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Talking of issues to do with property ownership, this Daily Telegraph article about how some of the old industrial cities in the US are shrinking caught my eye. The US authorities are encouraging, with the use of a bit of public funds, the idea of knocking down whole swathes of supposedly defunct towns and cities and returning them to their “pristine” natural state. It is, in one way, a part of what the economist Joseph Schumpeter once called the “creative destruction” that is vital to capitalism.
Except that I don’t see a lot of capitalism going on here, more a sort of hybrid of private enterprise and state involvement. If, as the article claims, hundreds of square miles of urban area in the US/wherever are no longer economically viable, and could be used for something more economically valuable, whether it be farmland, recreational parks, golf courses, boating lakes, race tracks, or so on, then why not leave it to property and land developers? I find it worrying that the US government, either in its federal or local forms, can decree that an area of land is no longer “economically viable,” and decide to send the bulldozers in. And I also cannot help smelling a strong whiff of anti-suburbanism in this article, at least according to some of the folk quoted in it.
I tend to find that it is a revealing about a person’s overall viewpoint as to whether they slag off suburbs or not. If you despise them, chances are that you are a member of the Enemy Class, even though such people hypocritically live in such places.
Maybe it is the garden gnomes, or something.
Tim Worstall – back in harness after running for office as a UKIP MEP – writes about the Labour government’s stated desire to ensure that not a single tract of the UK is without broadband access. It is the sort of techie, practical measure that Mr Gordon Brown thinks will help win him a bit of respect in the traditional Tory and LibDem shires.
As Tim says, the logic of this idea is questionable. There are geographical, physical reasons why broadband access, or indeed other forms of communications, are not available everywhere, all the time. Also, as the comment thread attached to Tim’s piece reveals, there is this argument, that I have raised before – also prompted by one of Tim’s articles – about why people feel that because X or Y wants a road, canal, power cables, whatever, that therefore the state should be able to use compulsory purchase powers, and taxation, to pay for whatever it is that is wanted. I have referred to this mindset as “brute utilitarianism”. Also, it is a cost of living in the countryside that one does not always have the same degree of speedy access to certain things that one has living in a town or city. That’s life, so folk should deal with it. (One of the few arguments for land value taxes is that people living in such remote places would, other things being equal, pay less taxes also. However, there are other problems with LVT as the Austrian school of economics points out, attractive at first blush though the idea might be).
I pay more to live in my rabbit hutch apartment in Pimlico and for the same outlay I could live in a big place in the sticks. But for the benefit of living in SW1, I get quick access to airports (a short trip from Victoria to Gatwick); the Tube, buses, taxis, broadband access, etc. This is part of the cost “package”, if you like, that comes with my locational choice. A person who lives in a remote area and who demands Pimlico or New York-style communcations is demanding that the citizens of a city should subsidize that preference. And yet many of the people who migrate from the towns to the country are quite well off; as I have noted in my native Suffolk, as soon as the townies settle in, they start demanding all kinds of amenities, not realising, or caring, that such things don’t exist because they are relatively expensive to put in rural areas, which is precisely why Mr and Mrs Chartered Accountant can afford to live in their nice village cottages in the first place.
Sometimes such debates are as easy as this: if people want something, then damn well pay for it yourself, and do not use the robber powers of the state to grab it off someone else.
Rant over.
Er, not quite: my reference to LVT brought out a crop of Henry George “land-is-special!” types on the comment board. Several of us have responded to them, but I came across this nice essay by Jan Narveson, which I think is one of the best smackdowns for the land value tax mob that I have ever read. Excerpt:
Now, the point of this little essay is that that is basically all there is to it, and there doesn’t need to be anything else. The idea that we all have an equal right to the land is amazingly arbitrary, and contrary to all human experience while it’s at it. It’s arbitrary in that it has no basis. The fact that we don’t make the land is irrelevant, as already seen: we don’t make the natural part of anything we have or own, no matter whether we have “made” it or not. But the point is, it doesn’t matter. For things are just things: they do not come with labels saying that they “belong” to some people or that some people, somehow, have a “claim” on them, nor in turn that everybody has a claim on them, equal or otherwise.
“It is rare that governments successfully cut costs by first spending more money.”
– Tyler Cowen. He was talking about Mr Obama’s plans to socialise US medicine. I am sure that when the NHS was set up here in the UK, the advocates of said argued that it would “save” money in the long run. Meanwhile, here is some useful commentary from Arnold Kling.
The late Peter (Lord) Bauer, a Hungarian-born economist who lived for much of his life in the UK, did outstanding work in demonstrating why markets and trade are superior to overseas aid, and pointed out how aid, and the organisations that often get involved in delivering it, frequently make problems of poverty worse, not better. Even aid advocates like Sir Bob Geldof will readily concede, meanwhile, that aid delivery becomes next to impossible during conditions of war, and when countries are under the rule of armed thugs. So last night’s Channel 4 programme on Somalia will have surprised few regulars at this blog.
What was interesting was how local traders were allegedly bribing some aid officials to take sacks of food and then sell it into the market. We were meant to be appalled by this, and part of me was. But also I also could not ignore the fact that this part of Africa seems to be buzzing with a sort of entrepreneurial class of men – one did not see many women – who trade in, and take great efforts to obtain, food and other stuff. That surely suggests that a market, of sorts, works in this part of the world. But what clearly does not work is the rule of law, or the enforcement of property rights. Without due protection for the latter, in particular, then the indestructible desire to “truck and barter” can all too easily degrade into a form of banditry. But let’s be clear here: while one can be nauseated at foreign aid being filched by some of the locals, that desire to trade is not, in itself, the problem. It is, in fact, part of the solution to the poverty of Africa.
Meanwhile, I strongly recommend William Easterly’s book on foreign aid and the mistakes that well-intentioned folk make about aid.
In just over one month’s time, some of us space geeks will be hoisting a glass or several to mark this 40th anniversary. I was only a three-year old toddler when Messrs Armstrong and Aldrin climbed out of the craft and onto that dusty, sun-blasted place called the Moon. 40 years. Popular Mechanics has a good look at what it all meant.
I think a good place to mark the occasion would be down at Greenwich, London, near to the Royal Observatory.
Some right-wing Americans got very upset when Jon Stewart, the TV comedy/news guy, monstered the CNBC “Mad Money” front-man Jim Cramer a few months ago. They had a point; it is clear that at least in some of his shows, Stewart tacks left. But whether unwittingly or otherwise, he was very fair in an interview recently with Peter Schiff – who by the way is possibly running for political office. Mr Schiff is a hard-money capitalist, an attacker of the Fed, of the bailouts of Bush/Obama. I wrote about him a while back. And Schiff used the platform of this very popular show to beat the drum for free markets, sound money, and getting rid of the Fed.
Good for Jon Stewart, at least on this occasion, for giving Schiff a platform.
Books that try to convey important philosophical ideas can sometimes be a bit of a struggle to read. Much as I liked Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged for the sheer sweep of the novel and the way it tackled all manner of topics, I’ll be the first to concede that some folk out there will find that type of book a daunting read. But a shorter, and highly engaging, example of something rather similar has been out for a few months now: “Old Nick’s Guide To Happiness”, by Nicholas Dykes.
I will not give the plot away but to say that Mr Dykes’ novel is based in the wilds of Scotland, focusing on what happens when a young man, who is shortly to head off for Oxford as an undergraduate, gets lost and hurt during a hiking expedition in the Highlands, and how he falls in with a rather unusual couple living there. There are lots of discussions of philosophy and ideas along the way, but is done in such a charming way that the reader, whatever their views, will not feel they are being lectured at. Admittedly, if you are a religious fundamentalist, deep Green or hardline collectivist, then this book will drive you nuts.
I have known Mr Dykes for several years and he has been a regular writer for the Libertarian Alliance, among other places. I liked this book very much and I hope Mr Dykes tries his hand at another novel. As he realises, abstract treatises are all very well, but if you can convey ideas through the medium of fiction, with strong characters, a good plot and plenty of engaging detail, it can be far more effective. The Left, if I can be permitted to use that term has long understood this – it needs to be understood by those who work in the broadly classical liberal tradition, too. And the same point applies even more, perhaps, to the world of TV drama and films.
Here is a highly thought-provoking article in Forbes magazine about the phenomenon it refers to as “gentry liberalism” – a term designed to capture the mindset of the sort of person who has voted for New Labour in the UK and Mr Obama’s Democrats in the US. It is, of course, such a shame that the word liberalism has been bent out of shape to mean something rather different, but the underlying logic of the article is hard to contest.
Of course, Mr Obama has a while yet in power, but if I were one of his campaign managers, I’d look at the massacre of left-of-centre parties in Europe with a certain amount of forboding. He’s not invincible, not at all.
I would hope, however naively perhaps, that a forthcoming UK government, after the current shambolic one, might take the axe to some of the quangos – quasi-autonomous governmental organisations – that cost so much and do relatively little that is of any use. So it is frankly laughable that the Conservative Party’s idea for controlling public spending (you mean hopefully cut it, Ed), is to set up something called the Office of Budget Responsibility. Oh please. What the heck is the Treasury department supposed to be for? The problem of controlling, and cutting, public spending is both simple and hard: simple to understand – there’s way too much spending, and we need to slash it – and hard, in that it will involve facing down various vested interests. Previous governments that have cut spending, or tried to do so, such as the Thatcher administration, did not have to set up some daft “office” to address the issue.
The trouble with this idea is that it shows how the current Tory party feels it must distance itself from the harsh decisions that will have to be made to shrink public spending from its current horrific levels. But this is an impossible task – far better to be blunt with the public.
“The irony is that no other leader could have led Britain so skilfully through financial crisis. Without him, the banks might have collapsed, and the G20 would never have happened. His work on development ensured that thousands of children did not starve and did not die because the rich world deemed them worthless.”
– Mary Riddell, in the Daily Telegraph.
So tell me, Ms Riddell, can you perhaps explain why the financial crisis, that has sent many British banks into the arms of the UK taxpayer, has not had a comparable impact on say, Canada, which shares a rather large landed border with the country at the centre of the credit crunch, namely, the US?
And why do you think that the government that presided over this disaster, that allowed public finances to run into the red, and massively so, before the credit crunch, can claim merit for what has happened since?
Does she not think that the way the Bank of England sets interest rates, or how banks have relied on the “too big to fail” assurance of public support, might not have had a teensy-weensy bit to do with foolish lending, for example?
Just asking, Mary.
In a comment thread on this posting, the question came up, from the commenter “Laird”, as to why Samizdata has not written about the local UK/European Union elections. Part of the answer, for my part, is that a little bit of me dies whenever words such as “EU elections” come up, but also there has been a lot of commentary and head-scratching analysis, in the press and other blogs, on this issue for the past week or so. What could I say that has not been already said?
Anyway, for our non-UK readers who have not been following it, the ruling UK Labour Party did very badly in both the local UK elections and the European one. In the latter case, Labour came in third place (15 per cent of votes cast), behind the Tories and United Kingdom Independence Party respectively. UKIP is a party that wants the UK to leave the EU. I voted for it – partly because I did not want the Tories to get a larger share of the vote and hence get complacent, partly because I broadly agree with UKIP on things like cutting state spending and the EU. UKIP is not a hardline libertarian party but it is the best of a bad lot, generally. And I happen to know one of its MEP candidates, Tim Worstall – who is a member of the London bloggerati – and I always say it is a good idea to vote for someone you know, trust and like (I also know Syed Kamall, a Tory MEP, but just could not bring myself to vote Tory. Sorry Syed).
As for the aftermath, well, UK PM Gordon Brown has managed, by a mixture of party membership cowardice, shellshock, bullying and flimflam to persuade his colleagues in Parliament to give him another chance in the job. Labour has suffered the lowest share of the vote since the First World War, albeit on a very low turnout of voters. The national socialist British National Party, a party which, let it not be forgotten, holds to fairly hard-left views on economics, has picked up two seats in the European Parliament, and did so by playing fairly hard on the grievances of traditional Labour voters in run-down parts of the UK. There has often been a streak of “sod the foreigner” in the makeup of the UK left, although it has been tempered by a sort of transnational progressivism, at least from the Fabian middle classes who have provided Labour with some of its intellectuals (if that is not too grand a word to describe such people).
So there you have it – Britain is on course, if poll data are accurate, to have a Conservative government by the middle of next year, when a general election must be held. Europe has moved, politically, to the right, with concerns about immigration and economics driving some of that. But the UK Conservatives, while they have benefited from a mortally weakened government, have not convinced me that they have a serious intent to shrink the state. It may be that when or if David Cameron gets the keys to 10 Downing Street and has a chance to read the financial books, that the full horror of what he sees will necessitate spending cuts. We shall see.
And in the meantime, the US has, at least for a moment, moved to the left under Mr Obama, although for how much longer, it is premature to say (bring on the mid-term elections!). Ideologically, the Atlantic may be widening. We live, as they say, in interesting times.
I guess it is a sign of the times that when the UK ruling Labour Party is in such a mess, the appointment of a character such as Sir Alan Sugar, the businessman and brash TV show main man, gets a collective raspberry, rather than the coos of applause and “well dones” that would have been the case say, five years ago. It is a largely pointless appointment.
Sir Alan, who is also the front-man for the BBC TV talent show, The Apprentice – modelled on the US one fronted by Donald Trump, is a Labour supporter, believing that there is a large, possibly even larger, role for the state in business. For all his image of the self-made man, he is in many ways quite a corporatist in this sense. And in his demeanor, he represents what a lot of leftists think business is: cut-throat and aggressive. Socialists often buy the idea that commerce is not a positive-sum game, so when they go into business, they behave like the worst caricature of the cliched 19th Century mill-owner. The whole vibe of “The Apprentice” is dog-eat-dog, pandering to the worst impressions that many people have about business.
And make no mistake, Sir Alan, even if he is a nice guy in his private life, comes across as a bully. And this is not a snobbish point, by the way, about his London accent or razor-dodging demeanor. I watched a BBC TV programme the other day when he was asked about his trip to see Gordon Brown, and the media outlets were rife with speculation on what he was doing. Sir Alan could hardly be surprised to be asked about it. Instead, he brushed aside this situation by almost telling the news presenter to shut up. “I’m not gonna talk abaaat it.” For one minute I thought the BBC was going to cut the interview short. It should have done so.
In the fag-end of Labour’s days in power, the elevation of this man to the peerage and a pointless job in “enterprise” will be seen as a rather bizarre footnote.
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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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