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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Here is part of a press release from the Institute of Economic Affairs, the London-based free market think tank. I could not agree more with what Mark Littlewood, IEA director general, says:
“An overstaffed and overpaid public sector should be the first to face cuts in government spending. It is complete fantasy to pretend that substantial cuts are not required, and it is the public who should feel angry at being expected to support a union campaign which would see their tax money continue to be squandered.
“Public sector workers earn, on average, over £2,000 more than their private sector equivalents1. This is in addition to the more generous pensions they receive and the enormously reduced historical risk of being fired.
“A reduction in the absurdly generous terms for workers in the inefficient public sector is long overdue. It is not an attack on the poor or oppressed, it is an attack on the privileged.”
In a nutshell, much of the UK’s present economic plight can be understood in the light of how, since 1997, the public sector payroll – including all those “private sector” jobs dependent on public contracts, exploded. Pretty much most, if not all, of the big spending rises over which Gordon Brown presided were gobbled up by this enormous rise in public employment. Now of course, if you work in the public sector, you will believe, or at least want to believe, that your job is of great importance, and that those selfish Gradgrinds in Westminster and Whitehall deserve to be attacked. But the point needs to be made that the private sector, increasingly weighed down by taxes and regulations, cannot support this state of affairs; it is an absurdity, as some in the trades union movement claim, to somehow argue that cutting all these public sector jobs will somehow threaten Britain’s economic recovery. Any recovery that relies on an artificial support machine of massive public spending and employment is not a recovery worth having. And remember that what we should be aiming for is to be better off, not simply employed in pointless or destructive “jobs”. If cutting such public sector positions frees up capital for something likely to generate greater wealth overall, that’s great. The question arises, clearly, as to whether this government has the stones to say this over and over. The signs are not particularly encouraging.
I have been thoroughly enjoying reading this book about how the Allies sought – very cleverly – to throw the Nazis off the scent ahead of the invasion of Italy, hence saving potentially thousands of Allied soldiers’ lives. An extraordinary cast of characters is involved, conjuring up the sort of plot-lines that would do credit to any writer of spy fiction. And indeed several of the protagonists on the Allied side were novelists with vivid imaginations.
A current controversy intrudes. Back in WW2, the Allies had the priceless knowledge via the code-breakers of Enigma about the enemy’s plans, and even more vitally, the fact of having cracked Enigma was kept a secret for many years under the various pieces of legislation controlling such matters both during the war and into the Cold War era. So when I read today about the latest moves by the Wikileaks website to publish all kinds of classified military information on the Web, I wonder about what would have happened if, say, a Wikileaks kind of outfit had been around during WW2 and had stumbled upon the kind of facts as described in the book I link to?
Of course, if we had had the internet back in 1939 or earlier, and had the ability to spread information and views around outside the conventional channels of the MSM that existed back then, maybe this would also have been used to weaken or undermine the enemy side as well. (Would a Hitler have prospered in the Information Age?). I remember that in David Friedman’s recent interesting book (also available in an online form) about various trends, he addresses both sides of this question: what happens to privacy in an age of good encryption and ever-increasing attempts by states and other groups to put folk under surveillance.
But even so, it should trouble anyone concerned with security to think that a Wikileaks outfit can put out this sort of material and seems to have no compunctions about doing so. And while Wikileaks may think it is performing a sort of public service, if we are in a war for national survival, say, and we use deception techniques to win, and some self-appointed characters decide to blow the lid on those techniques, then what should the response be? In my view, this is a treasonable act or at the very least an act of aiding and abetting enemy combatants. It goes beyond, I think, the sort of opposition and free speech, including the right to condemn what a government is doing, during wartime. (And by the way, even under anarchism, secrets might be of importance to certain people, so it is no answer to say that such issues are made redundant if we get rid of states).
And it is not just about issues of national security that I think this website is running amok on. Take the world of banking. Some time ago, for instance, Wikileaks published data on individuals who have accounts at an Icelandic bank. Now no doubt the website will claim that it was acting in the public interest, but there are perfectly honest reasons for why people have private bank accounts, such as not giving out valuable information to oppressive governments/criminals (but I repeat myself, Ed) trying to grab that money, or kidnap them for ransom, etc.
And perhaps the man who runs Wikileaks should be glad that some of the older punishments for treason no longer are used in this country. Very glad, in fact.
“Colonialism today is a dead issue. No one cares about it except the man in the White House. He is the last anticolonial. Emerging market economies such as China, India, Chile and Indonesia have solved the problem of backwardness; they are exploiting their labor advantage and growing much faster than the U.S. If America is going to remain on top, we have to compete in an increasingly tough environment. But instead of readying us for the challenge, our President is trapped in his father’s time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father’s dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.”
– Dinesh D’Souza.
Those mid-term elections in November should be interesting.
Christ but I hate the BBC. This morning – probably out of some masochistic urge – I had the BBC Breakfast News channel on. I suppose my only defence is that I wanted to see those goals that England had contrived to score against that footballing colossus, Switzerland. Anyway, one item that came up was the issue of a proposed nationwide minimum drinking price for booze. There is already one in Scotland . There is a very high chance that such a minimum price, which flagrantly breaches the rights of sellers to flog their stuff at whatever price they think fit, will come into law.
Now it is no surprise, really, that the BBC tends to act as unwitting or even witting voice of government-favoured conventional wisdom, but the interviewer on this morning’s show who was giving a representative of the alcohol retailing industry a hard time was particularly bad. This is the guy I mean, by the name of Simon Jack. His biography states he worked as a decade as an investment banker, so presumably the BBC thinks this gives him a terrific insight into the world of business. Well, I don’t know about that – it may be that if this guy was any good at that job he’d be still working in the financial sector and earning zillions. Or maybe he realised that his heart was not in it and preferred to act as early-morning interrogator of businesses instead. This character seriously gets up my nose: a lot of his questioning is hectoring and demogogic, with questions such as: “But how can you defend your profit margins, Mr Evil Banker?”
This morning, he asked about how can the booze industry justify selling product at below cost of production. Surely, he said, this is designed to entice us poor moppets into buying lots of liquor and drinking ourselves into a stupor? Well, if Mr Jack had been awake during his college days while studying some economics, he’d realise that firms routinely sell some items at such cheap prices, even below production costs, to encourage a new market, whether it be for booze, cars or whatever. Free samples and all that. But obviously such pricing policies could not occur indefinitely: firms wish to make a profit. It was particularly weak for the industry lobby man not to state as much, and to assert that the industry is entitled to set its prices how it wants, and that anyway, why should not people be able to buy at prices mutually agreeable to them and the sellers – the vast majority of alcohol consumers do not turn into George Best or Oliver Reed and do not vomit over the pavement. But of course the BBC now endlessly repeats the charge that cheap drink is turning our city centres into beery nightmares and therefore, the rest of us should have to pay more for whatever is deemed to be causing the problem.
The BBC is leading the way as a news organisation that constantly hammers the booze industry, just as, in times past, happened to the tobacco industry. And the BBC Breakfast show, with its mix of hard news and what is a lot of fluffy, lifestyle features with lots of chats on the sofa, is a particularly persistent channel for this sort of temperance advocacy. In some ways, with its red sofas and pretend air of jollity in the morning, it is far more dangerous in this regard than snarling Jeremy Paxman in the evenings. At least you can usually switch channels to a late-night movie and watch Clint or whoever blowing bad people to glory.
Here is a long(ish) article stating that because financial investors think the UK government is serious about slashing the public deficit, this is keeping the prices of UK bonds high – which also means the interest rate that firms pay to borrow long-term is less than in a number of other countries.
Obviously, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. We are now entering a period when the various government departments of Cameron’s administration need to deliver with real cuts, rather than simply talk about them. But it does seem that there is a real difference of perception in how markets view the UK (trying to cut the deficit) and the US (spend, spend, spend!). Other things being equal, it will cost a dollar-denominated corporate borrower more to get financing than a sterling-based one. The UK economy will benefit. Just one more reason to ignore the siren songs of the Keynesians.
In the previous posting by Brian on the alleged match-fixing scam involving Pakistan’s cricket team, one commenter called Jim made the excellent point that gambling is illegal in Pakistan. It is, as the practice is banned under Shariah law – but there is a vast and thriving underground gambling industry there and indeed across the Indian sub-continent.
Now, as we libertarians like to point out, if you ban consenting activities between adults – such as betting on sports – then when such activities are driven underground, criminals get involved, with all the sort of consequences we are now writing about. That is not to say, of course, that if gambling were legalised in Pakistan, that the match-fixer gangsters would hang up their hats and do something else. But it would, in my view, help a great deal to drive some of these scum away.
Americans bored by all this talk of cricket might recall that baseball has had its problems in the past, as have other sports too. This Wikipedia entry is worth reading (and maybe improving).
And there are certain parallels in this issue with insider dealing in financial markets. On one level, I think that it should not be made illegal since it is difficult to work out the difference, sometimes, between a trader who is just quick off the mark to exploit new information and someone who happens to be privy to inside information. Arguablym, distortions caused by insider dealing eventually get arbitraged out by other investors. However, in the case of private stock markets, they are, as private institutions, perfectly entitled to set the rules so that trading is seen to be “fair” and open, if only to encourage investors to buy and sell stocks who might otherwise have been cynical about insiders getting all the best deals. It is like a private sports association setting down rules against things such as use of enhancement drugs, and so on. So long as no-one is forced to compete against their will, no-one can carp about the rules, and the adoption of such rules draws in more people and interest.
Back to the insider dealing point: As more people play in a market if the rules are seen to be fair, then this encourages greater liquidity and reduces the cost of capital. With the match-fixing issue, the costs of not punishing wrongdoers is something similar: it will drive away people from the sport due to greater cynicism, and hence reduce revenues, investment in new grounds and facilities, and so on. Cynicism, whether in sports, business or elsewhere, is a sort of deadweight cost on an activity by driving away fans, investors, etc.
A pretty fair summary of what the Tea Party movement means for current US politics and the races leading up to the mid-term elections. For non-US readers who are unfamiliar with all this, the article is not a bad introduction. At least the Reuters report does not write it off as full of racist nutballs or religious bigots, and actually focuses on the anti-tax, anti-spending viewpoint of the Tea Partiers.
I think that in the light of the recent controversy about the place possibly known as the Cordoba Center near Ground Zero, the real cause for annoyance on the part of any New Yorker, surely, is why it has taken so long to get going with any serious construction down there. This Wikipedia entry on the Empire State Building, for example, suggests that the building in Midtown was erected in a space of only a few years. That was in the early 1930s – what was so radically different then?
I suspect that if we already had an impressive and dignified piece of architecture in the southern tip of Manhattan, the row about what happens to nearby buildings would not have erupted so much. It seems that planning and political issues are at stake here – after all, places such as Dubai and various parts of Asia put up skyscrapers with great speed these days.
Or maybe the intention all along is that Ground Zero should remain a flat, empty space of land, purely in the form of a place for remembrance.
I came across this article, which reads like a plotline from a Robert Ludlum thriller. Gloriously bonkers.
(H/T, David Thompson).
“So Obama, Biden, Pelosi, and Reid are all on Air Force One. Suddenly it malfunctions and crashes. Who survives? America.”
From a commenter on this item.
Actually, the logic applies to most countries and their governments. Parts of our MSM like to believe that if the leader of X or Y has a problem, dies or whatever, that the nation will be plunged into chaos. Not so; it is a mark of a healthy country that the passing of a leader, even in tragic circumstances such as those affecting Poland recently, is not a massive blow to the country per se.
Tangentially, this book by Gene Healy about the “cult” of the modern presidency is worth reading.
“Which former president does Barack Obama most resemble? When it comes to handling oil spills, the answer is Richard Nixon. Like our current president, Nixon too presided over a major offshore oil blowout—the three million gallon Santa Barbara spill of 1969. And, like Mr. Obama, Nixon responded by whipping up anti-oil sentiment and passing a sweeping moratorium on drilling. This parallel is important to keep in mind, because Nixon’s reaction helped cause the worst energy crisis in American history.”
Alex Epstein.
Alas, the rest of the article is behind the WSJ subscriber firewall (I wonder how that is working out for Mr Murdoch, Ed).
In the intifada that began in 2000, Palestinian terrorism killed more than 1,000 Israelis. As a portion of U.S. population, that would be 42,000, approaching the toll of America’s eight years in Vietnam. During the onslaught, which began 10 Septembers ago, Israeli parents sending two children to a school would put them on separate buses to decrease the chance that neither would return for dinner. Surely most Americans can imagine, even if their tone-deaf leaders cannot, how grating it is when those leaders lecture Israel on the need to take “risks for peace.”
– George Will.
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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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