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Alice Thompson is a bit of an economic dunce, isn’t she?
“Their private polling shows that the public loathe bankers more than politicians, so the Conservatives are desperate to disassociate themselves from the City. Voters are furious that the gap between the yachts and have-nots has grown rather than diminished in the past few months. While City high-flyers are once again buying £10,000 stocking fillers, eBay crashed last weekend under the weight of people trying to sell goods to get extra cash for Christmas. The more distance the Tories can put between themselves and the City the better. Even Boris Johnson, always a reliable guide to the prevailing political wind, has dumped his “monstrous” pinstriped friends. Instead, the Tories are courting the CBI and business, emphasising tax cuts for companies and promising to be “unashamedly pro-enterprise”. The message is clear: real businesses matter; the City doesn’t.”
Let’s unpack this. I read the entire, dreadful piece and it occured to me that Ms Thompson is wedded to the notion that if an activity – such as hedge fund arbitrage – cannot be immediately explained in terms of some physical good or easily understood service – like laundry – then it must be suspect in some way. She does not necessarily endorse all of the anti-market sentiment expressed by others she quotes in her article, but the overall tone is unmistakable. It is also a reminder that there is much hostility to banking, finance and the market on parts of what I might call the Right as among the Left, crude though such terms are in terms of political mapping.
Of course, it is true that the size of the financial services industry has been arguably swelled beyond what is healthy by decades of ultra-low interest rates, which have caused an increasingly manic hunt for yield, leading to the whole alphabet soup of acronym products associated with the credit crunch. But that is not the point that Ms Thompson is making. She seems to be saying that banking per se, when set against other kinds of economic activity, is wrong or morally dubious, and that we’d be better off without it. But whether “we” (who?) would be “better off” with a different mix of economic activities is something of a subjective judgement, not something that can be modelled according to some sort of utilitarian calculus. For instance, should banking make up 5%, 10%, or 20% of an economy’s gross domestic product? How much is too big or too small? Surely, in a proper market without artificial barriers to entry and without the distortions of central bank rates, regulations and the like, the size of banking as a sector will vary depending on the shifting sands of consumer preferences. That is all.
I am not suggesting that Ms Thompson take in all these points in a brief column for a newspaper, even if she had a clue about economics. But frankly, when I read yet another version of the centuries-old slur against speculators and “middlemen”, even if dressed up in the slightly “gosh how awful” tones of a rightwing female columnist, I think it is necessary to kick the offending author in a sensitive part of the anatomy. If Britain loses its edge in financial services due to a rash of bad legislation, heavy taxes and the rest, this nation is in trouble. The exodus is already well under way.
This story, in The Times (of London), caught my eye:
Gerard Earley was so impressed by Ian Hart’s performance in the West End that he got to his feet to applaud. Ian Hart was so unimpressed by Mr Earley that he ran from the stage to scream threats at him. Ignoring the appeals of John Simm, his co-star, the actor lunged at Mr Earley, whom he accused of talking during his performance. When Mr Earley protested that he had not been talking Hart launched into a furious rant and had to be restrained by ushers. Hart, who says that he does not enjoy the relationship between performer and audience, could now face police action.
Chatty theatre-goers are very irritating. I am sure that readers can understand how annoying it is to sit in front of a noisy person while watching a film, or listening to a concert of a certain type, etc. Usually, the theatre/venue relies on the audience being sufficiently well-mannered to behave, but in this increasingly infantilised culture, I notice that there tend to be more and more signs and instructions, such as telling people to switch off their mobile phones, etc.
Of course, when such venues are privately owned, the owners can set whatever restrictions they want and hope that customers accept them – if they do not, they will go elsewhere. So if a steward working in a cinema, say, observes a couple chatting away, using their phone, eating loudly or being generally boorish, they should be able to chuck them out without a refund.
But while the circumstances of this case I mentioned are in dispute, it does appear that this actor is particularly sensitive to perceived noise or interruptions. He sounds as if he is not cut out for live performances. Better take up something less stressful, old chap.
Good grief, it seems as if one of the main doomongers in the MSM, George Monbiot – known in these irreverent blogging shores as George Moonbat – is feeling a bit angry and let down by the revelations of those emails connected to the University of East Anglia’s climate research unit. To give GM credit, he’s been more blunt about his anger than many of them might be, so fair play to him. But as Bishop Hill comments, Monbiot’s comments point to his gullibility.
As as been noted before, we free market types would be far kinder towards the Greenies if so much of their agenda was not intertwined with a desire both to load up more regulations and taxes on us. The antics of scientists allegedly trying to bury inconvenient evidence are not harmless: these people have consequences.
There is, in my view, a continued genuine core of necessary work that needs to be done in trying to map Man’s impact on the climate and figuring out what is the best way to cope with it. It is a mistake for free marketeers to take the lazy assumption that AGW is not something one needs to be concerned about. But there is no doubt – maybe it is just the recession – that some of the fizz, some of the moral superiority, of the AGW alarmist crowd has gone. AGW alarmists might be less quick to dub anyone who doubts their views as “deniers”. As far as the interests of genuine scientific understanding are concerned, that is a definite improvement on where things were a a few years ago.
I first wondered whether this story was a spoof, but it appears not to be so.
I recently read David Friedman’s latest book, A Future Imperfect, and thoroughly enjoyed it. He has now posted a series of lectures he has given at different venues, touching on many of the subjects in the book, as well some that were not in the book. Subjects, for example, such as encryption, copyright, how technology is changing legal systems, society, our view of family life, and the like. Definitely worth downloading some of these lectures if you have the time. Ideal for playing on the MP3 player on the way to the office. A definite improvement on listening to the BBC’s Today programme, that is for sure.
In the meantime, here is a quote from the book that I particularly liked. It is about nanotechnology and some of the fears people have, including the “grey goo” issue:
“Before you conclude that the end of the world is upon us, you consider the other side of the technology. With enough cell repair machines on duty, designer players may not be a problem. Human beings want to live and will pay for the privilege. The resources that will go into designing protections against threats, nanotechnological or otherwise, will be enomously greater than the (private) resources that will go into creating such threats – as they are at present, with the much more limited tools available to us. Unless it turns out that, with this technology, the offense has an overwhelming advantage over the defense, nanotech defenses should almost entirely neutralise the threat from the basement terrorist or careless experimenter. The only serious threat will be from organisations willing and able to spend billions of dollars creating really first-rate molecular killers – almost all of them governments.”
(page 272.)
I suppose it says something about The Daily Telegraph’s admirable commitment to freedom of speech that it let this comment I paste up below through, or possibly, the laxness of its editors. Following a comment piece about the forthcoming trial of the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, we get this remark, by someone dubbing itself “Lord Barnett”:
The trial will be a farce,held in New York for the benefit of the jews and the media of the World,The people who should be on trial are the Israelis,George Bush senior,Bill Clinton,the Bush Administration and American jews.Nobody is interested in why 9/11 happened,you can also lay the blame at the door of all Western Govenments for doing nothing to stop the holocaust on the Palistinians by Israel.Every American Administration has stood by,watched and helped Israel steal Palistinian land and murder its people, then call them Terrorists when they try to get it back,we have all watched and read about it,what is going on there is an absolute disgrace,lets just have a look at the Middle East today,Saudi Arabia,run by dictators with American backing to keep them in power,well its either that or the mad mullas who would switch the oil tap off,who would you rather have in power?, Its the same with Kuwait,Bahrain,Oman and the rest,but then you have Syria and Iran,the only Arab Nations who are trying to fight America and its dominance in the Middle East,they are called pariahs because they speak out against America,Iran is developing nuclear weapons,just like the Israelis,why should Israel have them but not Iran?, And then yesterday we have Netanyahu saying he is going to build around nine hundred more new homes on stolen Palistinian land,and what does America say to this? “Its Disappointed”, wow,there`s a strong statement that will have the Israelis quaking in their boots,until the West stands up to Israel and America there will never be peace in the World,but i am sure there will be another 9/11.The United Nations is a farce,not one single resolution it has brought against Israel has passed because America has vetoed them,whats the point? Then Independant Inquiries done by jewish people outlining all the crimes that Israel has committed have been dismissed by Israel and America as biased,who is going to stand up to these criminals?.
This character repeats the trope that Israel has “stolen” land from others, that it is a terror state, and that its fear about Iran’s having nuclear weapons is somehow groundless or unfair. This moron presumably is deaf to the fact that from the time of its founding, various Arab powers have been vocal in their desire to crush this relatively tiny state; he – I assume it is a he – is deaf to the fact that Iran is led by a man who is openly in favour of wiping Israel out.
As I said, it is perhaps right for the Telegraph to let people like this rant and rave about the Jews, Israel, blah-blah. It is sometimes salutary to be reminded of the depths of hatred and ignorance that exist in the breasts of those who wish that country and the Jewish people harm. It pays to know that there are enemies out there, if only to encourage continued vigilance.
About the only half-truth admitted by this idiot is the point about Western backing for Saudi Arabia. That remains, in my book, a serious failing of Western foreign policy. The sooner we can reduce our use of oil from that nation – which has financed a good deal of anti-western terrorism – the better.
I wonder what Patri Friedman, moving light in the Seasteading Institute and an advocate of the idea of creating new nations, makes of this story.
Sealand is one of the longest-running attempts to create a micro-state. It is off the Suffolk coast, based on an old anti-aircraft tower. The article, by the local newspaper in the East Anglian region, contains a nice photo of the place.
I suspect that if Sealand ever provided services – such as totally encrypted financial service facilities – then a tax-hungry UK would not demur at sending over a frigate to shut the place down. But the guy who set up this place has been known to defend his territory vigorously. For a supposed old eccentric, he’s held out remarkably well.
The “watermelons” – green on the outside, red on the inside – can sometimes be uncomfortable elements, prone to occasional frictions. The old left, with all its many faults, did at least favour industry and material wealth. And the cause of wealth creation can clash with the Green agenda, though let it be noted that the best way to tackle environmental problems, in my view, is for us to get as rich as we can.
Well it seems that the liberal-leftist film director and actor, Robert Redford, has caused some sharp intakes of breath among the climate change alarmists by airing a “denialist” movie at his Sundance TV channel.
Enjoy!
(H/T: Big Hollywood).
An earlier version of this item referred to the Sundance Festival, not the TV channel. My error.
This comment on the current Speaker, of the House of Commons, John Bercow, who is generally regarded by many people as a slimeball of the first order:
“If you feel that is an exaggeration, look what they did when last entrusted with what was potentially a great reforming measure – the chance to elect a new Speaker to replace the compromised and incapable man we must learn to call Lord Martin. They ended up choosing the legislature’s equivalent of Donald Duck, not because they believed he might step out of his cartoon one day and restore order to a profoundly damaged but vital institution, but because it would upset the Tory party. That is how serious the present parliamentary majority is about restoring the credibility of the Commons. And as we read endless stories about the new Speaker’s lavish refurbishments of his apartments, the size of his television, his wife’s political stunts and his decision not to dress properly for the State Opening, the full force of what a pointless little creep he is, and how he squats vacuously in one of the great positions of state, is brought home to us.”
There is a passage in F.A. Hayek’s The Road To Serfdom where the great man writes about how “the worst get on top” in political systems where there are few restraints on power. Mr Bercow validates that theory most admirably.
Oh, and Brian Micklethwait, like me, has met Bercow. He’s not a fan.
Via the Cobden Centre, a relatively new think tank that focuses on banking and money from the “Austrian” point of view, here is a nice article by James Tyler. He sets out how to avoid past problems and what to do about banking and money.
I still think that fractional reserve banking, so long as it is openly stated and so long as legal tender laws are scrapped, is not necessarily an evil. If a person deposits money in an FRB that advertises itself as such and if he takes out commercial insurance to cover a potential disaster, then in a free market based on consent, I am not sure that FRB should be made illegal. For sure, a bank that claimed to be a 100% reserve bank that was in fact, not fully covered, should be prosecuted for running a fraudulent business. But that is simply a case of obtaining money by deception, an offence covered in existing law.
As is so often the case, I think that some of our current woes could be ameliorated, if not solved, if we enforced the basic Common Law of this realm rather than endlessly creating new rules instead. But then I guess that would give politicians nothing much to do, would it?
Boris Johnson, Mayor of London and media columnist, has this to say about the new top income tax rate of 50 per cent, due to take effect from next April. He is pretty blunt:
So it is utterly tragic, at the end of the first decade of this century, that we are back in the hands of a government whose mindset seems frozen in the wastes of the 1970s. If Gordon Brown remains in power – and perhaps even if he does not – Britain’s top rate of tax will soar far above that of our most important global competitors. China, Germany and Australia are on 45 per cent maximum; Italy is on 43 per cent; Ireland on 41 per cent; France on 40 per cent; and America is on 35 per cent.
I would not mind so much if I thought this expedient was temporary, or that it would work. If the 50p tax was going to plug the hole in the nation’s finances, then it might be a good thing, and it would be right that the rich should pay a larger share. But even on the Government’s figures it is only due to raise £2.5 billion of the £700 billion required – and those estimates may be wildly optimistic. This tax is predicted to drive away at least 25,000 people; it may simply encourage more avoidance; it may actually cost money, not bring it in.
As he says, many of those whose lives are shaped by the shrivelled, dog-in-the-manger philosophy of collectivism will not give a damn. So what, they will say? And in the Daily Telegraph article that Boris Johnson writes, you can read a goodly number of such dismissive comments, from the sort of cretins – I use the word without apology – who seem driven more by hatred of the rich than by a serious desire to improve conditions generally.
But what interests me in the politics of this is how emphatic Mr Johnson is in saying what a disaster the top rate will be. He’s absolutely right, of course, and it is heartening that a senior figure from the opposition Conservatives should say so. I have my problems with Mr Johnson – he’s certainly no consistent advocate of small government – but by goodness, it is good that he is making this point and in this emphatic way. No doubt Mr Johnson will be told by the various unlovely allies of David Cameron to shut up, to not be “difficult”. (The same thing happened when he mentioned the Tory promise to hold a referendum on the EU Lisbon Treaty). Well, to hell with that.
It appears that an incoming Tory – or BlueLabour – government will not reverse this new, top rate in the first budget after any election. That would be a gross mistake. I hope Mr Johnson does not shut up on this issue. Of course, he also has to practice what he preaches in his own job.
As Samizdata regulars might recall, I am not exactly a great fan of Naomi Klein, author of the Shock Doctrine, a book that tries to argue, rather absurdly, that various dastardly free market governments (which ones? Ed) exploited, in a sort of underhand way, the inexplicable failures of socialism (the horror!) to impose those terrible ideas of people such as Milton Friedman. Yet there was nothing underhand or deceitful about what say, Sir Keith Joseph – one of Mrs Thatcher’s close political allies – argued when he said that the stagflation of the 1970s had undermined the Keynesian settlement and proved that big government was harmful. Far from being some sort of sly attempt to exploit a shock, the governments of Reagan/Thatcher or even some of the social democratic governments in the 80s such as Spain, implemented some forms of free market reform because it made sense, given the situation. Anyway, you can read some of my views on this here, and there is a demolition of the book here.
Robert Higgs, a libertarian writer, has pointed out that in fact, it is frequently the case that disasters of various kinds frequently are used by political leaders to expand, not roll back, the state. It may be that the partial halt, if not reverse, to the growth of the state that occured under the Reagan/Thatcher episode was an aberration, although I obviously hope it was not.
Of course, in the ultra-long run, the numerous failures of endlessly repeated regulation, tax and yet more regulation and taxes, may yet produce such a disaster that this “shock” may once again encourage the “doctrine” of free markets, limited government, honest money and free trade. So I guess we must hope that in a perverse kind of way, Ms Klein is vindicated, if not quite in the way she imagines or wants.
Why give a damn what this person says? Well, she sells a lot of books. A lot. JK Galbraith, Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, and others do the same. And there are articles by the Richard Murphys, George Monbiots and countless other characters that feed the collectivist narrative that what the world needs even more of is more government, more rules and more powers for the likes of them. Therefore, I share the view of the US libertarian and author, Tom G. Palmer, that we need to be better at knocking their theories down and responding vigorously. And that is why I salute the indefatigible Tim Worstall, who seems to have dedicated part of his blogging energies to making the existence of Richard Murphy, hater of economic and social liberty and a general buffoon, a waking nightmare. It may seem cruel to mock the afflicted, but bear in mind that at the moment, the Murphys of this world seem to be succeeding in their desire to shut down an element of global markets, otherwise known as tax havens, since these places create one of the few incentives left to keep taxes down. He’s not just a harmless buffoon, comforting though it might be to assume so. He’s certainly not harmless, and neither is Ms Klein.
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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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