As we await the UK government’s financial statement known as the Pre-Budget Report, expected to be full of stuff designed to appease Labour’s so-called “base” of banker haters, I have been re-reading Ludwig von Mises’ classic explanation of why there has been so much hatred for markets and business down the years from the likes of intellectuals and their media outlets. Some of the names and examples will be a little dated – who now remembers such old monsters like Harold Laski? – but the message is as pertinent as ever.
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George Monbiot, who the other day voiced anger at the misbehaviour of so-called scientists at the University of East Anglia’s climate resarch unit, has reverted to his original mode of George Moonbat by attacking AGW skeptics as deniers who want to dupe the public in the service of Big Oil. It does not occur to this man that he, and others like him, also have made a very nice living out the AGW story. After all, research grants and academic careers have been built on it. Where’s there is muck, there is brass, as they say. There is a whiff of desperation in the air from these guys, who resemble nothing so much as a bully confronted by those whom he or she has tormented. Opinion polls like this one show high levels of skepticism among the public about the claims made by alarmists, and the fact that the climate has not, on average, warmed up at all since 1998, is not quite helping their cause. Monbiot and others like him need to drop the hysteria, the smugness, the bullying and the rest of it. They need to grasp the fact that their predictions are debatable and that the CRU leaks are intensely damaging to their agenda. Even a BBC Breakfast TV presenter, who normally has all the interviewing manner of a soft cuddly toy, asked a guy on the show yesterday about “whether the UEA leaks are undermining the Copenhagen process”. This story is not going away. December 8th, 2009 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Bishop Hill, who has been working overtime to keep apace with the whole University of East Anglia climate change kerfuffle, has this remarkable example of how some journalists have been threatened by AGW alarmists. How lovely. By the way, as a native of East Anglia, I feel ashamed of how my region has been tainted by these arseholes. When the UEA was originally built back in the 1960s, it was constructed, much to my father’s chagrin, on a golf course. Given the collapse in that institution’s reputation as a result of the emails, perhaps it should revert to golf and do less harm to what remains of the UK’s intellectual life. December 7th, 2009 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Tom G. Palmer has a new book out and he is one of those guys whom I read pretty regularly. He recently talked about the book, its topics, in a panel discussion along with Marginal Revolution blogger and NYT columnist Tyler Cowen. Definitely worth your time. December 5th, 2009 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
This lead item in the Guardian newspaper today, which I read with a sort of grim satisfaction, explains how he has bought into the whole idea that climage change skeptics are not just wrong, they are baaaaaaaad. The reaction to the scandal of the University of East Anglia CRU emails shows that part of the “Green Establishment”, with odd decent exception, to be in deep denial. Keep it up, Gordon. The more this plodding, revolting disaster of a politician and his friends continues to take this line, the more it justifies what Lord Lawson, former UK Chancellor, is trying to do in re-framing the debate over the policy of how to address real or alleged AGW. Gordon Brown: he’s the gift that keeps on giving. Update: fresh developments at the UK’s Met Office. (H/T: Counting Cats). December 5th, 2009 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
“The science is so settled it’s now perfectly routine for leaders of the developed world to go around sounding like apocalyptic madmen of the kind that used to wander the streets wearing sandwich boards and handing out homemade pamphlets. Governments that are incapable of – to pluck at random – enforcing their southern border, reducing waiting times for routine operations to below two years, or doing something about the nightly ritual of car-torching “youths”, are nevertheless taken seriously when they claim to be able to change the very heavens – if only they can tax and regulate us enough. As they will if they reach “consensus” at Copenhagen. And most probably even if they don’t.” December 4th, 2009 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
I see that Peter Mandelson, now Lord Mandelson of Post-Industrial Northern Wasteland – or whatever, is frustrated, apparently, that he did not get the job of the European Union’s foreign representative. Indeed. His friend, former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, also failed to secure the plum of the EU Presidency. I can see the charms: no grubby electioneering, lots of nice trips and conferences and armies of lackeys serving your needs, driving you around in limos, etc. To quote Mick Jagger, you can’t always get what you want. I am sure Mr Mandelson will recover his sang froid eventually. These things are sent to test us. December 3rd, 2009 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
The BBC, as well as other news outlets, is carrying this story about the father of a dead soldier. The father is complaining about the lack of helicopters and other important equipment. It also turns out that a letter that was due to be sent from Downing Street to the man’s father was sent very late. This is a sad and anger-inducing story: the father was interviewed, clearly distressed, on BBC television this morning, and was also making very angry, and to my mind, some pretty shrewd, points about the management, or mismanagement, of the war in Afghanistan. And yet there is something about these interviews with grieving parents of dead military personnel that bothers me. And it clearly also has bothered the writer and one-time prison doctor, Theodore Dalrymple. Mr Dalrymple was writing about a related recent story of how a letter of condolence, sent by Gordon Brown to the mother of a dead serviceman, contained spelling errors. Mr Dalrymple writes in the Social Affairs Unit blog:
I agree. I think it is terribly harsh to say to a person like the father interviewed this morning that he should bear in mind that serving in the army is a risky profession and that anyone who joins up should recognise this, but it does need to be said, by someone. The “victim culture” is spreading its slimy tentacles across the land; when I see any parent lash out and demand that X or Y be blamed or shamed for a train of events happening in a warzone, I can sympathise, even agree with some of the comments. But what I cannot abide is the failure to recognise that the risks are high, and many brave people pay the supreme price. December 3rd, 2009 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
Here is an interesting discussion – of the sort likely to send parts of the redistributionist left over the edge – pointing out that in certain respects, the poorest in the US have become better off and that by some yardsticks, inequality has also shrunk. For what it is worth, inequality per se is not an issue that I regard as one raising any injustice whatsoever so long as the economic pie expands. If the economy was a fixed pie, then there might be some presumption that a large slice for Mr X came at the expense, possibly, of Mr Y. It is, however, worth noting, I think, that support for the free market order tends to be more robust when there is a large, entrepreneurial middle class into which anyone, given sufficient hard work and a pinch of luck, can enter and where the chance to escape poverty is high. All in all, the stats I refer to in the link are encouraging news, and worth spreading around. November 30th, 2009 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
Peter Schiff, as ever, has a nice take on an argument that I have heard expressed from various commentators in recent years and months: China saves “too much” and its “excessive” savings are the source for all this Western borrowing – and now the financial SNAFU – so Chinese folk need to get their wallets out, spend more, be less frugal, so that this “imbalance” in the world economy can be corrected. Schiff gives this line of thinking fairly brutal treatment, but as he says, there is also some truth in it. Because China’s exchange rate is kept artificially low against the dollar and other currencies, Chinese exports are cheaper in Western markets than they would otherwise be; this means that in turn, China earns large amounts of foreign exchange, which in turn get invested in things like Western government debt securities, such as US Treasuries. This buying of Western debt like Treasuries has enabled Western consumers to enjoy credit for cheaper than otherwise would have been the case, fuelling the credit boom, etc. Of course, what this line of thinking tends to overlook is that if Chinese savings are based on real earnings, and those earnings are being invested in Western productive assets, then how is this a problem? Consider: part of the 19th Century, the UK invested enormous sums of its capital in places such as Argentina, the US, Canada, Australia, India, and so on. This export of capital was entirely benign as it generated long term returns based on real investments. Would it have been better had this process not happened? I agree with Mr Schiff that the Chinese yuan will float freely eventually; when it does so, Chinese exports will be more expensive in Western markets, while Chinese consumers will be able to buy more Western goods, and so the “problem” of all this surplus capital will disappear or be less pronounced. The “imbalance” will begin to rectify itself, given the chance. And that means the West will have to rely more on its own savings to generate investment in the future. The question, of course, is whether the tax and regulatory climate makes that process happen smoothly or not. There have been many different explanations of what has gone awry in the world economy in recent years, and of course any search for an explanation cannot ignore China and the impact of its own policies. But it strikes me as unjust to put China in the dock. The prime driver of the crisis has been Western monetary incontinence, a largely home-grown force. November 30th, 2009 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
“When someone asks him how his day is going, Jack replies, “Previously, on 24…” I came across this line here. November 30th, 2009 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
Following on from Michael Jennings’ item about how science research is actually conducted, I was reminded of a post I did several years ago about a fine Gregory Benford book that drew very much on the issue of political game-playing and science research. Timescape is a fine novel, and will resonate with those bemused by the antics of AGW alarmists and their media cheerleaders. November 26th, 2009 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
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