“What’s really going on, I think, is that the nature of class war has changed. The old virus has mutated. The old social and political divisions have given way to two new classes — rather as on the trains. Those in economy are most of us, paying for the comforts of those in first class. And those in first class are the new political class — all those who owe their advancement and their security and their pensions and their privileges not to their backgrounds or their talents, or even necessarily their political parties, but to the state and our taxes.”
|
|||||
|
Patrick Crozier has an interesting list of things that might disappear if AGW alarmism, now very much on the defensive, loses support from policymakers. Here are a few suggestions from me about products that might wane or go into defensive mode: Carbon-trading hedge funds and other financial firms trying to make money out of cap-and-trade rules. Alas, I don’t expect the alarmism theme to diminish in Hollywood movies or BBC documentaries. Mind you, as I said in a comment on one of Brian Micklethwait’s posts the other day, you know the prevailing climate of opinion (excuse the pun) has changed depending on the kind of villain chosen for a Bond movie. When they cast a deep Green scientist as a baddie, and put the villain’s lair in a bunker in deepest East Anglia, we’ll have won. Suggestions welcome. February 23rd, 2010 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Back into the Westminster Village. Readers may have already seen the news reports alleging that Gordon Brown bullied members of his own staff in Downing Street (his office, it should be said, denies such claims). Apparently, a charity that runs a sort of hotline service took a call or calls from folk at Number 10 pleading for help. The issue threatens to turn into a major political storm. On the BBC Breakfast News this morning, one of the presenters was trying quite hard to put the charity on the defensive but the charity adamantly backed up the claim that complaints of bullying had been received. It did not, it should be noted, state that it believed Brown was in the wrong. Some may say that harping on such matters misses the “Big picture”: should it matter whether a prime minister is a decent person to work for or is a total jerk? I think it does matter, just as it matters when it turns out that so-called climate scientists fabricate evidence and then try and lie about it, or bully or generally try to intimidate anyone who disagrees. It matters, in other words, that some of the people that we might disagree with in our ideological battles are shits and liars. For one of the emotional tactics that collectivists of various hues have used over the ages is that “We are good people.” To be an AGW skeptic, for instance, is not just to be wrong, it is a sign that you are a Bad Person. To have disagreed with socialism was, for a long period of time, also a sign that you were “bad” in some way, or that you failed in terms of compassion, etc. Mr Brown is a man who goes on a lot about “values”: indeed, he waves his morally excellent beliefs around like a badge. So to find out that he allegedly bullied junior staff who might be reluctant to answer back is a useful fact to know about. This point should not be pressed too far. After all, people whom I regard as being broadly on the side of the angels can sometimes be hard work and be rude. But it is interesting, I think, that a person known to be tough as a debater and sometimes rude to cabinet colleagues, as was the case with Mrs Thatcher, was well known for treating her staff in Downing Street with great kindness and consideration, according to various accounts that I have read. In the end, I think it matters in how a powerful person treats those who are not powerful. On that basis, the stories coming out about Brown are very damaging indeed. This could be an interesting week in UK politics. Update: I see that Rod Liddle has suggested that the alleged victims of workplace bullying grow a bit of backbone. I guess he has a bit of point, but Mr Liddle would presumably draw the line when an employer starts throwing physical objects at staff, causing potential injury. Many years ago, I used to hear stories about a news editor for a regional publication who would hurl typewriters at staff, lose his temper uncontrollably, etc. In that case I think an employee should not only sue, but if necessary, hit the employer in self defence. February 22nd, 2010 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Here the most fundamental relevant principle is the one discovered by Bastiat: economic value lies in service; an economic exchange is an exchange of services, each valued more highly by its beneficiary than the alternative situation in which the service is not performed. We are accustomed to talking about “goods and services”, of course. But the distinction, while perfectly all right in its place, does not reflect anything fundamental – rather, it obscures what is fundamental. When A buys some object, x, from B, what he gets from B is the right to use x. That is what it is to “have” x, in normative terms.” Jan Narveson. His essay – which touches on an old bugbear of mine (!) – nicely slices through the fallacies that people engage in when they disparage services as opposed to manufacturing or other, more supposedly “real” kinds of wealth, as happened on the thread in this article. February 18th, 2010 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
Over at the Adam Smith Institute blog is this nice item on a recent performance of s Tom Stoppard play, touching on the themes of oppression under the old Soviet Union. Apparently, as the ASI commenter notes, this makes some theatre reviewers a bit sniffy, since all this stuff about the USSR is so, well, dated, dahling. As the blog points out, it is not. The kind of issues that arose under the Soviet Empire are as relevant now as they were during the Cold War. Some of the names have changed a bit, that’s all. Talking of dramatists, here is an old post of mine about David Mamet, who has had a bit of a Road to Damascus political conversion. February 17th, 2010 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is an interesting debate going on at the Econlog blog about whether there is anything like a “meritocracy” in the market. (My short answer: it is a mixture of luck and merit, but I am not sure about the ratio between the two). Rather than me weigh in, I just wanted to point to what I consider to be Bryan Caplan’s insightful comments. I also liked the comments in the associated thread by a character with the name tag of “MernaMoose”. It may not always be the case that the hardest working folk make the biggest bucks, but it generally operates that if people think it does, then the system as a whole generates a bigger pie in which many of those who have worked hard to maximise their talents do well. After all, fatalism (“why should I bother since it is all down to chance?”) tends to correlate, from what I can see, with a less prosperous society in general. Unfortunately, there will always be the hard cases where the supposedly worthless celebrity earns gazillions while the hard-grafting nurse gets paid a lot less. (Although in my experience, some of these celebs have worked incredibly hard to get where they are). But in a society based on voluntary exchange and where no central authority gets the potentially horrendous power to decide who has made the most use of their talents (assuming such talents can be known in advance), that situation is inevitable. Being philosophical about such things, such as watching a trust-fund brat sailing through life while someone else has to slog away for a relatively small income, is hard, I know. February 17th, 2010 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have started reading the book, Crashproof 2.0 by Peter Schiff, and I thought I would register some early impressions. He is a guy who was once mocked for daring to suggest, only a few years ago, that the buildup of debt in the US and parts of the West, and its reliance on what amounts to “vendor financing” from Asia, was bound to end in tears. It did. “Vendor financing”, by the way, relates to the practice of a firm that offers temporary loans to the consumers of its own products. This, more or less, says Mr Schiff, is what happened in the past decade or so: Western consumers bought cheap products from China; Western manufacturers went bust or offshored production to Asia; China used the foreign earnings from its exports to buy up Western debt, enabling even more Western consumer spending, fuelling even more Chinese exports……until the whole process when up in smoke. (This process was aided by an artificially weak Chinese exchange rate, not to mention the recklessly loose monetary policy of the Fed.) So far, so good: Schiff makes a lot of sense in debunking all of this. But then there is a rather rum argument. Schiff says that somehow, this process was bad because as a result of the low-cost production from China and other parts of the world, US manufacturing jobs were replaced by allegedly lower-paying, crappier service sector jobs. (It is simply assumed that non-manufacturing jobs are worse than manufacturing ones). This sounds a bit like the sort of attack on globalisation I have heard made by such economic illiterates such as Lou Dobbs of CNN. I was a bit surprised that an Austrian-leaning writer such as Schiff should be making it. If the service sector can generate wealth for those who work in it, what is the problem? If, in a proper free market without the distortions of fiat money etc, certain manufacturing jobs were to be done by low-cost nations and other jobs by us, how is this a cause for Apocalyptic treatises? Another query I have is this: if the Chinese/whoever are earning real income by selling us stuff, and then use that real income to lend us money that is used to fund investment in things that will create wealth in the future, again, how is this a problem? Sure, if that Chinese money is simply fuelling consumer spending and encouraging feckless spending and low savings – which is what did actually happen, I can see the issue. But lending money for productive purposes is hardly an evil. In the 19th Century, for example, the UK, with its wealth generated in the Industrial Revolution, was a net investor into countries such as the US, Canada and Argentina. I guess the trick is to make sure that the money lent for productive purposes is money derived from genuine savings, not funny money. February 16th, 2010 | 42 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Had McQueen’s life been recorded in a measured and appropriate way, it would have retained some dignity. As it is, we’ve had to consider the silhouette of trousers as though it ranks with the irrigation of Sudan or a cure for cancer. And that just makes him look a complete prat.” George Pitcher, writing about the fashion industry in the light of the death of 40-year-old designer Alexander McQueen. Much of what Mr Pitcher writes in this piece also applies, in my view, to parts of the architecture and “modern” art establishment. However, at least the fashion industry operates mostly in a free(ish) market. If we don’t like its products, then we don’t have to buy them. When a tax-funded body pays for some freakish statue, for example, it is not quite the same thing. February 15th, 2010 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Well, for yours truly, along with fellow rugby fans such as Antoine Clarke and Brian Micklethwait of this parish, some of our weekend plans have had to be slotted around watching, or trying to watch, the rugby matches in the Six Nations tournament. For the uninitiated, the teams are Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, Italy and France. I watched the games on Saturday – I did not see today’s England-Italy match as I was driving around the Kent coast – but on the strength of yesterday’s matches alone, I am risking the prediction that this tournament could be one of the finest of recent times, or at least one of the most engrossing. As a person with a bit of Scottish inheritance, I was rooting for the Scots on Saturday, and I thought they had pretty much clinched it until, in the last 10 or so minutes of the game, the Welsh, aided by some Scottish injuries, errors and possibly some lapses of concentration, staged an incredible comeback to win the match. As for the French, they comprehensively beat the Irish in Paris by a margin that makes one wonder how the Irish managed to win the previous tournament, although I imagine that the Irish will play, or try to play, with a bit more composure in the next match. But the French look a class apart from the rest – their pack was awesome. One small detail pleased me yesterday, in that the Scottish team seems to have reverted to wearing a dark-blue strip that bears some relationship to the colours of the country. As I noticed several years ago, the Scottish recently had a strip that looked very similar to that of the New Zealand one, and very confusing that was. Anyway, bring on next weekend! February 14th, 2010 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
“In short, sterling is in the toilet, our pensions have been slaughtered, cash savings yield almost nothing, the country is up to its neck in unprecedented debt, the banking system is awash with funny money, our gold reserves were sold off at rock-bottom prices, and Britain’s dole queue is considerably longer than before Crash Gordon began cooking the books. Apart from that, it’s not too bad.” Even now, after thinking through all the various words written about the plodding disaster of a man that Brown is, it is shocking to contemplate the damage he has done and continues to do, as he heads towards oblivion. February 12th, 2010 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Climategate is like the finest single malt whisky – 30-years matured, complex and multi-layered, distilled to a fiery concentration, and every drop of the cask to be savoured in small, delicious, damn-the-prohibitionist sips.” – From regular Samizdata commenter, Pa Annoyed, writing about this recent post of Brian Micklethwait. February 11th, 2010 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
By the way, here is an old post I did about a superb spoof on 1970s education programmes, which convey a similar sort of feel to some of those old Cold War public information items. February 10th, 2010 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
|
   |
||||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||