Virginia Postrel has a nice item about WW2 aviator style and the Tuskegee airmen who broke racial barriers of their time in WW2. I must say that there is something deliciously satisfying at the thought that these guys helped shoot down the airforce of a racist German empire. And that they flew such glorious birds like the P-51 Mustang as they did so.
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Andrew Roberts, the UK historian, pens what can only be described as a robust defence of soon-to-be-ex-US President, George W. Bush. It has stirred up a hornet’s nest of comments, some of which include open support for OBL’s cause, which makes me wonder about who edits the Telegraph blogs these days, if at all. Unfortunately, this piece suffers from a number of basic factual errors that make one wonder about the quality of the editing of the Daily Telegraph’s print edition, never mind the electronic version. He says, for example, that Oliver North directed a movie about Bush, when in fact he meant Oliver Stone. These Olivers are a bit of a pest: I mean, there’s Oliver Reed, Oliver Cromwell, Oliver Twist, and loads of others. It might rather tickle both Messrs North and Stone – one a rather controversial soldier, the other a former-soldier-turned leftwing filmaker, to be so conflated. On a more serious note, though, Mr Roberts suffers from over-reach in his understandable desire to set the record a bit straighter. For a start, any believer in the small government brand of conservatism, even a hawk who supported the overthrow of Saddam and the fight against the Taliban, has to confront the continuing expansion of government and debt under the Bush administration. Bush went over the heads of Congress to support the bailout of the US auto industry. Then there is the whole nonsense of No Child Left Behind, Prescription Drugs, Patriot Act, and the rest. As for protecting America from attack, it is true, that he deserves – as I said some time ago – some, if not a lot, of credit for the fact that there has been no major repeat of a 9-11 sort of attack on US soil since that terrible September morning; and yes, I happen to agree with Mr Roberts that paying a pure “wait-and-see”, defensive posture after that day was not really plausible. Libertarians continue to argue among themselves, never mind with others and often vehemently, about the proper scope of foreign policy, or whether a libertarian foreign policy is an oxymoron. For me, the principle of self-defence cannot rule out the need, in certain circumstances, to go after declared enemies with a track record of violence and mayhem. Bush went after some of those enemies and made mistakes along the way. But I think, that on foreign policy at least, the judgement of history on this man will be rather kinder than at the present time. January 15th, 2009 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
 One of my favourite actors, star of the great series, The Prisoner, has died. Here’s a great appreciation of that cult 60s television series by the late Chris R. Tame. It goes without saying that the message of that series – the dangers of an all-encompassing state – are more relevant now than ever. Patrick McGoohan, rest in peace. January 14th, 2009 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
This guy clearly is not impressed by the recent Hollywood film about ‘Che’ Guevara, which I will not be watching:
The quote was seen at the blog of David Thompson. I have said it before and I will repeat: for all its possible charms, I am not setting foot in Cuba until it becomes a haven of capitalist decadence. Not a minute before. Even if that means paying more for cigars and the booze. Here is a film about Cuba, starring Andy Garcia, which is much more worthwhile. January 14th, 2009 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
One of the reasons why people get so cross about the cost of petrol is the knowledge that a high proportion of the price paid at the pumps is accounted for by tax, rather than the cost of extracting, refining and distributing the stuff. The same goes for a pack of cigarettes, pint of beer or a bottle of wine, to name a few. With a lot of grocery produce, such as your humble carrot, most people may not appreciate – yet – how much of the cost of getting those vital vitamins is accounted for by government-created production costs. Well, there have been a flurry of stories on the wires about a recent EU Parliamentary vote to ban dozens of pesticides that are deemed harmful. As a result, farming groups claim, output of crops will fall and presumably, if other things remain equal, prices will go up at a time when household budgets are under strain. It does not seem to have occured to policymakers that a simple option would be to put what chemicals are used to treat crops on a packet so that consumers can figure this out for themselves and take an informed decision. The trouble with stories like this is that the votes to ban X or Y at the EU level rarely gain a lot of coverage for more than a day or so, and then the issue tends to fizzle out, of interest only to obsessives and geeks like yours truly. A busy populace, worried more about their jobs, mortgage or children, will hardly dwell on the issue. But when Mr and Mrs Briton wonder why on earth it costs so much to buy basic groceries, the temptation will be to imagine that it is the fault of big, evil supermarket chains, for example. Rarely will the cause of the cost be seen as stemming from bureaucrats and European MPs. Of course, it may well be that the chemicals being banned are as harmful as is claimed, although given the way these things work, I doubt it. We are told that for a healthy diet, your average person requires several servings of fruit and veg a day; such things are considered good for warding off cancer. Even if there is a health risk from chemicals, the health risk of not eating enough vegetables because of high costs is even higher. These things involve a trade-off between one set of risks and another, rather than some imperfect and perfect state. If such chemicals are banned, resorting to grow-your-own is hardly a viable alternative, since modern farming can, through economies of scale, achieve better yields and lower costs-per-output than someone tending their vegetable patch. And importing fruit and veg from countries such as Spain via air transport, for example, is also becoming less attractive an option due to increased fuel prices and governments’ taxes on air travel. Once again, the Forgotten Man gets the shaft. This chemicals ban, like measures such as “employment rights”, paternity leave or 35-hour weeks, impose costs on the populace without a government having to take the potentially visible and unpopular step of raising taxes. Joining the economic dots is hard. I just hope that some in the MSM try and do so occasionally so that the message gets through. We bloggers cannot do it all on our own. Update: in the comments, one person argues that I have contradicted myself by pointing to public apathy or lack of time to scrutinise EU actions, on the one hand, and my stress on the ability of consumers to read packaging labels, on the other. There is no contradiction, though. People shop daily, weekly, monthly, etc. They constantly come up against labels, look at packaging, see advertisements, surf the Net looking at products, and so on. One of the great things about markets is that it is a constant provider of information. Not always accurate, of course. By contrast, once an EU directive has been imposed, that is usually the last that any ordinary member of the public will hear about it. As soon as a law is passed, the media and political wagon rolls on. January 14th, 2009 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Let me say it again, the only newspapers around in the future will be very upmarket, all the downmarket stuff being more readily available on the internet or in magazines made of pulped squirrels that will be handed out free to the unemployable and the insane.” – Bryan Appleyard. Those squirrels cannot catch a break. January 13th, 2009 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
This gloomy Bloomberg article, talking of capitalism’s global “winter of discontent”, argues that the current troubles are the first globalized crisis for free enterprise. Well, when an article makes an error in the first paragraph it does rather dim one’s enthusiasm for reading on. Arguably, we have had cross-border crises in markets dozens of times: the recession of 1870s, the Great Crash of the 1930s, the 1970s oil-shocks and stagflations in the US and UK, the early recession of the 1990s in countries as different as far apart as Japan, UK, Germany and US, etc. Maybe the sheer extent of the malaise now is what has struck the Bloomberg writer, but truth be told I think this is a matter of degree. According to this excellent book, markets were in fact more globalised 100 years ago than they are now. To use one of my least favourite words, there is now a constant “narrative” as to how the recent turmoil somehow proves that unregulated capitalism has failed and too closely interlinked. Quite how anyone can, with a straight face, argue that financial markets have been unregulated in recent years is a joke. Here are some of the regulations financiers have been dealing with, often with counter-productive results:
I am scratching the surface and I am sure readers can come up with more rules and regulations. Every time any of you good readers hears this canard about “unregulated capitalism”, call them out gently for this and ask them in what field, apart perhaps from security or medicine, are activities more heavily regulated than finance? Update: oh, I should have mentioned the US federal housing agencies such as Freddie Mac, and their contribution to creating a massive moral hazard problem in the house lending market. January 13th, 2009 | 31 comments - (Comments are closed)
Take a look at this, and scroll down for some of the comments. I still occasionally come across the sort of comments in the vein of “would it not be a good idea to stick all those yobs in the Army/whatever or make them do unpaid work?” etc, etc. These comments come up when there is a discussion about problems of our terrible young people. And this seems to be a viewpoint that transcends the usual left/right political divide: conservatives like the “get em sorted out” mindset while the left goes more for the “building a sense of community” approach. As usual, the notion that individuals are entitled to live their lives for their own sakes gets lost. I mean, that is just so damned selfish. The issue is quite simple: if the problem is youngsters getting bored and into trouble, then the obvious solution is paid work, hence removing all the legal and tax barriers to said, such as minimum wage laws, restrictions on hiring teenagers, and so on. Acquiring the pride of getting a paycheque strikes me as far more useful in encouraging positive behaviours than some sort of conscription plan for young adults, as seems to be on the cards in the US. And I’ll repeat my point that it is not enough just to speak out against plans to conscript 18 to 25-year-olds, for example. Proposals to make people attend schools (or whatever euphemistic words for such places exist) until they are 18, for example, is also wrong, and in many cases, counterproductive, particularly where non-academic youngsters disrupt the teaching of their fellows because they are bored senseless. Far better to encourage apprenticeships, with things like tax breaks, than keeping them in one damned education project after another. If this idea of a young civilian corps in the US becomes fact, I wonder how many of all those young Obama fans will became disenchanted with him? But then I recall that Mr McCain, his vanquished opponent, was pretty keen on all this service stuff as well. January 9th, 2009 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Fraser Nelson over at Coffee House picks up on a point that has been obvious to yours truly for a while as well: the dystopian novel, Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, nicely charts the sort of demented statist economics that we are seeing back in fashion now. Rand’s novel is more than 50 years’ old and it focuses on the railroad industry, but its themes apply just as well to the world of modern banking or the internet. Even if you decide to skip the enormous John Galt speech at the end of the 1950s novel, reading this book will help clarify a lot of the issues now swirling around. I can think of a few people in public life today who would qualify as the villains. Who, however, are the heroes? Where are the Dagny Taggarts, Hank Reardens or Francisco D’Anconas of today? There are mutterings about the book being made into a movie, starring the likes of Angelina Jolie (who is actually a lot smarter than some of her Hollywood peers), but I am not sure what the situation is with that. Hmm, let me speculate on the glory of an anti-statist movie winning an Oscar. As a side observation, I cannot help but notice that ever since the UK government nationalised banks such as Royal Bank of Scotland, which owns Coutts, the private bank, there have been worries that wealthy clients of Coutts must be a bit nervous about having their finances run by folk beholden to the state. Indeed, as Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds might say. Those banks which have by luck or deliberate choice avoided state bailouts will benefit. January 9th, 2009 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
Via the indispensable Bishop Hill blog, is this scary Henry Porter article about how many Britons, including professional photographers, are being arrested for taking photos of supposedly “off-limits” buildings. I also notice in the article that yet another Tory MP has been arrested. The police seem to be developing quite a taste for arresting MPs on dubious charges these days. But at least some judges are beginning to tighten the screws on coppers demanding to arrest or search people in “high profile” cases. But what about the rest of us plebs? January 8th, 2009 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Daniel Finkelstein says what needs to be said. Brilliant article. January 8th, 2009 | 66 comments - (Comments are closed)
Following on from my post earlier about what sort of things might be regarded as wrong or intolerable by future generations that are widely done now, this book by David Friedman (son of Milton F), which looks at potential future legal, scientific and ethical controversies, looks interesting. For instance, Friedman asks what might happen to inheritance wrangles where the “deceased” is in fact held in cryonic suspension and hence not technically dead, as might be defined in a specific legal code. Some of this stuff might appear pure science fiction, but SF has a way of sometimes becoming reality. After all, the very fact that many people can afford to not use animal products such as leather has been made possible by synthetic fibres and materials such as plastic, something that did not exist about 100 years ago. Other developments could also make certain moral controversies either irrelevant or shift the boundaries markedly, or raise controversies that no-one has to contend with now. On the dystopian side, the developments going on in IT might raise such worries about how the state might try to do things like implant computer chips into people’s bodies as a sort of ID system. Only the innocent have anything to fear… January 8th, 2009 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
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