thought the Yemenis were doing it? Muammar Qaddafi has a full time, pneumatic Ukrainian ‘nurse’? Nice one. Diplomats are terrified of Pakistan’s nukes? Me too. And so on, ad infinite boredom.”
Ben Brogan, The Daily Telegraph.
I had some thoughts on the Wikileaks outfit a short time ago. As Brogan says, none of the revelations seem be dangerous in terms of revealing, say, agents in the field who might now be in fear of their lives, nor has it betrayed deception measures of the type designed to foil the enemy, as in leaking cipher codes. All I would say is that Mr Assange had better get himself some decent personal security. He’s pissed off the likes of the Saudis. Very unclever.
I rather like this habit of economists trying to put their own money on the line in making certain predictions. David Henderson has an item about it. It adds a certain frisson to the joustings between different camps. The most famous bet of all, of course, is the one between the late Julian L Simon and Paul Ehrlich. The latter lost his bet that the price of commodities would rise over a certain period (they did not) and he declined to accept another bet for another decade. Poor loser, I say.
I would have liked to have seen the odds back in 2008 that Obama would likely be only a one-term president, or that one, or possibly two, nations could be driven from the euro-zone by say, 2011/12.
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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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