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.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
If you want evidence of management ruthlessness, never mind Wall Street, the City or for that matter, politics, then check out the English Premier League. Scolari, the Gene Hackman lookalike who was once the manager of a World Cup winning side with Brazil, no less, has been sacked as manager of Chelsea by its Russian owner. Chelsea are only a few points adrift of Manchester United, the leaders. Tony Adams has been fired as manager of Portsmouth, which is near the bottom end of the table. A few weeks ago, Paul Ince, a former midfielder with Manchester United and West Ham, was sacked from his job. At Tottenham, they have been through about three managers in as many years. The same merry-go-round operates at such febrile clubs as Manchester City, Newcastle, Bolton or West Ham. In the latter case, you can bet the cries will go up that its current, relatively new manager, Zola, should be headed for Chelsea, where he is rightly adored as a legend. Against all this, it seems mildly incredible that Arsene Wenger has lasted so long at Arsenal, and of course that Sir Alex Ferguson has reigned for more than two decades at Manchester United.
It is as if the credit crunch has barely begun to make itself felt at the world of English football. Some time ago I wrote about the wrangles between players and clubs over contracts. As far as the sackings of managers go, the world of football looks more cut-throat than ever.
Last night I heard an argument used in relation to the climate change argument and Man’s alleged role in driving it, that went along the following lines: We have a responsibility to ensuing generations, maybe even those around 1,000 years or so hence, which means we should do X or Y to curb CO2 emissions etc to ensure that these future generations’ lives are not blighted.
Now of course nothing is more likely to get your humble blogger annoyed than the “Do it for the children” line. The precautionary principle: do nothing if you cannot prove it will not cause harm – would have killed the Industrial Revolution at birth, prevented any life-saving drug from having been brought to market, been used to shut down scientific speculation, space-faring, advanced dental surgery, modern medicine, the whole 9 yards of human endeavour. And the problem with the argument that says “We have a responsibility to generations yet unborn” is that it demands a great deal. How on earth can I or others evaluate the proper limits or scope of such a responsibility? What about the Law of Unintended Consequences? For instance, if we adopt the PP, and we severely curtail the pace of industrial development, scientific advance or economic growth, will we not bring about disastrous consequences for our children, grand-children and so on? In fact, if folk want to bring up the issue of “Do it for the kids”, I tend to respond that if we are to take this sort of multi-generational responsibility, then we should go for as much freedom and growth as possible, and not the other way around.
Another way to think about this is from the position of scarcity, both in terms of time and resources. I only have so much time in my life to make the sort of adjustments that I might hope to benefit my kids, or my grandkids, or whatever. I also only have so many resources at my disposal. And with that in mind, I think that governments – which after all are only collections of persons – have only fixed resources and time at their disposal too, and that there are major tradeoffs to be considered in stifling a technology A to benefit a technology B. Simply repeating that we “owe it to our children” does not take us very far. All too often, in fact, the line about protecting future generations can easily descend into a form of argument by intimidation, a sort of moral bullying.
When it comes to bad arguments used in conversations on topics like this, Jamie Whyte’s gem of a book repays a lot of reading for avoiding pitfalls.
Of course, as a final point, the “Do it for the kids” argument frequently comes from those advocates of greater state controls who are blind to the damage that the state does, sometimes deliberately, to the institution of the family. The ironies abound.
Here is a collection of good articles attacking the massive US stimulus plan. Fair play to Andrew Sullivan for linking to them. There’s hope for him yet.
The blogger Slugger O’Toole expresses a very sensible view, in my opinion, about the recent case of a NHS nurse who was disciplined for offering to pray for a patient. I am all in favour of the separation of church and state, but then would reflect that this case shows just what happens when hospitals are part of the state and not part of the non-state sector, where they can be run by secular or religious groups without such issues arising. If a hospital is run by a church or has an endowment froma religiously-minded gazillionaire, and staff want to pray with its patients and the patients are okay with that, what exactly is the problem? Many UK hospitals, as their names often suggest – such as St Thomas’s Hospital in London – were founded by churches and religious orders. For all that I am not a religious person, I can greatly admire the spirit of compassion that motivated many religious believers to work in or endow hospitals with funds. Many of Britain’s greatest hospitals were started by churches and their history goes back hundreds of years.
“…when things go wrong, we seek bogeymen rather than face up to our own shortcomings. We expect instant, painless solutions to self-inflicted problems. Britain’s booze culture is blamed on the slick advertisements of drinks companies and the cut-price tactics of supermarkets. Our obesity epidemic is the fault of junk-food outlets and confectionery suppliers. And our personal indebtedness, the highest it has ever been, is the result of a pernicious campaign by greedy banks to enslave their customers. Oh yes, and the crash was caused by beastly Americans.”
Jeff Randall, economics columnist and broadcaster.
Roger Thornhill, an occasional commenter here who also has his own blog, asks what is all the fuss about a foreign firm in the UK hiring foreign workers? He points out that if a UK firm operating in say, Germany, were to bring over some of its own staff, it might cause outrage among the locals, but then UK unions would protest at their members being banned from working abroad.
The truth is that when Gordon Brown made his comment, “British jobs for British workers”, he stoked the flames of a protectionist labour force doctrine that is now threatening to get out of hand. The disgrace of it is that even when the UK economy was growing relatively strongly, millions of able-bodied UK adults were not working and living off benefits. The tax, benefit and education system conspire to keep large numbers of the indigenous population out of the workforce. So naturally, firms turn to other sources of labour if they feel they can get a better deal.
In these tough times I feel sympathy for skilled workers who have felt themselves to be frozen out by a foreign employer doing business in the UK, but the brutal fact has to be faced that as far as many employers are concerned, some of the locals are just not as employable as foreigners. It is a terrible indictment of what has happened to the UK labour market under this administration. Untangling the mess is, or should be, a priority lest the situation fans the flames of protectionism, with disastrous consequences.
Update: The always cool-headed Chris Dillow puts up a feast of links explaining the impact of such foreign labour on local markets.
This is excellent. Brew up a coffee, give yourself a break, and read the whole thing.
The UK’s National Gallery – a state-backed institution – and galleries in Scotland have secured £50 million to pay to keep a Titian painting “for the nation”, using state – taxpayer’s money – for this purpose. A Scottish Labour MP has criticised the use of taxpayers’ funds on this painting, arguing that such money would be better spent on supporting arts eduction for school children instead. The story is here. Naturally, the idea that a work of art that has been loaned by its owner is private property and should not be thought of as a something that belongs to “the nation” is not addressed in the article I link to, since that is outside the intellectual frame of reference either of the arts bureaucrats who spend this public money, or indeed the Labour MP who criticises them.
Leave aside the hopefully temporary problems posed by the credit crunch. For the past decade or so, there has been a huge amount of money swirling around among the rich and even not-so-rich to be spent on the arts. There is no need, in my view, for a penny of taxpayer’s money to be spent on the arts. Leave aside whether you love or loathe the things that public funds are used to support: the point is that these things should not be receiving tax-raised funds at all. Let the rich of today patronise what budding Titians, Raphaels or Turners that might be out there.
This is hilarious. All together now: aaaahhhhhhh!
(Hat-tip, Noodlefood).
This is wonderful, funny and true.
Via Radley Balko.
It is on days like these that I am glad that I work for a web-based business and that I work from home for part of the day anyway. Judging by how severe weather has hit the UK overnight, rendering the UK public transport network immobile, that is just as well. The London Underground – with the exception of the Victoria line – is down. Buses and other transport like trains are severely affected.
I am hearing that this is the heaviest snowfall since 1991. We have already had some severe cold in early January. Whether this is part of a trend I have no idea. But some of us are rediscovering how to cope with severely cold weather in the UK. I have a father who is recovering from a major operation in hospital and may not be able to go home because of the weather.
Take care out there.
I occasionally will read a big novel, such as a “classic”, because I think that it is a mark of a reasonably intelligent person to be on nodding terms with some of the high points of our literature, although I often wimp out and pick up an old R. A. Heinlein or the latest John Varley science fiction novel instead. But I certainly do accept that there is nothing more tedious than plodding through acres of text as if it were somehow proof of moral virtue or literary stamina. Tolstoy’s War and Peace is a bit like climbing the North face of the Eiger – more of an effort than I think it worthwhile making right now. And James Delingpole thinks the same. His article on the late John Updike is caustic, if not disrespectful.
|
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.
|
